Rahul ko gussa kyun aaya? Congress VP is like a rich kid in college, who is far from topping the class

Though he does it less often than in the past, you can’t fail to notice that every time Rahul Gandhi stands up to speak in public, his first reflex is to roll up the sleeves of his kurta.

The rolling up of sleeves, a habit that had become the subject of media mirth and twitter taunts during the 2014 Lok Sabha campaign, is a classical giveaway of Rahul’s mindset: every time he stands up to speak, he is getting ready for a fight, not a discussion.

True to form and manner, a bellicose Rahul was on display yet again during the debate on intolerance in the Parliament on Tuesday. He started with the perfunctory rolling up of sleeves and then delivered a speech that was a mix of old complaints, current concerns and fresh diatribe.

“VK Singh called dalit children dogs, Sakshi Maharaj called Nathuram Godse patriot, protests in this country now mean sedition, India should not learn the wrong lesson of intolerance from Pakistan, the PM should speak up when liberals and minorities are attacked,” Rahul said on Tuesday. Thankfully, the worn-out suit-boot ki sarkar jibe and the six-day stubble were missing.

The problem with what Rahul said was not the content — some of his concerns were genuine and lines smart — but the delivery. Almost all of Rahul’s speech was like his usual, I-am-so-angry rant, thrown at the audience and delivered in his trademark high-pitched voice that begins to crack the moment he raises the decibel level beyond his comfort level. Humour, wit, satire, saracasm, literary flourishes — all the ingredients that make a speech memorable and the orator a compelling proposition — were missing from a debate inspired, ironically, by the protests of poets, writers and artistes.

In spite of his youth, charming, dimpled-cheeks persona (when he allows it to emerge out of that stubble), when he speaks, you can’t escape the feeling that Rahul is like a JK Rowling character, someone from whom happiness, optimism and hope have been sucked out by a dementor, leaving behind only pessimism and despondent rage. Perhaps only a shrink can tell us why a young, mild-mannered man who has got leadership on a silver platter and inherited a party as a family heirloom is always angry and irritated.

Way back in 2014, when Rahul was thrust into the frontline by his party against Narendra Modi, DNA had wondered , ‘Has anyone ever seen the leader of a party, in power for two consecutive terms, so bitter and angry about “how things haven’t happened”? Why was Rahul Gandhi angry? If he was angry about the lack of development or poverty, then his anger should have been directed at his own party than at anyone else. If he was angry about being challenged by Narendra Modi, then he came across as a bad sport. As someone said, Rahul’s speech was like a rich kid in college who knows he isn’t topping the class.’

But electoral disasters haven’t convinced Rahul that his faux anger is well past its use-by date. It had some novelty value when he first tried it at Bhatta Parsaul and Niyamgiri, it carried some shock value when he tore up the Samajwadi Party manifesto during the 2012 campaign in Uttar Pradesh and then his own government’s proposal to allow convicts to contest polls. But now, his anger doesn’t stir up anger against the subjects of his rant, it evokes a mix of apathy for his words and sympathy for him. Instead of the genuine rage of someone upset with the prevailing system, it sounds more and more like a personal pique of an easily irritable man.

To make himself heard, to convince listeners of his intent, the Congress leader needs to dump his monotonous, argumentative RaGa. As Kaveree Bamzai argued in DailyO , choreographed anger has its uses, but it is also subject to the law of diminishing returns, even if it is off and on. When the anger is not followed by action, it is time for a new narrative.

Instead of complaining and critiquing all the time, Rahul now needs to contribute constructive suggestions (even Asaduddin Owaisi did that during his fiery speech); instead of conveying the impression of gloom and doom, he needs to convey hope and optimism. Instead of behaving like a street fighter, Rahul, for his own good, needs to morph into a statesman and a leader.

Often Rahul has been heard complaining, ‘Woh gusse ki rajneeti karte hain.’ High time he heard some of his own tapes.