Rahul Gandhi’s reading list is pretty impressive these days. It includes the Upanishads, which are the distilled fount of ancient wisdom, and the Bhagwad Gita, peerless as a text of philosophy. He revealed this in Tamil Nadu, which too has an ar-ray of literary classics that may take more than one lifetime to read. At the rate Rahul is falling in love with Tamil Nadu, we can expect his reading list to expand, hopefully, to include the Tirukkural, splendid proof of the dictum that brevity is the soul of wit and wisdom.
There are a lot of people who have read extensively to have become hugely respected founts of received wisdom because they read just for the sake of picking up knowledge. But Rahul’s search for knowledge seems to be clouded by a political slant, namely he is studying the Upanishads and the Bhagwad Gita since he is “fighting the RSS and BJP”, as he himself said while addressing party functionaries in Chennai.
It is not yet certain if the sales of commentaries on the Upanishads and the various interpretations of the Gita that come with the well-known sacred text have picked up because they have a new votary. But then Rahul is no Barack Obama whose reading list, much like Oprah Winfrey’s, could give an immense kick to book sales. Authors would give their right hand to have their titles on the reading lists of those two, much as musicians would like to see their songs in the playlist of the likes of Obama.
The Tirukkural could do wonders for a politician wishing to criticse others for their misdeeds provided, of course, that the leader can keep himself above the pack of the career politician who has ruined the image of the tribe. Maybe, Rahul could read translations of the Kural that are freely available to know as many home truths as there are in the more ancient texts that was passed on in the country’s great oral tradition. Rahul also plans to watch Tamil movies and also read some about Tamil culture, so it does appear we have a new fan of the state.
The problem, of course, is that Rahul is seen as the one with the golden spoon in his mouth and viewed since birth as the heir apparent in the finest tradition of the Nehru-Gandhis whose dynastic rule in the seat of executive power, or by virtue of leading the party as in the case of Sonia, has been viewed as a boon by sycophants and a curse by others. Rahul’s much awaited anointment as the party chief seems to have had another date put on it. It is only a guess whether his visit to Tamil Nadu to rub shoulders with all the opponents of Narendra Modi had anything to do with his promotion at this juncture.
To bestow a special status on any place they visit is a politician’s dexterity in use of words and imagery. Rahul’s love for Tamil Nadu, expressed in endearing terms as a feeling he wanted to sh-are with his sister Priyanka, was a feature of his latest visit to the capital of the Tamils. It was not far from here that his father lost his life, a victim of statecraft gone awry as he put India in the line of someone else’s war in sending the IPKF to Sri Lanka. Far from keeping the peace, the force got sucked into an outright war between the rebel Tigers and the ruthless Sri Lankan army of a nation that had even bombed its own people at some point in its chequered civil war history.
However well meaning Rajiv Gandhi was and with what good intentions he sent the peacekeeping force while pitting it against the Tigers, it was a diplomatic as well as operational disaster. He paid for it with his life at the hands of a vicious guerilla war machine that stopped at nothing to achieve its aims. His assassination in Sriperumbudur, at the seat of the shrine of a saint and savant who united people regardless of their caste and colour, was one of the saddest events in the confused politics of the Tamils of that time when pan-national Tamil identities were thought of as not only fashionable but possible too.
As the potential head of the Congress, Rahul may soon have to rule on how to reshape a faction-ridden state party that has lost its relevance in local politics. But if ever he has to decide on things beyond that he might do well to remember the lesson drawn from the Rajiv Gandhi intervention in Sri Lanka.
There is plenty of literature on what happened in the modern war in these parts. As a matter of statecraft, Rahul might do well to include such tomes in his reading list. He might, after all, need fundamentally to “understand” Tamil Nadu to know it is somewhat different from the rest of India. If he does bone up on Tamil knowledge, he would be doing better than his dad.
