Letter to BS: Congress should find a non-Nehru-Gandhi member to take charge

Apropos the editorial “Family Plots” (February 25), the Congress, with or without the Gandhis, will continue to be under constant attack from the ruling party as long as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is in power under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The Congress at present is on the same boat as the BJP when it had been losing one election after another since 2004. The crisis then was so bad that many from within the party started targeting each other. Former Union minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, Arun Shourie, had infamously said, “BJP kati patang, Rajnath Alice in Blunderland”. He had also said, “My prescription is jhatka (swift execution), not halal (slow execution). One or two is not enough. Saareke saare (all).” The then party spokesperson had replied, “His (Shourie) nomination to Rajya Sabha is coming to an end, I am sure he wants action against himself. He wants to become a martyr.”

There is no doubt the Congress has many leaders who want to be in the party in spite of being out of power. Time has probably come for the Congress to find a dynamic non-Nehru-Gandhi family member to take charge. However, such a leader should be prepared to face the criticism from the BJP that he or she is a puppet at the hands of the family. As for Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi, it is high time they travelled the length and breadth of the country, if necessary, with a few lucidly-written chapters from The Discovery of India in different languages to understand what real India stands for.

N Nagarajan, Secunderabad

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