Leaders are born in jails. The next most conducive place is the court room. Those who favoured Rahul Gandhi with this boon pretend not to know the rudiments of history.
It is easy to get carried away by prevailing trends. One such trend is to break your antagonist down through litigation, as seen in the case of Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal. Law, meant to be an instrument of justice, is used as a weapon of intimidation on the principle that process is itself the punishment.
This strategy has its usefulness in respect of insignificant persons and spent forces. But, for one who is yet to be baptised by fire as a major political presence, this logic could work in the reverse. Rahul Gandhi could not have hoped for a greater advantage than what is being offered to him on a platter for a variety of reasons.
The strategy of dragging Rahul to the court appears to be predicated on two calculations. The first is the perception-quotient. In the eyes of the public, a defendant appears a criminal. The subtle point that one is innocent until pronounced guilty doesn’t help the defendant in this respect. The second is the vexation-quotient: to burden the person concerned with processes and procedures, together with the emotional burden that litigation necessarily entails.
But this is only one side of the story. In the present instance, the other side of the matter is sure to outweigh.
This trial is the closest Rahul could have come to the cliché – “trial by fire”. The fact that this could dissipate the opprobrium conjured up so laboriously against Rahul as a naïve beneficiary of dynastic succession, seems to have escaped the notice of his adversaries. The dynastic slur will continue to stick only for as long as Rahul remains insulated from the rough and tough of being put to the test. The moment he proves his mettle, the anti-dynastic cloud will shift. He will begin to be seen as a victim of a prejudicial attack, a vilified politician. And this could go against those who have so far revelled in this line of attack and reaped its benefit. That is not good news for the BJP.
Second, once Rahul goes through the process and proves his mettle, he will be born as a leader in his own right. This is not merely a matter of change in perception. The major liability that Rahul has carried so far is of being, in the lingo of the BJP, a part-time politician. What has lent credence to this calumny was the fact that he hasn’t till date undergone a struggle and proved himself.
Struggle is the womb for the birth of leaders. When one enters…
