Opinion Intimate enemy

Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif’s home in Raiwind, where his grand-daughter’s wedding is being held, at Lahore, Pakistan on December 25, 2015. (PIB photo)

Political convergence appears to have overtaken the Congress, which has been reacting to the BJP precisely as the BJP has been wont to react to it. In reaction to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s unscheduled change of flight path to Lahore, the Congress has protested that this is not the way in which two nuclear-weapon powers should conduct diplomacy at the apex level. Its spokesman has disparaged the prime minister’s track record on Indo-Pak relations as a series of “somersaults, cartwheels and U-turns”, taking a position that is usually associated with the right. Days ago, the party came down heavily on the PM when he landed in Moscow, for inspecting the guard of honour while the Indian national anthem was playing. It was not a serious issue, it passed as soon as the PM’s attention was drawn to it, and indeed, it would have been of no political significance had not the Congress sought to take advantage.

It appears that the party has not found a voice of a pitch suitable for the opposition benches, and it is entirely for want of trying. It is almost as if it is happy to have the BJP choose the weapons, and is caught in an endless loop of repartee in an idiom that does it little credit. The most enduring contribution that the Congress has made to the House this year is obstructionism, which it has justified as retaliation for stonewalling by the BJP in sessions past, when the Congress had occupied the treasury benches. Particularly ridiculous was the manner in which the party dragged the issue of the National Herald case into Parliament and held it to ransom. The Gandhis were required to attend court by law, and the issue was not fit for political bargaining.

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It is true that the BJP has changed course on talks with Pakistan. However, any move that could possibly help the peace process to turn a corner deserves support, and spontaneously extending a hand on a birthday may achieve that. It did not behove the Congress to dismiss Modi’s move as “preposterous” and “utterly ridiculous” before his plane even took off from Kabul. The noises it made over the minor transgression involving the national anthem recall a recent incident in a Mumbai theatre from where a family was ejected for refusing to stand while it played. Such actions betray a peevish pettiness, even an intolerance, of a kind that a self-professedly liberal party must surely be opposed to. In the Opposition, the Congress has a crucial and constructive role to play. It must find a suitable voice to go with it.