“After 11 years, it felt as if there was an opposition in the parliament,” a fanboy of hers said on the Facebook page of a Hindi newspaper, after the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family spoke for her Congress party during the long, and surprisingly high-quality debate on Operation Sindoor.
But fan praise has to be discounted.
What we perhaps need to understand is why Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s 25-minute speech in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday attracted widespread acclaim, cutting across the usual divides based on political affiliations.
As debates go, this two-day affair was a long one, at times tiring and often repetitive in content, but Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP-led government can take some dubious credit for finally enabling a real discussion on a key issue, transcending the familiar pattern of noisy opposition protests, government stonewalling, and frequent adjournments.
Given that much of national TV is not much different in noise levels and often involves stage-managed panels stuffed with sweeping accusations and decibel punches, this debate was a substantially fruitful one, though it left key questions unanswered.
Whatever the ups and downs, Priyanka Gandhi’s virtuoso speech won some sort of a player-of-the-match recognition.
Speech as Performance
A bit of musical musing may be in order. Performing artists often differ not only on the basis of who they are but also on the forum where they perform.
Modi, like a raucous rockstar, excels in open space stadia and mass rallies, and sometimes in parliament, where he offers solo performances that offer little scope for questions during or after his speech.
But then, the Parliament also doubles as a small auditorium, sometimes enabling performances resembling closed-door concerts.
Gandhi’s speech appeared closer to the latter category as members watched in rapt attention – partly because of rare house discipline and partly because of the way she spoke that redefined the parliamentary debate as a genre: it involved a recognition of previous speakers, a focus on key aspects, and repartees that made her speech a two-way street. Last but not the least, there was her biting sarcasm that evoked not loud laughter but some murmured sighs that seemed to go: OMG!
“You like to pat yourself on the back but hide yourself from the country and parliament,” Gandhi told PM Modi, who has not been found wanting in self-praise. “The Prime Minister takes credit for Operation Sindoor. That is fine. Let him take credit for Olympic medals as well. Sure, he can. But taking credit also means taking responsibility,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone that was more lightning than thunder.
Screenplay Meets Sarcasm
Her reaching this point was more critical, much like a Hindustani vocalist building up the mood in a slow, well-etched raga before suddenly speeding up her tempo. This classical vilambit-drut style was such that even her own supporters applauded less and listened more, as if they were surprised more into silence than cheers.
This alaap of hers, offered with visual detail, resembled a screenplay narration that would have done an aspiring Bollywood director meeting producer Karan Johar proud.
As she recounted the events of 22 April, she brought in elements of storytelling that resembled Dastangoi, the oral storytelling format of Persian origin, in which tales are filled with drama, emotions and contrasting factors. The fact that she chose a humanitarian focus (not ideological) is what perhaps touched hearts and nerves where political narratives usually do not reach.
The fact that this was done in chaste Hindi, and not the lack-of-roots English that the Gandhi family is often accused of, had an extra element of outreach, something she has steadily worked on over the years.
While her plaintive tone reminded one of her grandmother Indira Gandhi, it must be remembered that the former prime minister did not quite have the dismissive sense of humour that was clearly evident in Priyanka, the performer. She paused for effect, responded to interjections, and suddenly raised her pitch to a shrill, accusatory tone when it came to matters of public security.
From Facebook to Baisaran
She even flashed back to the happy Facebook pages of a victim’s family and then recounted elements of the massacre site, the Baisaran Valley, as if she had been a personal witness to the whole thing.
“Their kids were playing on the trampoline while the family was enjoying the pleasant weather in the valley,” she said, before uttering her punchline. “Not one security guard was present,” and then she moved to how the tourists felt orphaned as ruthless terrorists opened fire on helpless victims in full view of their families.
In some sense, she was only repeating what other opposition members were saying in their droning, whining speeches: intelligence failure, lack of government responsibility, evasive lack of transparency, and the absence of security in the backdrop of blustering government claims of having changed Kashmir for the better.
But the political game changed because of the way she told the story, with a sense of communication that took in both, members immediately present around her, and the millions who would watch her on videos travelling at digital speeds on social media platforms.
As she named the victims one by one, and shot back at those who called them “Hindus” by saying they were “Bharatiya” (Indians), the Congress party’s secular ideology had been cleverly baked into the cake she took.
Flash or Turning Point?
Given the details of the speech, its bullet points must have been rehearsed and probably crafted with an assisting team. But her pauses for effect, the retorts, the tone, and the casual confidence with which everything was delivered showed that Gandhi had come into her own in politics, in which she has long been seen as a supportive but somewhat reluctant accomplice to her earnest, often fumbling brother Rahul.
While political equations and coalition dynamics do favour Modi and the organisational might of his RSS-BJP combine, Gandhi seemed to signal a new phase in Indian parliamentary history that reminded one of the 1950s and 60s, when erudition and logic were more to be seen. We have to wait and see to assess if her speech was a flash in the pan or an indicator of the shape of things to come.
(The author is a senior journalist and commentator who has worked for Reuters, Economic Times, Business Standard, and Hindustan Times. He can be reached on Twitter @madversity. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)