Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi: Two sides of the same political coin

By Karthik Subbaraman

After Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s national coming-out speech in February, Indians were subjected to the privilege of a national coming-of-age address by Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi, 42, last Thursday. The two speeches were very close to each other. No, really.

Fellow Indians, no matter how much the media says otherwise, you are being given the choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Welcome to General Election 2014.
It may be too much to suggest that the same “guy” (Rahul, this word is for you) wrote their speeches, but it sure seemed like that. Otherwise, why would both our presumed electoral adversaries bring up, and then debunk, good old stereotypes about India?

Modi told us we are no longer a nation of snake-charmers, thank you, but mouse-charmers. As far as Rahul goes, India does not resemble the ponderous elephant. People, we are more like a beehive, remember. They were explaining India to Indians. Staying with stereotypes, our two future gladiators were keen to emphasise a national quality we supposedly possess in ample measure: optimism.

The Nehru-Gandhi scion humanised this national trait through a little anecdote about a young lad willing to run from one city to another in search of a job. Very optimistic. Modi, too, held up this national trait by holding up a half-empty glass and declaring that it was full. Air, the Gujarat chief minister told us, apparently filled the rest of it. Hot air, more than few would be tempted to say.

Both men made deprecatory noises about China, and both men peppered their speeches with some corny lines. Being patriotic citizens, we will skip the China theme, but we cannot do without sampling the corny lines. Modi: India has the ability to export anything. Why not export teachers? Rahul: There is a tendency to look at India as a country… India is energy, it is a force. If you go back a thousand years, two thousand years, you would find that force came from our rivers, Ganga, Yamuna, Saraswati. So, people, you will have noticed that Modi may be the more experienced, but Rahul held his own quite easily in the corny-lines department.