Through the third eye

Your Khan & our Khan
A simmering Bollywood star war seems to be spilling over to the Congress. Now, a section of the party’s leaders just can’t stop praising Salman Khan for his ‘direct contribution’ to the party’s election campaign in Mumbai as well as for supporting Rahul Gandhi’s Ferozabad battle. This camp is also quick to add that unlike Salman, who openly joined the Congress war against its rivals, his rival Shahrukh Khan has so far conveniently limited himself to advertising his friendship with Rahul and Priyanka through photo sessions in VIP cricket galleries or at 10, Janpath.

The pro-Salman ‘Congressies’ now ask why those party leaders who claim credit for facilitating Shahrukh’s proximity to Gandhis could never get him to shake a leg for the Congress when it mattered.

Homecoming
Nafiza Ali’s unilateral ‘return’ to the Congress from political wilderness evokes bigger laughter at 24, Akbar Road, than what her Lok Sabha poll performance in Lucknow in an SP uniform had. Yet, Congressmen being what they are, the return of the prodigal is being used to drive home a bigger agenda. Party folks close to

K Karunakaran have found in the Nafiza episode an opportunity to loudly wonder why the leadership cannot clear the readmission of K Muralidharan, son of the Kerala veteran. Murali, after many political misadventures outside the Congress, has been knocking at AICC and PCC doors for an ‘unconditional return’. The ‘K camp’, also worried over the Leader’s failing health, ask if ‘social butterflies’ could fly in and out of the Congress, then why a former PCC chief and a two-time Lok Sabha MP like Murali is being made to wait. Finally, AICC in-charge of Kerala Mohsina Kidwai has agreed to meet Murali in Delhi later this week.

Willing conversion?
The non-factional Parivar devotees are now a confused lot. Not long ago, they heard Shri Mohan Bhagwat’s coronation as RSS sarsanghchalak being hailed as a defining moment in the saffron world. The new RSS chief, they were told, ‘is a man of the new world’ with fresh and dynamic ideas’. His ‘respect’ for L K Advani and his inclination to play along with the Ashoka Road movers and shakers were cited as indications of the new order that would succeed Mr Advani. But the moment Dr Bhagwat, a qualified veterinary doctor, revealed his scepticism over paper tigers’ ability to become roaring tigers and opted, instead, for a pedigreed lead horse from the Nagpur stable, the spin took a reverse swing. Now, goes the new line, Bhagwat and the RSS are cut off from the realities of modern India, its new-age politics and are bent on treating BJP as their bonded slave. The eerie resemblance of this line to what the ‘pseudo secularists’ have been saying all along has the average Parivarite baffled.

Second challenge
Supporters of the Samajwadi Party (SP) felt reassured by the speed with which young Akhilesh Yadav recovered from the Ferozabad shock to roar vengeance on those who messed up his wife’s debut show. They understand the strategic importance of putting up such a brave front when one’s political front is falling apart. Yet, they also get a nagging feeling that their young gun has not yet hit any new bright idea.

His post-Ferozabad resolve to take on the Rahul Gandhi challenge, they recall, is reproduction, verbatim, of what the SP spin doctors had come up with when Akhilesh took over as state party chief after the
LS poll meltdown in May.