It seems futile at times to mourn the loss of the Congress party's moral centre in general and on Gujarat, post-2002, in particular, but in an exceptionally moving and deeply-felt piece, Aakar Patel, perhaps deliberately ignoring the recent Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar tickets, makes a valiant effort to stir awake the morally comatose party:
I have no quarrel with Narendrabhai. He represents an aspect, the bitter resentment, of Gujaratis, and he does it well. I have family and friends who respond to his bigotry; I can no more hate him than I can hate them.
My problem is with the Congress. It has rolled over and died in a state where it should stand up and fight against this hatred from the inside, like Gandhi would have done, and Patel.
...Dear Rahul, both of us will be 40 in months. Middle-aged and closed of mind, as the men you see about you. Hemingway said, “The world is a beautiful place, and worth fighting for.” I don’t think it’s a beautiful place. But I think we should fight anyway.
Read the full piece: Don't roll over and play dead in Gujarat
_100_140.jpg)
