Rahul Gandhi’s Mentor, Sam Pitroda Makes Racist Remark and Then Resigns From his Post

The chairman of Indian Overseas Congress, Sam Pitroda who is said to be the mentor as well as friend, philosopher and guide of Rahul Gandhi, has managed to shoot off his mouth again within the space of a week and created another controversy as per today news paper and other media sources.

This time Pitroda was quoted as saying, “"We could hold the country as diverse as India together. Where people in the east look like the Chinese, people in the west look like the Arabs, people in the north look like, maybe, white and people in the south look like Africans.”

Immediately, his unimaginative and rather hollow statement became today news in Hindi and other media channels. The incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) grabbed another golden opportunity that came on a platter to run down the Congress party in the narrative war.

The Congress was also quick to disassociate itself from Pitroda’s controversial statement even as it was recovering from the hammering it got in the narrative war after the controversy created by Pitroda’s statement last week.

Senior Congress party member and a close confidante of the Gandhi family, Jairam Ramesh was quick to Tweet that his party "fully disassociates" itself from the comments made by Pitroda.

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The Pitroda saga – from the frying pan into the fire

It appears that Pitroda has acquired a rare ability to score self goals for a Congress party that is already struggling with the self-defeating and suicidal policies of its de facto leader, Rahul Gandhi.

Earlier, last week, Pitroda had said that India should adopt an inheritance policy wherein the 55% of the value of assets of a person who dies, should be taken away by the government.

According to today news paper reports, the BJP immediately grabbed this heaven-sent opportunity and went all out with the message “If the Congress comes to power, it will take away 55% of the assets that people leave behind for their children”.

The Congress had no answer to this charge made by the BJP other than to “Disassociate” itself from Pitroda’s statement and further clarified that these are his personal views and not those of the Congress party.

The damage was already done because it is believed that this statement by Pitroda, considered Rahul Gandhi’s mentor, is in fact in the latter’s agenda if he ever comes to power.

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Pitroda’s statements underline the intellectual hollowness of the Congress

Ever since the prime ministership of Rajiv Gandhi, Pitroda is looked upon in the Congress leadership as some kind of an intellectual fountainhead emanating knowledge and ideas.

However, these bizarre statements first on inheritance and then on the race and ethnicity of Indians from the different regions of the country has exposed the intellectual bankruptcy of Pitroda. That is now the trending today news paper as well as in other channels.

As long as the Congress was in power, Pitroda was safe and secure under the canopy of the party’s control over academia, intelligentsia and media but that is no longer the case today.

Hence, whenever the mask falls from Pitroda’s face, as it did twice in the last week or so, his severely limited imagination and intellectual ability got exposed.

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If this is how the topmost “intellectual” of the Congress party imagines India then it should not surprise anyone that Rahul Gandhi keeps talking of civil and ethnic unrest all over the country. In fact, he is on record saying that “the country will burn and anarchy will spread all over India”. When you have a political mentor who thinks, “People in the east look like the Chinese, people in the west look like the Arabs, people in the north look like, maybe, white and people in the south look like Africans”, what can one expect from the pupil?

AUTHOR: Dev Kumar is an independent geo-political observer, commentator and blogger who tries to look at international issues in relation to India and present a different dimension that has hardly been covered by mainstream experts.