Petty Patriots

At a time when the nation is making a strenuous diplomatic effort to isolate Pakistan for its continued patronage of terrorism, the Congress party led by Rahul Gandhi and his smirking apparatchik Jairam Ramesh seems more invested in sabotaging India’s credibility abroad than in confronting its enemies. The continual sniping at their own MP Shashi Tharoor, who is ably representing India as part of a global outreach following the Pahalgam massacre, is downright disgraceful.

Dr. Tharoor, known for his erudition, eloquence and statesmanship, is currently leading one of all-party delegations sent abroad to counter Pakistan’s narrative and explain India’s calibrated military response - Operation Sindoor – to the barbaric Pahalgam massacre. Instead of lauding him, Congress leaders are busy mocking and maligning Tharoor.

Jairam Ramesh, a man known more for condescension than conviction, saw fit to compare Indian MPs on a diplomatic mission to the very terrorists they are trying to expose. That this language mirrors the propaganda churned out by Pakistan’s ISPR is no coincidence. From questioning the Balakot air strikes to mocking Operation Sindoor, Congress seems determined to provide Pakistan with an alibi at every turn.

This is not dissent. This is dereliction. The Congress’s eagerness to ridicule India’s military and diplomatic responses, simply because they were not orchestrated under its own leadership, betrays a party that has shrunk into a sulking irrelevance. What else explains its decision to ridicule the foreign outreach as “junkets”? Or to smear Tharoor as a “BJP super-spokesperson” merely for explaining India’s position coherently on the world stage?

This is petty-mindedness of a juvenile order. And it is not new. The same party once mocked the Indian Army chief as a ‘goonda’ and demanded proof of India’s retaliatory actions. It has long confused partisanship with patriotism and grievance with governance. In today’s Congress, any Indian success not authored by the Gandhis is met not with applause, but with sabotage.

One would expect a party that once claimed to have negotiated the Shimla Agreement and led India through war to display at least a fig leaf of maturity in moments of national crisis. Instead, it has become a party of Twitter trolls in khadi. When India seeks to build global opinion against cross-border terrorism, it is met with sneers from those who ought to be helping sharpen the message. When India reaches out for solidarity, the Congress and its media ecosystem blare out talking points indistinguishable from those in Islamabad’s press releases.

For them, every initiative taken by the Modi government is a conspiracy, and every soldier’s sacrifice an occasion for sarcasm. The tragedy here is that the Congress no longer seems to know how to disagree without dishonouring the nation. Criticism of the government is a democratic right. But when that criticism begins to parrot the language of India’s enemies, the line between opposition and betrayal becomes dangerously thin.

India deserves a better opposition, one that is adult enough to know the difference between politics and perfidy.