SO, Rahul Gandhi was not invited to the state banquet for Russian President Vladimir Putin. We are told Prime Minister Narendra Modi had ensured that the leader of opposition in parliament’s Lower House — the shadow prime minister in the British system — wasn’t allowed to make even a courtesy call on the visiting dignitary. Rahul took his exclusion demurely, calling it a reflection of the government’s insecurity. He didn’t seem too bothered. When he travels abroad, he said, he finds it difficult to meet senior leaders because they had been advised to not interact with him.

Modi’s peevishness with the Gandhi family is well recorded, but there is evidently more to it than the challenge of competing with Jawaharlal Nehru’s legacy and the palpable inferiority complex the combat engenders.

His spite for Rahul can be linked to 2005 when Modi was denied visas by the US and European countries. The Congress government headed by Manmohan Singh had taken over the previous year from a BJP-led coalition of prime minister A.B. Vajpayee. Modi’s tourist visa to the US was revoked during Congress rule. The American embassy cited his alleged role in the 2002 communal violence in Gujarat when he was chief minister of the state.

Did PM Singh indeed have a role in instigating foreign embassies to stall Modi’s travels abroad? If so, it was a foolish and counterproductive idea. If there was indeed a case against Modi, and Zakia Jaffri swears there were several, then the Indian state should not have taken refuge behind........

© Dawn