Take a despairing look at the man in the picture. That is exactly not the expression a union home minister of a terror-stricken country should sport on his face. And when you know the face belongs to the Congress old guard Sushilkumar Shinde, you also know the trade-mark fixed smile has slipped ever since he has been handed over the reins of the all important portfolio of home ministry by a prime minister who apparently knows everything but never makes it known to people.
Let me not get you into a maze. My interaction with Shinde is nothing to rave about. I had a brief interaction with him during his tenure as Maharashtra's Chief Minister in 2003 when as an accreditated journalist I would go to the Mantralaya more to share tea with fellow scribes than out of any political interest. At a press conference, I told him that I also had some roots in Solapur from where he too hailed. He gave me that condescending, patronising smile that politicians usually reserve for their constituency. Co-incidentally, it was at Solapur that I bumped into him again since our residences are in the immediate neighbourhood. He stood outside the gate of his house, sharing small talk with a few party workers. As I happened to pass along, he spotted me and lo! That smile was back. I smiled back in the surprise that he recognised me. He gestured to me that we could meet later, but the occasion never happened. Thereafter, I saw him only in newspapers and TV channels, and mostly for wrong reasons. But you didn't need political punditry to diagnose that he, like many politicians in this country, was suffering from a terminal foot-in-the-mouth syndrome.
The trigger for writing this blog, however, dates back to a function sometime in 1982 when Shinde was in Nagpur to unveil the statue of (Swatantryaveer) Vinayak Damodar Sawarkar where as a Congress functionary and a union minister, he raised the hackles of his party by speaking words of appreciation for Sawarkar's role in the freedom struggle.
The Congress couldn't fathom in hell what prompted Shinde to attend the function when it was all so evident that RSS had organised and sponsored it. But the party that should be duly credited for making sycophancy a national virtue, pardoned Shinde's indiscretion. Loyalty to Gandhi family is a primary qualification in Congress. Add a Dalit face to it and the party treats you with kid gloves. The din against Shinde died down after a regulation show-cause notice. The smile remained very much in place.
Thirty years later, Shinde keeps giving ample evidence that nothing has changed really. Now that should be a bit surprising since you would like to believe that someone armed with an experience as CID sub inspector of police coupled with a long political career might have prepared him for the home ministry. Obviously, Home is not where his heart and mind is.
You need to spare Shinde for all the stock cliches that he delivers as a politician and minister since it is a malaise that cuts across most others of his ilk. What befuddles is why does he have to cut a sorry figure by making statements that put him to ridicule. If only he were to take a leaf out of his prime minister's closed book, he would know what not to speak than what to speak. On the day terror scooted to Hyderabad, he said "We knew attacks were going to happen, but not when exactly." Blame it on the terrorists who should have sent him an official communique on the Indian Mujahideen letterhead on the time and date of the attack.
Barely a week earlier, he reneged on what he had claimed at the Chintan Shibir of the Congress on the existence of so called saffron terror outfits. He "regretted" his remarks that led to a puerile semantic debate whether a regret amounted to an apology.
Shinde opened his account as the home minister by displaying the humorous streak in him. At a function in Pune, he said casually that "Like the Bofors scam, the Coalgate scam will also be forgotten." When the Media and the Opposition questioned the wisdom behind that remark, Shinde made light of the controversy by saying "I had gone to attend the felicitation ceremony of a former schoolmate. He did not make anyone laugh so I thought let me add some humour to the function." Of course, no one found it funny at all.
As Power Minister, he raised the collective eyebrows of the country by seeing nothing unusual when the whole of the North grid had collapsed even as the bureaucrats in his department were attributing it to severe power shortage.
I hope to catch up with the minister when I plan to visit his home town next month end. I have little doubts the meeting will be laced with humour potent enough to rupture intestines. I also intend to give him a few cassettes of old film songs of which he is known to be a abiding connoieseur.
Meanwhile, you keep enjoying his brand of humour. And if you happen to catch Raj Thackeray mimicking him in his speeches, ignore it as a bad joke. Raj looks contrived, Shinde is a natural.
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