We Indians tend to be so fixated on some of our politicians that one of them hugging another of them creates an absolute tsunami of reactions! The fact that the hug in question became far more important than the weighty issue of a no-confidence motion against the government is also possibly evidence of how easy it is to distract us with irrelevancies and nonissues. So here is what happened: Rahul Gandhi of the Congress spoke at length to criticize the current dispensation and then went ahead and hugged Prime Minister Narendra Modi whom he had just been ciriticising! Predictably social media is in a flurry and meme-meisters went wild:
Rahul Gandhi finished off his speech by saying that there was no hatred in his heart for his political opponent, how his party was all for spreading love and so on. He then proceeded to go over and hug Modi who seemed altogether surprised at the gesture.
Rahul Gandhi went back to his seat and was then seen to wink at his party members. Predictably, the reactions to the hug and the wink ranged from approval and amusement to criticism and ad hominen attacks.
Many loved the gesture as something that was surprising and amusing; as such a gesture to appreciate. People felt that this was so unusual that it took the PM by surprise as well.
Many felt that the hug was unseemly and indecorous; that it had no place in parliament. Inevitably, comparisons were made to the ‘jaadu ki jhappi’ from the Munnabhai films.
Many commentators felt that Rahul had successfully highjacked his namesake Gandhiji’s message of love and nonviolence by making a magnanimous gesture to a political opponent.
Other famous winks where quickly brought into the conversation. As soon as the nation saw visuals of the hug and the wink, the memes started.
Amul’s highly topical ads were quickly in on the action. Within just a short while of the actual incident in parliament, yet another hilarious Amul butter ad was out.
This was the take of popular cartoonist Manjul on the event.
Some saw the hug as being unusual and as difficult to digest as, say, the CM of Delhi Arvind Kejriwal hugging his opponent the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi.
Those on one side of the political divide ridiculed RaGa’s gesture and called it hypocrisy in view of the fact that Congress had been critical of Modi’s hug-diplomacy in the past.
Obviously there were those on the other side of the political divide who saw not only humour in the situation but presaged what, in their view were the events to come.
Whether people disapproved of Rahul Gandhi’s hug ‘n’ wink behaviour in parliament or thought it was a good move, the bottom line is that it made for a fun day at office for our parliamentarians. It made Indians interested in parliamentary proceedings for a change – Indians, who rarely find anything interesting in the usually dry and dreary proceedings of our ‘Temple of Democracy’.
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