Rahul's Gandhi "many Indians" comment is admirable in many ways, but it makes for poor politics. It reminds me of Hillary Clinton's "half of Trump's supporters are deplorables comments", which she had to immediately walk back and apologise for. One of the central rules for https://twitter.com/RahulGandhi/status/1315119655720153089

politicians is that you don't condemn voters (or your own countrymen). Rahul Gandhi's comments are true but they should be left to activists & analysts, not politicians. If you watch US politicians for ex, all of them speak in the name of "American people" and invariably in this

construction, American people are "good" and want all the things the particular politician wants. This is a demonstrably false construction since people are always divided on what they want, but such constructions are a fantasy meant to give authority to the positions of

the politician. When Modi says 125 crore Indians are behind him, he knows that many of them despise him, but he is appropriating Indian people and Indian nationalism, and positioning himself as their voice. This is what politicians all the world do, unless they cater to specific

voting blocs, which is definitely not true for a national, supposedly "broad based" party like the Congress. Of course, a politician can and should attempt to elevate society according to their principles, but an astute politician does that by appealing to their "innate goodness"

rather than by condemning them. Words have to be precisely calibrated to attack your political opponents. In this case, RG might have said the RSS (or "anti India Hindutva forces" etc) does not consider Muslims, Dalits and tribals as human. But by saying many Indians, at once

he removed himself from the electorate whose votes his party wants, and second he ceded some more space of centre, mainstream India to the BJP. The intention was admirable, the statement was true, but the vocabulary was pretty novice.

I understand this tweet, but Nehru was by far the tallest leader of his time and could have gotten away with it. Rahul Gandhi leads a 50 MP party which is desperately fighting to reclaim ideological and political space. He can't afford it. https://mobile.twitter.com/AmanWadud/status/1315202539869163520