At one point in his interview with Curly Tales, Rahul Gandhi realises that he can't be too harsh with his dislike for matar (peas) and kathal (jackfruit). He swiftly adds a note of tolerance: “But I will eat if I have to," somehow signalling that even these out-of-favour dishes are not to be left out of the attempted outreach of Bharat Jodo Yatra (BJY). His appearance on the travel and food show hosted by a YouTuber is the latest in a string of his supposedly non-political interactions, if not apolitical. In doing so, Rahul has tried to be distant from what is called ‘political talk’ in an increasingly diffused and fuzzy world of news media.
The being and making of a mass politician is also about the politics of the non-political. It means that your dining table and other aspects of personal space are competing for projection with the polemics of predictable political positions. In most cases, leaders across political parties in India are opting for a blend of the two rather than treating them as rival options. And so, slice-of-life downloads on leaders in the public realm have found new feel-good genres and agents of know-your-leader connect. “You have strange notions of publicity,” Jawaharlal Nehru had to curtly tell Khuswant Singh, the press officer (PRO) at India’s High Commission in London. This was preceded by UK papers managing to publish photographs of India’s first prime minister and Lady Mountbatten having a quiet dinner at a Greek restaurant in Soho. While that would still be a discreet and guarded fort for any form of media to breach. It is unlikely that top leaders today will be less indignant with such breach of private space but certainly their idea of publicity has far more patience and use for the personal.
