What is also relevant in this context is the call for the hanging of a convict, Mohammed Afzal, for the attack on Parliament. The shrill calls on the street demanding that he be hanged is a contrasting perspective on how “revenge” is seen. In this case, it is all about an eye-for-an-eye and using it as a key expression of patriotism and being one of the “tough” guys — a very useful tool for political mobilisation.

It is in this context that a non-politician like Priyanka and her one act of sitting on a jail bench are a showstopper. Without perhaps intending to, the quiet meeting takes you straight back to what another much older person did when he walked out of an island prison after spending 27 years in jail for the colour of his skin. When Nelson Mandela walked out of Robben Island, he did the only thing he saw worthwhile, despite criticism from those keen on a more extreme way of settling past wrongs with whites and Afrikaners in South Africa. He ensured that a Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up — where “revenge” was set aside as being far too uncivilised a response to decades of uncivilised apartheid inflicted on the blacks.

This is not the first time that Priyanka’s personal, and very private acts and statements, as it were, have had a political resonance. In 2004, just after the Congress Parliamentary Party meeting heard that Sonia was not going to be PM, late at night, a senior TV reporter caught Priyanka walking out and asked her if her mother’s act of renunciation was “in the finest traditions of Indian politics” of sanyas. Pat came the reply from a slightly irritated Priyanka: “Rajniti kyun? This is in the finest traditions of bharatiya sanskriti.”

... contd.