N Sathiya Moorthy
5 July 2024
The recent intervention by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and other BJP leaders during Congress Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi’s speech in the Lok Sabha indicates their inability to accept the changing political scenario in the country.
The BJP leadership seems to be feeling that they have lost everything, despite their continued attacks on the Opposition. The Indian people, especially the younger generation, have acknowledged Rahul Gandhi’s presence and leadership, which has caused concern for the BJP. The present-day BJP leadership has indoctrinated their cadres and supporters to think in a particular way, making it difficult for them to understand the changing mood of the voter.
The BJP’s downswing in mainstay Uttar Pradesh during the recent Lok Sabha polls was predictable, and the party needs to begin soul-searching to stay relevant. The BJP leadership’s behaviour and conduct in the two Houses of Parliament have displayed a tendency that they are unable to change, with continued attacks on the Opposition, starting with the Congress and Rahul Gandhi. The BJP’s perceived but non-existent nuanced criticism based on religion while taking on Rahul Gandhi on his maiden LS speech as Leader of Opposition is evidence of their existence in another world.
The real world around them has moved on, and that is where Rahul and the rest of them reside. Yet, both are still equidistant from the goal-post. If it is unrealistic for the BJP to believe that they are still there, others, even those around them and cheering, do not seem to think so, anymore. If the INDIA combine thinks they are there, only their cheerleaders believe so. Both have a long distance to cover. It is here a young and dynamic Rahul can make or break a difference!
In conclusion, the BJP leadership’s inability to accept the changing political scenario and their continued attacks on the Opposition, starting with the Congress and Rahul Gandhi, indicate their existence in another world. The real world around them has moved on, and both the BJP and the INDIA combine have a long distance to cover. A young and dynamic Rahul Gandhi can make a difference, but he needs to prove his mettle as the Leader of Opposition and as the continuing catalyst for the Opposition unity.
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The way Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, and a host of other ministers and senior BJP leaders intervened and interrupted Congress Leader of the Opposition (Leader of Opposition ) Rahul Gandhi when he was speaking on the motion of thanks to President Draupadi Murmu for her customary address to the inaugural session of the new Lok Sabha was indicative of their inability to absorb the real message from the Indian voter. Yes, as Modi has repeatedly pointed out after having initial difficulty in digesting the real meaning of the results, it was a mandate for ‘continuity and stability’. By continuity, he was referring to his leadership and that of his BJP-led NDA, whose character has however changed with the induction of the JD(U) and the TDP.
By ‘stability’, yes, there was some meaning and warning in what he said – that had it not been his return, the Congress-led INDIA combine if only given a chance to rule, would have fought among themselves incessantly and caused political instability of the kind, witnessed first during the ‘Janata experiment’ in the late seventies and the UDF trials in the mid-nineties. By all these, he continued to indicate that the Congress rival was the cause of trouble for coalition governments.
But Modi, like his predecessors in the Vajpayee-Advani duo conveniently brushed aside the fact that it was the latter’s ‘Ayodhya rath yatra’ that sounded the death knell of the V P Singh-led National Front government (1989-91). By re-writing contemporary history even as it was unfolding, the BJP leadership made the whole of India believe that Singh’s unfolding of the ‘Mandal agenda’ had caused Advani to kick up the ‘Mandir issue’. The reverse was the truth.
Reconcile themselves…
That way, it was possibly the first time in the Modi era in Parliament that a long list of ministers stood up to intervene when the Leader of Opposition was on his feet. It was the first time when the Prime Minister was present – and also felt the urgent desire to apply brakes to Rahul’s flow when he seemed to be running away with credits, which the BJP was not willing to concede even at this ‘late hour’.
Yes, the ‘late hour’ is because the BJP strategist and Team Modi are unable to reconcile themselves to the changing scenario at the national level. No one is saying, and not certainly is ready to bet that the BJP will not win the next Lok Sabha elections five years hence or the intervening assembly polls in Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, and other bigger states, let alone the medium-sized and smaller states. But the way the BJP leadership is reacting, they seem to be feeling that they have lost everything – and there is no tomorrow for them and their party.
That is because of the fear that the Indian people, from across the country, barring a few exceptions like Madhya Pradesh, have readily acknowledged Rahul’s presence, which was not the case over the past ten years and two Lok Sabha polls (2014 and 2019). Equally important, younger generation regional party allies of the Congress in the INDIA combine have readily conceded the leadership to Rahul, unlike what the BJP had hoped for. The government’s efforts at driving a wedge in INDIA combined with making President Murmu and re-elected Speaker Om Birla make pointed references to the emergency era of Indira Gandhi fell flat.
Among the leaders from those days, Tamil Nadu’s DMK chief minister M K Stalin, who was a victim of the dreaded MISA during the emergency, did not stir. For others, starting with those that are euphemistically dubbed the nineties’ kids and beyond, emergency did not matter at all. They needed jobs, inflationary controls at their levels of consumption, and social security and support, which even the elite among them, had got to understand during their long stays overseas on ‘off-shore assignments’.
India of the future
This is the India of the future. Religious bigotry and violence have no place, and the BJP has to modify, or rehash its policies, politics, and public image if it has to stay relevant for the next couple of decades and more. For those closely following the LS polls, the ruling BJP’s downswing in mainstay Uttar Pradesh was a predictable event. For the BJP to stay relevant, the party has to begin soul-searching here and now and begin with UP, where the much-hyped Ayodhya temple consecration impressed none.
Because the present-day BJP leadership has come to believe and behave in a particular way – and have also indoctrinated their cadres and outside supporters to think the same way and not otherwise, they are unable to understand, let alone appreciate the difference. That way, ten long years in the wilderness may have exposed Rahul Gandhi to the realities of real-time politics, which he had problems accepting and acting accordingly when the Congress-led UPA was in power for an earlier ten years, 2004-14.
Suffice it to point out that if that were not the case, Rahul could well have accepted an appropriate ministerial post under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during UPA-I and graduated to something bigger and more substantial through the next five years. Maybe, if Rahul felt less adequate to the prime minister’s job which is more demanding now than in the previous century of his great grandfather, grandmother, and father, he could well have signed up as a ‘minister without portfolio’ in the PMO. He could not get a better teacher and guide than PM Singh, who was also a hands-on man who understood the Indian economy and politics – in that order – better than almost all others in the country, put together.
That was not to be, and the Congress especially was the loser. Today, a more mature Rahul has not shied away from taking up the leadership role for the entire Opposition in Parliament, a role that many of them had hoped to be on the Treasury Benches but was not to be this time. If his pre-poll cross-country, first south-north and then east-west showed him up as a people’s man pre-poll, now his performance will be keenly watched, much more by his urban middle-class critics from the past ten years, who may have begun feeling that they had allowed themselves to be led by their nose, and had jumped to conclusions without evidence. By following the undemocratic dictum of ‘rights without responsibility’, Rahul might have unknowingly given them a cause for complaint – to erase which he now has a golden opportunity.
Trial by fire
Rahul Gandhi has yet to prove his mettle as the Leader of Opposition , yes, and also as the continuing catalyst for Opposition unity, which only the Mo-Sha duo facilitated for Elections 2024. On test will be his ability to carry a much senior Sharad Pawar and once-ideologically opposite Uddhav Thackeray in the run-up to the assembly elections in Maharashtra. If he was able to retain all existing allies, and also bring around Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal, he would have proved to be an able negotiator and emerging leader acceptable to more parties and leaders on his own steam and that of his party, too.
That is to say, Rahul Gandhi has passed the ‘trial by fire’ or ‘agni pariksha’, so to say, by showing an uncanny grit and determination to stay back, fight back, and also succeed, even if partially, against all kinds of cat-calls and mostly unfounded criticisms that denigrated and defamed his family elders for four or at times even five generations, going back to great-great-grandfather, Motilal Nehru. One cannot imagine another person in his place, first among the multitude of Indian leaders, political, corporate, and otherwise, and then among the 140-crore population who would have withstood demeaning references like ‘Pappu’, day in and day out, inside Parliament and outside, as Rahul Gandhi alone has done. That is proof of his staying power, from which he still has a long way to go.
The simple trick in electoral politics is to know and acknowledge when the voter’s mood changes. Rahul had to wait until the exit of family hangers-on, who believed and made others too to believe that if the Congress Party was in power, a Nehru-Gandhi could only be the Prime Minister, nothing below. Today, Rahul has begun his second innings as the Leader of Opposition and the ruling BJP rival seems determined to help him move up the ladder and fast. That is because the Mo-Sha BJP leadership was lucky enough to be able to enter power in the native Gujarat state first and at the national level, later on, without even minimum experience in exposure to democratic dogmas and parliamentary practices.
The Congress and Rahul did not have anything equivalent to the RSS for straightening them out or providing grassroots-level feedback through their dedicated cadres. Maybe, the Congress and Rahul were ‘lucky’ for it, as theirs is an ideology that was opposed to what the RSS has stood for over the past hundred years.
In contrast, the BJP had the RSS to guide them, but the Mo-Sha leadership had no use for the party’s ideological parent for the past decade. The fact is that even while being wedded to their ideology, RSS cadres have had the wonderful knack of studying voters, based on other parameters like good governance, price and inflation, employment, and family earnings. This, in the case of the BJP, was lost.
Rather, Rahul’s victory, however limited in Elections-2024 was a gift from the BJP, for which not only he but the Mo-Sha duo also worked. It may or may not happen again, but then the BJP leadership at the Centre, their conduct and behavior in the two Houses of Parliament, have displayed a tendency that they are unable to change – more than they are unwilling to change. Their continued attacks on the Opposition, starting with the Congress and Rahul Gandhi, their perceived but non-existent nuanced criticism based on religion still while taking on the latter on his maiden LS speech as Leader of Opposition , all are evidence of their existence still in another world.
The real world around them has moved on – and that is where Rahul and the rest of them reside. Yet, both are still equidistant from the goal-post. If it is unrealistic for the BJP to believe that they are still there, others, even those around them and cheering, do not seem to think so, anymore. If the INDIA combine thinks they are there, only their cheerleaders believe so. Both have a long distance to cover. It is here a young and dynamic Rahul – the reference is not to his age, where Amit Shah is still only 59 compared to his 54 – can make or break a difference!
(The writer is a Chennai-based Policy Analyst & Political Commentator. Email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorthy.com)
