Rahul is setting the political narrative and the BJP is obediently responding with an unusually high level of anxiety to every word he utters. (Photo: C R Sasikumar)
I sat with the three celebrated psephologists, prominent electoral soothsayers, all awaiting a formal announcement of being called onto the stage for the usual shindig that is proforma in the election season: A mega-televised event of a big media enterprise with a live audience meant to titillate TRP ratings and provide amidst the light entertainment show, a sliver of pretentious forecasting. I remember one of them saying: “This (the 2024 Lok Sabha elections) is the most boring election in my lifetime. That the BJP is winning is a foregone conclusion. The question is, can the Modi magic propel it close to the Rajiv Gandhi tsunami of 1984”. “414 LS seats?” I said with unconcealed disbelief. “Why not?”, he said with the confidence of a man who had rarely seen a bad hair day. Another quipped emphatically, “Rahul Gandhi is done and dusted. Why don’t you all understand that?” The third smothered a visible snigger.
If Jammu and Kashmir is Pakistan’s pathological obsession, Rahul Gandhi is the BJP’s never-ending fixation. But there is a difference now. Until the Bharat Jodo Yatra happened, the Nehru-Gandhi scion was easy pickings for the saffron party riding a wave of insuperable, incomparable triumphs, boosted by PM Narendra Modi’s seemingly impeccable political salience. Rahul looked by comparison like a relative novice, still struggling with mastering the know-how of managing the unfathomable conundrum of Indian politics. He faced internal remonstrance from the benign G-23, while the external headwinds became like a gigantic tornado, fuelled by Big Media.
Fast forward to September 2024.
Rahul is setting the political narrative and the BJP is obediently responding with an unusually high level of anxiety to every word he utters. It is an extraordinary reversal of fortunes. Nothing illustrates the BJP’s ludicrous Rahul preoccupation than when Rahul steps abroad to engage with the foreign press and diverse university audiences. The political conversation becomes nauseatingly vicious back home. A case in point is Rahul’s current official visit as Leader of Opposition to the United States. The BJP seems to be discombobulated. It is important to understand their psychological paralysis.
BJP’s motormouths say in belligerent unison: “Why does Rahul criticise India abroad? He hates India”. It is a bizarre argument. The BJP is pretending to be splendidly oblivious to the fact that in the age of social media and 24×7 television channels, geographical distances are bridged in the course of a nanosecond. There is nothing that Rahul says when he is in London or Texas that he has not stated before. His criticisms are laced with a mature dispassionate appraisal and are not ad hominem, which is what he is repeatedly subjected to. What hurts the BJP is the following trifecta. There is huge amplification without censorship and redactions of Rahul’s speeches, an alternative viewpoint to the state-controlled disinformation campaigns and banal memos emerges, and PM Modi looks hugely dwarfed (pardon the oxymoron) given his inability or reluctance to have a similar freewheeling question and answer session with young audiences. In 11 years, the Indian Prime Minister has not held a single press conference. Game, set and match to Rahul. That is the BJP’s peeve.
A case in point is Ilhan Omar, a US Congress representative from the Democrat party, who is the latest actor in the serial brouhaha created by the fake news manufacturing cell of the ruling party. It is a tragicomedy of epic dimensions. What Omar has said the same things about Kashmir, Article 370 abrogation, Citizenship Amendment Act, human rights abuses, etc., are not too dissimilar from those expressed by Kamala Harris in the past.
The latter could be the next US President. Will India’s External Affairs Minister recommend a diplomatic reassessment of US-India ties because Harris has remarkably strong views? S Jaishankar is the same man who valiantly rationalised the most mammoth diplomatic faux pas of our times: “Ab Ki Baar Trump Sarkar,” which I am sure left many in the foreign offices blushing beetroot red in embarrassment. Jaishankar would also be aware of what Harris had to say on Jaishankar’s boycott of a House Foreign Affairs Committee meeting because of Pramila Jayapal’s (who had moved a controversial resolution on Kashmir) presence on the same. I was on a TV show the other day, where a BJP spokesperson casually said that Rahul ought to be tried for sedition. No one even flinched a wee bit. It is this vulgar vanity of the BJP coupled with the low standards of public discourse that prevails (remember the “mangalsutra” and “Bhais chori kar lega” gems from Modi?), which makes Rahul’s candid interactions feel like a breath of fresh air.
Indian democracy is a slow, tardy work in progress. Under Modi, politics has been reduced to a soap opera, a daily dose of silly histrionics and vacuous argumentations are the new norm. When did you last hear a TV debate on inequality, AI, climate change, growth versus equity, and police reforms? A nervous BJP, still to reconcile with their diminished political clout, is sounding ridiculously fossilised. That is their problem. But India certainly deserves better. Much better.
The writer is a former spokesperson of the Congress Party
