Opinion Why BJP needs Rahul Gandhi

The images from the club came at a bad time for the Congress: The party’s eight-year-long crisis was underlined once more with Prashant Kishor deciding not to help with its revival late last month. And at pivotal political moments in recent times — when the Punjab Assembly election campaign kicked off in December 2021 or when the Congress took out a peace march during the 2020 Delhi riots — Rahul Gandhi has been missing in action, often on trips abroad.

Yet, his style of working is not, in essence, the business of either the BJP or the government. Rahul holds no public office of concern to anyone but the voters of Wayanad constituency. Why, then, has India’s most dominant political force been obsessed with a diminished leader from the Opposition?

For the Hindutva Right’s political juggernaut, the obsessive demonisation of Rahul Gandhi yields dividends. Yet, this constant targeting isn’t just a matter of tactics and political convenience. For all his faults, the leader represents — in however shrunken a manner — a significant ideological and political challenge to the RSS-BJP.

Rahul Gandhi’s denigration taps into popular discontent. That many political leaders — including a substantial number from the BJP — are dynasts does not detract from the fact that the descendants of Nehru appear to have a stranglehold on the party of the freedom struggle. Just as the House of Windsor is the lynchpin of Britain’s ossified, regressive class structure, the Nehru-Gandhis have come to signify a lack of social mobility for the youth — the fact that descent, not achievement is enough to guarantee a career in politics.

For the BJP, especially since the ascent of Narendra Modi, Rahul Gandhi provides the most convenient juxtaposition to further a cult of personality. The PM is self-made, hard-working, openly and almost militantly Hindu, always present, a nationalist. Rahul (in the Right’s view) is a dilettante politician, a descendant, eschews responsibility, is of mixed heritage, holds up “pseudo-secularism”. Despite the fall in Rahul Gandhi’s popularity, it is useful for the BJP to present him as the alternative on the national stage to strengthen the TINA factor. Would the BJP leadership compare as favourably with Mamata Banerjee — a politician risen from the streets — or even M K Stalin or Jagan Reddy, who are both sons of leaders but do not have either the “elite” or “outsider” tag? Rahul Gandhi’s demonisation by the ruling forces has as much, if not more, to do with his background as it does with his political failures.

And that background — and Rahul himself — still carries with it an alternative idea that can challenge the BJP’s “New India”.

On the ideological front, it appears at first glance that the RSS-BJP’s dominance is verging on the hegemonic. Regional parties and leaders that challenge the BJP electorally in the states have competing interests and lack coherence at the level of ideas. The Congress too appears ill-equipped to battle the BJP. After all, senior leaders have jumped ship, and its “soft Hindutva” tactics show a poverty of ideas. Yet, the Congress remains — in however vestigial a form — the only party with a national presence that can rival the BJP. As Suhas Palshikar argued (IE, April 30), the “Congress space” is still relevant, even if the Congress seems to be less so. It is the centrism of the “Congress space” that can act as an ideological glue to sustain a national coalition of non-BJP parties.

Unfortunately, that space — a liberal, federal idea of India — seems to be of no concern to many Congress leaders. Too many are willing to back the BJP line on issues like the Ram Mandir and J&K’s constitutional status. Not enough have either national name recognition or a mass base. It is in this regard that Rahul Gandhi presents a potent challenge.

Unlike, say, a Jyotiraditya Scindia, he cannot be poached. He cannot abandon the Congress and the ideals it once represented — Rahul cannot abandon Nehru’s secularism or Indira Gandhi’s “garibi hatao” because to do so would be to deny his raison d’etre as a politician. In that sense, he is perhaps one of the few significant implacable foes for the BJP that stands in the way of a “Congress-mukt Bharat”. Best, then, to keep the focus on the name.

aakash.joshi@expressindia.com