Opinion The Third Edit: ‘Andolanjeevi’, ‘chunavi Hindu’, ‘ mohabbat ki dukan’ — how politicians widen India’s political lexicon

In the game of electoral rhetoric, if there is one thing politicians know well, it is this: It is not their parties’ manifestos or the extravagant promises they make that are most likely to stick in the end. Words can be weapons of mass distraction and chances are, if one is creative enough, the right amount of suggestion can strike a chord with the right demographic at the right time. Take for instance, the allegation thrown out by Delhi BJP chief Virendra Sachdeva on Tuesday at the Delhi Chief Minister: A “chunavi Hindu” — someone who allegedly discovers his or her spiritual roots only during election season.

Sachdeva is only one in a long list of politicians to have understood that political discourse in India isn’t just about policy. It’s also, and more, about performance — the sort that can hold the citizen in thrall from the constantly spotlighted election podium to the only episodically open Parliament. He, of course, need look no further than the Prime Minister, his party’s leader, whose felicity with words combined with his political acumen has widened India’s political lexicon in the last decade. Coinages such as “andolanjeevi” (professional protesters), and “Khan Market gang”, a shadowy cabal of elitist intellectuals, the political deep state, if you will, only with better coffee, have revved up the political exchange. On the other side, Congress’s Rahul Gandhi has tried valiantly to match up – his “mohabbat ki dukan” is a case in point. But it is a battle of unequals. With its will to install new political narratives and disrupt old ones, the BJP is clearly the party with the most when it comes to minting words and phrases.

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In the 1990s, LK Advani had accused the Congress of being “pseudo-secular” — an euphemism for the politics of appeasement. In the decade since 2014, the ambit of the term has widened to include liberals and left-leaning ideologues, morphing itself to “pseudo-sickular” to denote the distance between “bhakts” and “anti-nationals”. Whether these labels are accurate or not is besides the point. That they hit and don’t miss is what counts.