Rahul Gandhi is, undoubtedly, the BJP’s favourite punching bag. This time, the Rahul-bashing by the party – which crafts every move with care – has started to look over the top. Senior BJP ministers sought his apology all week. It was unprecedented for Treasury benches not to let Parliament function – usually, it’s the Opposition which stalls proceedings and it is the government which is supposed to ensure that Parliament runs smoothly. And now there is also a move to have Rahul suspended from the Lok Sabha and not allow him to speak unless he apologises. The RSS, too, usually a more circumspect organisation, criticised Rahul; the Vice President, a constitutional authority, also took Rahul to task. By disallowing Rahul from speaking in Parliament, the BJP runs the risk of reinforcing the very charge the Congress leader made in the UK — that Opposition leaders are not allowed to speak freely in parliament. This, when India is emerging as the most prominent voice of the global south, and is presiding over the G20. Why then is the BJP hyping this issue? The more it ups the ante against Rahul, the more it makes him the issue — which suits him. For the Congress has succeeded in projecting him, in the global community, as the principal adversary of Narendra Modi in India. The BJP’s current campaign ensures that Rahul Gandhi remains on the radar. A Modi versus Rahul face-off suited the party to the hilt in 2014 and 2019. When pitted against him, Rahul was no match for Modi. While Modi’s popularity ratings remain undiminished, Rahul’s “non-serious” image has undergone a change after the Bharat Jodo Yatra. Is the BJP taking a risk by making Rahul the central focus of its attack? Will it generate sympathy for him which often happens when one is hounded for taking on someone who is powerful? Or, does the BJP think the risk is a “safe” one to take – with political gains likely to outstrip the losses? Some reasons for the BJP’s strategy are obvious. Rahul gave the party ready ammunition and it’s mining it to feed into the nationalistic fervour it wants to create in the run-up to 2024. All the boxes are ticked: he criticised the Modi government on “foreign soil”, talked about Indian democracy being completely “undone”, and commented on the silence of the EU and US in light of the democratic backslide in India. The last column talked about the limitations of Rahul’s politics of doom and how flagging it in Cambridge only amplified his own sense of helplessness. It’s becoming clear that the BJP will again use the victim card in the 2024 elections, projecting Modi as a leader who has done so much for the country but is only facing barbs, and vilification from his opponents (read the Gandhis). Indeed, this is the key theme of a BJP video, “Mujhe chalte jaana hai” that the party has put out. The BJP has also seized on it to dent Rahul’s credibility and show that either he gets carried away, or makes dodgy claims – both show him as non-serious. The Delhi Police have sent Rahul a notice seeking information about the victims of sexual harassment he had spoken to during his recent Yatra. It will be difficult for Rahul - or anyone else-to bring women to publicly own that they were sexually harassed or gang-raped. For his part, Rahul has said that attacks on him are an attempt to “distract” attention from the issue he’s raising: the nature of the relationship between the Prime Minister and Gautam Adani and his companies. It is clear that the BJP does not want a discussion on Adani in Parliament. What, however, gives the ruling party comfort is the state of the Congress' organisation which continues to be in shambles. Today, people do not even mention the name of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh which once threw up Jawaharlal Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Govind Ballabh Pant, Sampurnanand, and Sucheta Kripalani. Rahul’s Bharat Jodo Yatra rebranded his image but came up with no plan for rebuilding the party organisation—not even something as obvious as short training shivirs in areas he visited during the yatra to mobilise new recruits and generate new political energy. The current, high-pitch spat in Parliament, therefore, suits both Modi and Rahul Gandhi (not necessarily the Congress, or the Opposition). Mallikarjun Kharge declared in Chennai that the Congress will not insist on being the leader. Building up Rahul will create the impression that he’s the national face of the entire Opposition whether or not he is declared as such officially. Hyping Rahul also fuels concerns in other Opposition parties about the return of “Big Brother Congress”. As things stand, the hard political reality is that it’s only a united Opposition which can give some kind of a fight to the BJP in 2024, a fight based on the painstaking, unglamorous work of ensuring one-on-one contests in Lok Sabha constituencies. As far as the Opposition is concerned, the man for 2024 may not be Rahul Gandhi. The man for the moment is Mallikarjun Kharge — as a “sutradhar” to stitch together opposition alliances in different states. Respected by other Opposition leaders, the new Congress President is already reaching out, for instance, to the Aam Aadmi Party that the Congress once shunned. The AAP can be a spoiler for the Congress in several states, be it Rajasthan, Goa, Madhya Pradesh, or Gujarat. An understanding in Delhi—which was unsuccessfully tried in 2019 between the two parties —can help in the coming Lok Sabha elections. It is the state units of the Congress — not Rahul Gandhi - that will be the critical difference to the party tally in the 2023 polls, be it in Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, or Rajasthan where Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot have to be on the same page, and Rahul Gandhi has still not been able to bring it about. It was the party unit in Himachal Pradesh that ensured a Congress victory, clear about the theme which would have traction: the restoration of the old pension scheme. The fact is that the game will change if a unified opposition can bring down the BJP tally even by 60-70 seats, subjecting the saffron party to many more checks and balances. And the unlikely event of the Congress pushing its tally to 100 Lok Sabha seats will breathe some life into the country’s institutions—which is the way democracy functions. Rahul Gandhi won’t have to lament in Cambridge that democratic institutions are dying. His party has to start winning elections. (Neerja Chowdhury, Contributing Editor, The Indian Express, has covered the last 10 Lok Sabha elections)
