When Rahul Gandhi visited Atal Bihari Vajpayee Memorial: 5 reasons why

Here are five possible reasons Rahul, who often talks of himself as one of the few steadfastly standing against the BJP and RSS, made an exception for Vajpayee:

1. “Jodo jodo, Bharat Jodo”

The stated aim of the cross-country ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ being led by Rahul is “to unite India, come together and strengthen our nation”. The party said Monday that visiting the Vajpayee memorial was in step with this spirit. Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate said Rahul’s visit signified that politics is conducted with a “large heart”. During the march, when confronted by BJP workers, some of them booing, Rahul has responded by blowing kisses at them. The Yatra, Rahul insists, has spawned a million “mohabbat ki dukan (outlets of love)” in a market of hatred “nourished by the BJP”.

2. Abandoning hardline?

Within the Congress, Rahul has positioned himself a hardliner, brooking no concessions to his core ideological beliefs. For instance, on leaders deserting the party and switching over to the BJP, Rahul has said he does not mind those “who are afraid of the BJP and RSS being shown the door”. In 2018, former President and veteran Congress leader Pranab Mukerjee’s visit to the RSS headquarters had drawn a backlash from the party, with a comment by the late Ahmed Patel seen as having Sonia Gandhi’s blessing. However, many within the Congress have been advocating the need to return to the middle-of-the-ground approach that has held the party in good stead. Of late, the party has been attempting softening of the hard lines, with Rahul too indicating this change.

In his speech outside the Red Fort during the Delhi leg of the Yatra, while he spoke about the BJP’s communal politics, Rahul harped on bread and butter issues. He suggested that the real motive behind the politics of polarisation was to “divert” the attention of the people from issues that actually impact their lives. It was a clear departure from the winter of 2021, when he had sparked off a debate on “Hindus vs Hindutvavadis” from the stage of a rally against price rise.

3. Expanding the Congress support base

In the 2014 and 2019 general elections, the Congress’s vote share remained ossified at a little over 19 per cent. There is a growing realisation within the party that for it to increase its share by a respectable eight to 10 per cent, if not more, it needs to wean away people who may have started backing the BJP during the last years of the UPA, as it suffered from charges of corruption and policy paralysis, and not necessarily because they were enamoured of the BJP’s Hindutva agenda. This is also a tacit recognition by the Congress that not all BJP voters are blind supporters of the BJP or PM Modi, unlike what Rahul has himself implied in the past.

4. Hindutva mascot Modi vs “moderate” Vajpayee

Despite coming from the RSS stable, Vajpayee, with his image of a poet-PM, belonged to an older generation of politicians who thought little of reaching out across the aisle. Indeed, the pulls and pressures of running a coalition government left Vajpayee with few choices but to tread softly. Between 1998-2004, when the BJP-led NDA was in power, on many occasions there were flare-ups between the saffron party and the Congress. In 2003, addressing Parliament, Vajpayee took strong objection to the Sonia-led Congress calling his government “incompetent, insensitive, irresponsible and brazenly corrupt”.

However, with the rise of Modi, the Congress came to appreciate the gentler BJP brand as represented by Vajpayee more. In the run-up to the 2014 general elections, as Modi was declared the BJP’s PM candidate, Sonia told a poll rally in Uttar Pradesh: “The country has seen many PMs. They were dignified people. Even the BJP’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee had maintained the decorum of the PM’s post.” In 2018, Rahul accused the Modi-Shah led-BJP of humiliating “Vajpayeeji, Advaniji, Jaswant Singhji”. On Monday, Congress spokesperson Shrinate said Vajpayee did not promote the poisonous form of ideology that the “Modi government practises”.

5. Old association

Vajpayee himself, in a television interview, once spoke glowingly of Rajiv’s role in helping him get treatment in the United States. “It was difficult for me to make the financial arrangements. Somehow Rajivji came to know about that. He called me, and he decided to include me in the delegation to the United Nations. I became a full-fledged member, all medical expenses were paid by the government. I came back fully recovered,” Vajpayee said.

In her condolence message after Vajpayee’s death in 2018 following a prolonged illness, Sonia described him as a “towering figure” who stood for democratic values. “But above all, he was a man with a very large heart and a real spirit of magnanimity. One saw that in all his interactions — with other political parties and their leaders, with foreign governments, with coalition partners, and indeed with his own political colleagues, whom he always treated with respect and courtesy,” she wrote.