Addressing the Indian Youth Congress conference with ‘Behtar Bharat Ki Buniyaad‘ (Foundations of a Higher India) as its theme in Bengaluru just lately, former Congress president Rahul Gandhi asserted that the nation was witnessing political contestation between two ideologies.
“On one aspect is the ideology of the RSS and BJP and on the opposite is the ideology of the Congress. There are numerous events, there are events within the Opposition… however the ideological combat that’s on within the nation… is between the ideologies of the RSS-BJP and that of the Congress,” he mentioned. It’s his unambiguous view that the Congress is the first proponent of the mom of anti-Hindutva ideologies.
Coming shortly after the celebration’s over-enthusiasm in singly shifting the non-confidence movement in Lok Sabha and never offering MPs from different events an opportunity to append their signatures to it, Gandhi’s speech added to the heartburn amongst different constituents of the INDIA alliance on the Congress projecting itself as the first mover in opposition to the BJP and the Narendra Modi authorities.
On the no-confidence movement, Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge, Chief of Opposition in Rajya Sabha, pleaded responsible to the ‘mistake’ saying this might have simply been averted had celebration leaders not acted with undue urgency.
Presumably, Congress leaders will convey to different companions that Rahul Gandhi’s speech by way of a video hyperlink shouldn’t be considered as one other affront as a result of he was addressing the celebration’s youth wing from an intra-organisation platform. The event thereby, justified mentioning the Congress celebration within the singular when shoring up confidence of the cadre in its ideology, over which the celebration has vacillated for lengthy.
Gandhi’s speech nonetheless, gives the chance to look at one other query whose reply will change into more and more vital because the 2024 Lok Sabha polls nears – how a lot, or to what extent, ought to the Opposition’s marketing campaign in opposition to the BJP-Modi mix be ideological, and the way a lot of it ought to stay targeted on livelihood and/or governance points?
Associated to this can be a spin-off – will not concentrating on the BJP on the idea of its ‘divisive’ ideology allow the celebration to enlist its core Hindutva-supporting electoral constituency extra solidly behind it, by polarising voters on the idea of non secular identification?
Some weeks in the past, in a dialog with Christophe Jaffrelot, the famous French scholar who has tracked the rise of Hindu nationalistic politics for greater than three and half a long time, this author put up the identical query.
Initially, he veered round to the view that it might be selected a situation-to-situation foundation, earlier than amending his ideas to say that if the Opposition needed to “select a single situation”, it will “make extra sense to concentrate on socio-economic (points) than identification politics.”
Fairly clearly, Rahul Gandhi doesn’t maintain this view as a result of from when he launched into the Bharat Jodo Yatra final September, he has been forthright in his assaults on Hindutva politics though being strident on different points too, like on the federal government’s dealing with of Manipur violence.
At instances he goes overboard, as within the strident dig at Hindu nationalistic icon Vinayak “Veer” Savarkar when his yatra was crossing Maharashtra. This permits the BJP to create indignation and harness its advantages.
Inside the Congress many worry, like Jaffrelot’s apprehension, that this strategy will allow Modi to prise open the Hindu-Muslim fault line to its profit. The counter to this, in fact, is {that a} soft-Hindutva strategy by no means benefited the Congress.
Critics of ‘middle-of-the-road’ politics, or what lecturers label as ‘pragmatic communalism’ of the Congress, contend that yielding to political use of faith by no means labored. This helped neither within the late Nineteen Eighties – when Rajiv Gandhi succumbed to Muslim fundamentalists by annulling the Supreme Court docket’s Shah Bano verdict whereas assuaging Hindu sentiments by facilitating the opening of the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi shrine to Hindu devotees – nor fetched the Congress extra votes in 2017 in Gujarat when Rahul Gandhi visited temples and celebration colleagues declared him a janeu (sacred thread) donning Hindu and introduced his gotra (sect).
It’s robust to foretell which technique goes to be extra helpful – in search of votes highlighting livelihood and social safety slippages in governance, or identification politics. In all chance, the identical ways can’t be uniformly profitable. For example, in Karnataka, the promise to proscribe Bajrang Dal might not have brought about as a lot injury as initially feared, however in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, the Congress items should not shying from harnessing Hindu symbolism.
Simply as many within the Opposition worry that the Rahul Gandhi ‘line’ performs into the fingers of BJP-Modi, there may be a fear on the opposite aspect that with the compulsive denigration of the INDIA events, the ruling celebration is enjoying into the fingers of the Opposition.
That is worrying as a result of inserting numerous terrorist organisations into the political discourse will solely underscore the failure of the federal government to remove such threats regardless of being in workplace for a decade. Moreover, Modi is aware of that repeated point out of the acronym, of which he’s a previous grasp, will give it larger forex.
Modi prior to now usually mentioned detrimental publicity too is ‘good’ publicity as a result of it forces folks to suppose that the incessant disparagement of anybody or any celebration signifies that they should have accomplished ‘one thing good’ to earn such vilification. At present, Modi’s marketing campaign in opposition to his adversaries is caught within the previous groove – dynastic politics, corruption, coverage paralysis of the UPA, the absence of a pacesetter and so forth.
Apart from going past serving reminders of nightmares of yore to a era that has no reminiscence of that interval, the ruling celebration too has to supply a extra convincing principle on the revival of the Nationwide Democratic Alliance (NDA) regardless of preserving it alive solely in title since 2019. For all kinds of causes, no incumbent for a decade is in an enviable place within the run-up to polls. This handicap may be offset solely by an overarching nationwide narrative as in 2019 and 2014 which is conspicuous by its absence in the intervening time.
The BJP, nonetheless, doesn’t face the issue that the Congress confronts – the sense of different INDIA members being dwarfed by the grand previous celebration. No NDA constituent has the ambition of being the dominant companion however many Opposition leaders need the pole place throughout the grouping.
All INDIA constituents face a dilemma that practitioners of coalition politics must confront – how a lot of area ought to their ‘personal’ leaders give to “my/our celebration” and the way a lot to yield to the collective? How a lot of their self-identity must be preserved and the way a lot may be submerged into the collective?
Placing the appropriate steadiness that furthers particular person ambition with out hampering the collective’s prospects is at all times a problem for coalitions. It’s as vexing an issue as thrashing out a non-confrontational seat-sharing system.
The Congress has made a starting with Mallikarjun Kharge’s declaration that the celebration just isn’t within the prime minister’s submit. Nevertheless, because it occurs so usually, alliances are sometimes derailed regardless of good begins. That is very true when companions vie for a similar social base or when they’re rivals in just a few states or sub-regions as is the case with some INDA events.
(The author is an NCR-based creator and journalist. His newest e book is ‘The Demolition and the Verdict: Ayodhya and the Mission to Reconfigure India’. He has additionally written ‘The RSS: Icons of the Indian Proper’ and ‘Narendra Modi: The Man, The Instances’.)
Disclaimer: These are the non-public opinions of the creator.
Featured Video Of The Day
Woman, 5, Sexually Assaulted In Kerala, Physique Discovered In Sack A Day Later
