Opinion: BJP Hunts For A Crack. Rahul Gandhi's Allies Could Be His Weak Spot

Rahul Gandhi has hit the expressway of narrative-building against the Modi government on the "vote chori (theft)" issue. In response, the BJP has been left playing catch-up. Though his chant has become the Opposition's chorus, he needs to pay attention to ubiquitous signages on highways telling "saavdhani hati, durghatna ghati (lack of caution leads to accidents)".

Gandhi is being consistent and not conventional. In the past he was mocked by the BJP and dismissed by those opposed to the BJP. But on Sunday last, ahead of a joint rally, the one-time powerful regional warlords who had scripted the Congress's decline over the last three decades and used to call themselves the BJP's true challengers, arrived in an open vehicle sitting behind him, not with him. His sister Priyanka Vadra Gandhi took the backseat. Mother Sonia Gandhi, once the undisputed empress of anti-BJP forces, waited on the stage.

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The BJP, which at one time used to relish the Prime Minister Narendra Modi vs Rahul Gandhi contest, has been trailing in the political narrative war since July last and is struggling to find ways to trip him. It desperately needs one "swing issue" to overturn the multiple challenges it faces, including incumbency of 12 years in Delhi. The Hindutva tail winds have died. The potent caste rainbows stitched in recent years have turned into fading "fog bows". Against "vote chori", the bjp has deployed countermeasures like charges of  "regime chori", "ghuspaithiya" or infiltrators and foreign destabilising hands. In a reaction to feedback received, top BJP leaders including Home Minister Amit Shah have hit the streets. But none of the countermeasures till now have displayed the teeth to bite the advancing bullets.

Even the BJP's ideological mentor RSS is helping in the hunt. In Indore, the Sangh's "Akhil Bharatiya Karyakari Mandal" discussed a "panch parivartan plan". Gen-Z's concerns and "external influences" are said to be the new key focus areas.

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Still, the government suffers a handicap in the sense that there is little to beat the opponents who have been out of power for long. But this is where the Congress and Gandhi need to use caution. They can't allow an opening, a crack that the BJP and its huge organisational machinery  can exploit.

The problem is that after the Sunday rally Gandhi is not walking alone. The Opposition bloc INDIA consists of "vanquished-by-the-BJP" players as the unifying criteria. But there are multiple inherent ideological and regional faultlines. If any of Gandhi's allies falters, he inherits the disadvantage.

He needs to remember that in Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote the character Sancho Panza says, "Tell me what company thou keepest, and I'll tell thee what thou art."

Why The Need For Caution

Recently, a video of the INDIA bloc poster girl Neha Bora went viral. The BJP accused her of slandering the Hindu faith and echoing a Congress-like "anti-Hindu tirade" after the All-India Students Association chief said: "Protection is absolutely necessary and it is precisely from the Brahmanical system that such protection is required. This is a system which posits that the poor, the oppressed, animals and women are all deserving of subjugation and abuse. It is the very same system under which even Brahmin women are unsafe and fall victim to rape. Priests commit rapes inside temples."

Bora's comments are rooted in Left ideology that views traditional religion as a tool used by powerful hierarchies to maintain the status quo. She chose to speak specifically about the "Brahmanical order" in Hinduism.

"She could have said women need protection as they are targeted in places of worship. But she singled out Hindus and Brahmins. This has always been the Left's line and it can't be ignored that the Congress has been pursuing the same line under Rahul Gandhi," a senior BJP leader said.

The bjp was quick to create a connection. BJP spokesperson Pradeep Bhandari said, "In 2014, Rahul Gandhi had reacted to the gangrape of a woman in Delhi with remarks that people who go to temples to worship goddesses also molest women in buses."

A Maharashtra-based  BJP leader picked another element of Bora's statement. "She said under the Brahmnical system the poor, the oppressed, animals and women are all deserving of subjugation and abuse. This is a deliberate attempt to misquote the holy Hindu scriptures," the leader said.

The BJP has already started constructing a narrative using Bora's comments. The party's social media team has picked up instances from the past to prove that Bora's statements were aligned with the stance of Gandhi and the Congress.

"It's the same Congress party which has used terms like 'Hindu terror'. Recall that Neha Bora is inspired by Islamists in Bangladesh and this tells you that they are targeting the Hindu faith," Bhandari said.

Recent statements by Gandhi are being added to the narrative. For example, on August 22, at the "Chhatron Ki Goonj" youth outreach programme in Pune, Gandhi had singled out Manusmriti and called on students to "smash patriarchy" during an interaction. While urging young women to reject traditional social controls, Gandhi's choice of scriptural target opened a new political battleground.

This is an opening the BJP has silently added to its ordinance to attack the Opposition. The argument being floated is that if religious scripture plays a part in upholding and reinforcing patriarchy, Gandhi could have quoted from scriptures of other religions to emphasise this point instead of focussing only on the Manusmriti.

The political dogwhistle is being connected to statements by Congress leaders like
P Chidambaram and Sushilkumar Shinde, who when they were home ministers in 2010 and 2013, respectively, used terms like Hindu and saffron terror during investigations into blast cases. This is like building a dossier. And Gandhi can't ignore it.

Unity May Lead To Complexities

After the 'high-on-unity' rally on Sunday in Delhi's Ramlila Maidan led by Gandhi and comprising over 20 Opposition parties, a debate rages on how large or small was the number of people who came to Ramlila Maidan to support the Opposition's "Chalo Dilli" call. But the real story unfolded on the stage. Till last Sunday, former West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee's politics had three key highlights - not ceding space to the Congress as the principal opposition party, not accepting Gandhi as the leader of the Opposition bloc and staying at a barge pole distance away from the Left front. On Sunday, she addressed Congress matriarch Sonia Gandhi as "my leader". Next, she greeted the CPM Secretary General MA Baby and in her speech called him "senior leader like Baby ji".

Speaker after speaker echoed Gandhi's "vote chori" and "illegitimate government" charge. Samajwadi Party's Akhilesh Yadav was the only leader who added "chanda chori (donation theft)" referring to the Ayodhya Ram temple offerings case.

This was a stark contrast to the INDIA bloc's last outing at Ramlila Maidan on March 31, 2024. Then, Gandhi and Kharge spoke about the threat to the Constitution and freezing of their party's accounts. RJD's Tejashwi Yadav focussed on the five lakh jobs created during his 17-month stint as Bihar deputy chief minister under the then chief minister Nitish Kumar. The Trinamool targeted the Modi government on threat to the federal structure and Yadav dedicated his speech to Samajwadi Party's 'PDA' poll plank. Former Jharkhand chief minister Champai Soren called his leader Hemant Soren "yuva samrat" and the AAP's Bhagwant Mann expressed outrage at party chief Arvind Kejriwal's arrest.

In November, the AAP and the DMK had not been seen in the INDIA bloc pantheon but there had been a greater cohesion among the partners. Gandhi, by keeping  the likes of Bora and lawyer-activist Prashant Bhushan visibly close to him, may be succeeding in amplifying the cohesion but there exists a disadvantage. Their public remarks may be ideologically suitable to the Congress's allies but politically incorrect and tricky for Gandhi. For example, Bhushan's "regime change" remark. The Congress had to spend time and energy to explain later that it believes in regime change through the ballot.

Bora's tirade against the "Brahmanical system" is equally problematic. The CPI(ML) has zero political stakes in UP which is set to vote in February-March next year. On the other hand Rahul's ally Akhilesh Yadav is eyeing the resentment against the BJP among Brahmin  voters. For years the upper caste has been wary of the Samajwadi Party as its rise to power was interpreted as "Yadav raj". Brahmins may be low in number but are considered influential.

Bora's statement may threaten Yadav's push and end up sending Brahmin votes back to the BJP. During the Sunday rally, while addressing the Opposition gathering, Trinamool's Banerjee had said, "Jo kaafir hai vo har roj darte hai (the kafir live in fear every single day)." In Islamic terminology, a kafir is someone who rejects the message of Allah and Islam's core beliefs.

The BJP alleged that it constituted polarising, religiously loaded dogwhistle politics targeted at majority sentiments.

The Congress and allies like the Samajwadi Party can compete with each other on issues like seat-sharing in UP. They can contest against each other like the Left Front in Kerala. But none can forget that what's good for them may be bad for Gandhi. Because of the new proximities, Gandhi will find it difficult to distance himself from a faux pas born out of the ideological position or regional compulsion of his allies.

It will become an opportunity for the BJP like the one offered by Manishankar Aiyer's "chaiwala can't be PM" jibe in 2014.

Are The Dog Whistles Working?

In the past, Gandhi had been sniping at the BJP's heels with one liners. Some have forced the BJP to rework its strategy and policy focus while some have been demolished. In April and May 2015, Gandhi coined the phrase "suit-boot ki sarkar (government of suits and boots)" to target PM Modi.

The BJP created a counter by labelling the previous Congress-led UPA regime a "loot ki sarkar". But the BJP learned a lesson and a slew of pro-poor policies followed.

In 2016, Gandhi raised the Sahara-Birla diaries bribery allegation claiming that when PM Modi was Gujarat chief minister, he allegedly received kickbacks totalling Rs 40 crore across nine instalments from a company. The issue died after the Supreme Court dismissed a petition for an independent investigation.

Next, Gandhi criticised the note ban or demonetisation in 2016 and the Goods and Services Tax (GST) in 2018. He said the moves were intentionally designed to harm small and medium-sized businesses, farmers and the informal sector while benefiting a small group of billionaires. He abandoned the twin issues to take up corruption in the Rafale fighter jet deal. PM Modi used his cult standing to turn his "chowkidar chor hai" chant to coin "desh ka chowkidar" in 2019.

But there is a catch. Between 2014 and 2019, PM Modi's personal image was like Earth's own atmosphere that burns up most small asteroids through friction and heat before they can hit. That political shield has thinned out and that's why the BJP finds that the bullets fired by the Opposition aren't ricocheting. The party's failure to construct its own narrative through new ideas is another handicap.

In the past, the BJP has recovered after trailing or being in a losing position by crafting or discovering a swing factor. This time, Gandhi would have to ensure that one of his allies doesn't end up providing just that.