It’s a measure of the adverse impact Congress Party leader Rahul Gandhi’s statements is having on the Bharatiya Janata Party’s electoral prospects that the BJP is being compelled to field at least half a dozen top leaders to counter Gandhi each time he fires a salvo.
This is an indirect admission that in the current scenario no single BJP leader is really capable of taking on Gandhi who must, therefore, be tackled collectively to control the damage and save the party. The BJP’s political strategy is reminiscent of Quad, a coalition comprising the United States, Australia, Japan and India, which acknowledges that China has become so powerful today that none of the four countries can contain it individually, leaving them with no option but to pool their military and economic resources to keep the Communist superpower in check.
To “refute” Gandhi’s hard-hitting criticism of Hindutva ideology and governance model during his tour of America States this month, the BJP deployed, besides Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Rural Development Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, Vice President Jagdeep Dhankar and Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Hardeep Puri.
In addition to these big guns, the sidelined and marginalised ex-Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad also sprang to the BJP’s defence essentially to build a case for his rehabilitation, not to speak of lightweights like Ravneet Singh Bittu branding the Leader of Opposition “Terrorist No 1” and Tarvinder Singh Marvah publicly announcing that the LoP deserves to be immediately killed like his grandmother, Indira Gandhi. And in the free-for-all atmosphere ignited by a rattled BJP, ally Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Gaikwad promptly declared a bounty of Rs 1.1 million for chopping off Gandhi’s troublesome tongue!
Notably, even as Gandhi is clearly spreading panic among BJP leaders and cadres nationally, his associate from the Indian National Development Inclusive Alliance, Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav, is giving Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath sleepless nights in the country’s electorally and politically most significant state, Uttar Pradesh, where the BJP’s tally of Lok Sabha seats fell to 33 from 62 in mid-2024. These days, Yadav is busy announcing from rooftops that the SP, which won as many as 37 Lok Sabha seats compared to the BJP’s 33, is going to wrest all the 10 assembly seats where by-elections will be held soon — and wrest entire UP from the BJP in 2027. All this is plausible and perfectly doable if you ask me.
As Gandhi tore into the BJP-Rashtriya SwayamSevak Sangh in the Big Apple, Modi-Shah-JP Nadda sounded the trumpets and called in the cavalry. But the BJP-RSS response to Gandhi’s attack on Hindu First ideology and majoritariasm was laughable and ridiculous. Even a Hindutva stalwart like Chouhan, who spent so many years as chief minister of a right-wing fortress like Madhya Pradesh before joining the Modi 3.0 cabinet, failed to rebut Gandhi’s fundamental accusation that the BJP viewed India as “one idea”, in contrast to the Congress party’s view that India is a “multiplicity of ideas”.
Importantly, instead of taking on Gandhi headlong and passionately defending the BJP-RSS’ Hindu-centric approach, Chouhan lamely and predictably accused Gandhi of tarnishing and maligning India’s image abroad, as if BJP-RSS is India. He had nothing substantive to say in defence of Hindutva and tried to shoot his way out by calling Gandhi “anti-national” and accusing him of “treason”. I’m sure all those who saw and heard Chouhan trying to refute Gandhi saw through his diversionary tactics and concluded that he is no match for Gandhi — and that the Hindutva agenda which Gandhi keeps slamming is downright indefensible. Chouhan cut a very sorry figure indeed.
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Shah was equally unconvincing as he accused Gandhi of making “anti-India” statements in America which “laid bare Congress’ politics of intentionally causing rifts on the lines of regionalism, religion and linguistic differences”. For good measure, the Home Minister also charged the LoP with hurting national security and sentiments! One doubts whether there are takers any more for such blabbering even among the BJP faithful. If there were really enough buyers for all the bizarre conspiracy theories floated by top BJP leaders and labelling of all critics as “anti-nationals”, would the saffron brigade have lost its majority in the Lok Sabha and been compelled to survive on crutches?
The BJP’s attempts to corner Gandhi for shining a torch on the othering and targeting of Sikhs in today’s India during his US trip, by raking up Operation Bluestar followed by the massacre of Sikhs in 1984 during Rajiv Gandhi’s rule, has also badly backfired. Prominent Sikhs lost no time in giving the Congress party a clean chit as it has apologised not once but many times for the military invasion of the Golden Temple and the anti-Sikh riots — and even gone to the extent of appointing Manmohan Singh as PM for two terms. Quoting BJP Leader L K Advani, they said that the BJP had actually pressured Indira Gandhi to attack the Golden Temple. They also flagged the ongoing projection of agitating Sikh farmers as Khalistanis by the Modi government, and how four farm leaders were recently stopped at Indira Gandhi Airport in New Delhi from boarding a flight as they had a small religious dagger, or kirpan.
The BJP has been gunning for Gandhi since 2014 as it knows too well that if any political party is capable of evicting the BJP from power, it is the Congress party which Gandhi leads. But the BJP is even more angry and rattled today because Modi too is headed for the US and Gandhi beat him to it. He has effectively queered the pitch for Modi who will land there on Sunday.
The author is an independent, Pegasused reporter and commentator on foreign policy and domestic politics
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