Opposition Is Looking Confident Of Defeating RSS-BJP Combine In 2024

By Arun Srivastava

For nine long years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been dictating political actions in India, but the expected opposition meet will not only redefine the nature of the political discourse of the country, but would set a completely new political narrative, engineering a different political activism and vision in the public domain.

For practical reasons, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has been playing the key role, performing the task of the fulcrum providing a new balance to the national oppositional politics. He, unlike other opposition leaders, was not skeptical of the participation of Congress at the meet, but what has been bothering him was the response from the other constituents. Nitish has been successful in persuading most of the opposition parties to join the conclave later this month.

Congress participation was never a concern for worry. Rahul Gandhi, from the beginning, has been quite sure that without a broader agreement, it would be a tough proposition to defeat the BJP, as it depends on the RSS support to romp home. Obviously, it was imperative that the RSS playbook, from which Narendra Modi borrowed extensively and has been using it ruthlessly claiming to be his own, should be smashed. To a large extent, Rahul has succeeded in his mission.

The Modi-aligned corporate media has been indulging in the Hindutva game to create a sense of uncertainty about the possible success of the opposition meet by harping that Rahul and Congress president may not attend it. The fact of the matter is the Congress does not intend to rush and would prefer to watch the first round of discussion. It would certainly like to feel the pulse of other parties about nature and character of his Bharat Jodo Yatra. Some of the present participants had maintained a distance from the Yatra that spanned from Kanyakumari to Srinagar, traversing over 4,000 kilometres on foot.

Nevertheless, Congress would prefer to give a strong shape to the coming together of the opposition parties. And in its move, it may like to assign the responsibility of convening to Nitish Kumar, something akin to being the chairman of the UPA. His task would be to give an ideological character to the group and present the group as the chief challenger to the RSS-BJP combine.

This group will be primarily responsible for evolving the formula for seat-sharing amongst the members in different states. In this context, the Congress cannot be accused of resorting to political hegemony. So far, the general notion has been the political parties come together to win the elections, but break up once the election is over.

Success of Bharat Jodo Yatra has already emerged as the “alternative vision” to defeat the BJP, and obviously the Congress party would not like it to be diluted by any other “alternative vision”. There is yet another aspect to the moves of some opposition parties to come together. They have no alternate political and ideological vision except seat sharing. But for Rahul, defeating BJP in 2024 is more important than just opposition unity bereft of an ideological core value system. For Gandhi, the Congress setting a counter-narrative to BJP is more necessary. According to him, Bharat Jodo Yatra is the first step towards his alternative vision.

The mood prevailing in the opposition circle could be gauged from the observation of JD(U)’s national general secretary Rajib Ranjan: “Everyone in the Grand Alliance looks electrified at the way the opposition parties are coming together to uproot the existing BJP-led NDA government at the Centre. We are confident that the NDA could be restricted below 200 seats if we fight the next Lok Sabha polls with proper coordination.”

Besides Congress, several prominent opposition leaders like West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, her nephew Abhishek Banerjee, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, former Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) patriarch Sharad Pawar, Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren, CPI-M leader Sitaram Yechury, CPI leader D Raja, former Uttar Pradesh CM Akhilesh Yadav are among those expected to attend. There are speculations that senior party leader Rahul Gandhi may join the meeting after returning from his USA tour. In fact that is one of the reasons for rescheduling the meeting to June 23  from June 12 originally fixed  by the Bihar Chief Minister.

Peoples’ response in America to Rahul has been interesting. Rahul’s visit to the US has been met with a mixture of excitement, curiosity and skepticism. Though the BJP ecosystem says that the response was poor in comparison to Modi, the basic fact cannot be ignored that Modi has been visiting as the prime minister of India, whereas Rahul has been travelling as an individual, who is no longer a Member of Parliament, nor the Leader of the Opposition. Even then he has been receiving immense response. The Indian Overseas Congress, Congress party’s international chapter, managed to have enough people to fill the audience for Gandhi’s events.

Rahul Gandhi taking a jibe at Modi is a planned strategy to demolish the latter self-styled halo. “There is a group of people who know everything… and PM is one such specimen”, Gandhi specifically ridiculed the recent focus on the Sengol (scepter) and Modi’s obeisance to religion, including his “shastang namaskar”, the full-length body prostration before the epitome of an older, monarchical idea of power. The Congress leader was immediately called out by critics and a troll army that produced photographs on social media of Gandhi in the same posture.

Rahul’s maintaining a low profile has worked magic. Shan Sankaran, founder of FixNix, a Silicon Valley unit, “I will call him Buddha. He’s a living Buddha. So, I think he’s not behind any of these fancy designations. He follows Dhamma for that matter. In many private interactions, what I found is he has very deep knowledge in many subjects not just technology”.

RSS and Modi put in lot of efforts and resources to prove Rahul as a fool and immature politician. But their endeavour miserably failed. The political development and the narratives which took shape over the last eight-nine months, since launch of the Bharat Jodo Yatra, followed by the convincing victory in the crucial Karnataka assembly elections, has sent a strong message to the BJP political ecosystem. It’s straight of the epic Mahabharata: “the boy who will finish off Kansh has taken birth”. The heaps of appreciation that Rahul has been receiving post Yatra has projected him as the competent challenger to Modi.

Though some experts and BJP political ecosystem strongly deny his emergence and do not deem Gandhi as a challenger, the desperation of the RSS and BJP is palpable in the fact that the diaspora has enthusiastically accepting of Rahul and is a strong indicator of the changing mood among the people.

One ought not to forget that even after massive victories of 2014 and 2019 at home, Modi depended on the diaspora for his image makeover, and for projecting him as the “Vishwa Guru” (world guru). Unfortunately, for Modi this diaspora has started turning its back on him and this was clearly visible during his recent visit to Australia. Even the Prime Minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese, had to face a hostile media for accompanying Modi and helping him in his pursuit. If the response of the UK and US diaspora is any indicator, it can be construed that political narrative flowing across the globe has reversed.

People have come to subscribe to the view that Rahul is down to earth and not an arrogant guy. He is looking more acceptable and humane than Modi. It is his clearheaded and perceptive accounts of the economic and political developments, in sharp contrast to Modi’s image conscious publicity stunts, that has made Rahul more acceptable. Modi became darling of the global fraternity because of the heady perception created by the diaspora.

US president Joe Biden has been giving Modi a long rope in his own interest. Certainly, it is not out of love for Modi. Since the Indian diaspora has presented him as the undisputed leader of India, Biden intended to use it for his electoral gains. His invitation to Modi to have dinner on June 22 is the part of his strategy to keep the Indian Americans happy so that they vote for him in the 2024 American elections. Ironically, in 2019 Modi campaigning for Donald Trump and raising the slogan “Abki Bar Trump Sarkar” failed to entice the diaspora. One hopes that Biden should have read the situation.

Nevertheless, there is little doubt that the recent developments have placed Rahul Gandhi above all other opposition leaders at home. Not only the Congress, but also the secular opposition should use this gain to their electoral advantages. If the mood of joy prevailing in the opposition circle is any indicator, then the opposition will be too eager to project him as the leading competent alternative to Narendra Modi at the polls. (IPA Service)