Against BJP's unconventional and predatory politics, even leaders with far greater conventional political skills may have struggled to challenge Modi's clout
The suffocating stranglehold that the BJP under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has taken over India's social, political and economic levers has made many Constitution lovers and thinkers jittery about India's future as a democratic republic.
This jitteriness has persisted for 12 excruciating years and is unlikely to end all that soon.
And this has made many a right-thinking person lose patience and vent their frustration on Rahul Gandhi, the main and perhaps the most potent leader India arguably has today, the long list of his shortcomings notwithstanding, to take on the might of Modi and the BJP's ideological fountainhead, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
Ramachandra Guha's angst
Some even blame Rahul for unwittingly lending strength to Narendra Modi. They also claim that he is surrounded by no-good sycophants.
Rahul Gandhi today is the only leader in the country who has demonstrated the will and courage to look Modi and the RSS in the eye.
In a recent article, noted historian Ramchandra Guha minced no words — his usual approach while discussing the Gandhi family — in observing that Rahul lacks discipline, gravitas and curriculum vitae. And, of course, the usual criticism that has come to stick to Rahul is that he is a dynast with a sense of entitlement.
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Does Rahul Gandhi deserve this seemingly uncharitable view that even the well-intentioned carry of him? Or does he deserve to be looked at differently than through the usual yardsticks and standards used to view political leaders?
He does deserve to be looked at differently. And the reasons are many.
Rahul's shortcomings
First, there is no point in defending Rahul Gandhi for everything that he does. There are some things that are hard to defend.
Like most others of his ilk, he is an incomplete politician with many lacunae. His inconsistency in pursuing an agenda to its logical end, inadequate oratorical skills and failure to mould the Opposition into a formidable challenge to the BJP are some starkly evident deficiencies.
His intermittent disappearances from the country's political map for some apparently personal sojourns have become subjects of unhealthy speculation.
Also, he has not been paying urgent attention to the most pressing demand of the time — rebuilding the Congress party organisation.
A different lens matters
All these things must be everybody's concern, but there sure exists a case today for not letting such conduct by Rahul Gandhi become our prime target.
The grave danger that the Modi-led ecosystem today poses to India's carefully nurtured secular and liberal disposition should prompt us to look at Rahul from a compellingly subjective perspective for the simple reason that he is the only leader in the country today who has demonstrated the will and courage to look Modi and the RSS in the eye.
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Let's first address the usual accusations that are thrown at him in a rather superficial way. The dynast tag, for instance. There is no denying that he is a dynast and has inherited the leadership of Congress from his forefathers like Pandit Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi.
But has he inherited it as a rightful claimant against the wishes of the party, or as a strongman who would brook no opposition to that privilege within his party? Or is it the culmination of a Gandhi-smitten Congress party thrusting the mantle on the Gandhis to provide much-needed binding glue?
Power and the Gandhis
Among those opposed to the vitriolic politics of the BJP, it is nobody's case that the Gandhis have agreed to or hungered for power and, as such, have domineeringly sought to keep the party reins tightly in their hands.
History is testimony to the fact that Rahul's mother, Sonia Gandhi, was vehemently opposed even to Rajiv Gandhi becoming Prime Minister after his mother Indira Gandhi's assassination. And when she was the master of her own decisions after Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, she refused to join politics until a desperate Congress party forced her hand and persuaded her to take over the party's reins.
Rahul is a dynast not by instinct but because of a groundswell in his favour within the Congress as well as among the public that supports the party.
Had she refused to accept the request then, Rahul may not have been where he is today.
Clearly, Rahul is a dynast not by instinct but because of a groundswell in his favour within the party as well as among the public that supports Congress.
That also explains why he is such an odd politician. He hadn't chosen to be one but became one by a turn of events beyond his control and not by carefully undergoing the rigours of politics to become a politician by choice. That's why he is an unconventional politician who refuses to go by the established rules of the game, namely rank dishonesty, trickery and treachery.
Even the likes of Guha acknowledge that Rahul is basically a good individual.
Questioning the dynast narrative
Having said that, the dynast argument also raises another important question: if Rahul is a dynast with a sense of entitlement, then why raise other questions about him, like what he is doing and what he is not doing, or why he is doing something or why he is not?
If you have a problem with his being a dynast, expecting him to do things you think he should be doing as a politician is like telling someone they are not eligible for a job, and that they are not doing the job as well as you would like them to do. What the proponents of the dynast argument should ideally be saying is that Rahul must step aside because he is a dynast.
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Also, the dynast charge and Rahul's refusal to take up a ministerial responsibility in the Manmohan Singh government are mutually incompatible points of criticism.
Who's the actor?
Also inconsistent with the “entitled dynast” allegation is another observation by Guha about his meeting the underprivileged sections of society, which the historian prefers to call “gestural gimmickry”.
A privileged dynast is quintessentially an ivory-tower resident who won't mix with common folk without an air of condescension. In those photo-ops, Rahul doesn't look like a put-on doing all that as gimmickry. That is actually true of Modi, a self-proclaimed tea vendor’s son. If the choice has to be made between the two, it is better to choose a down-to-earth dynast than a high-flying chaiwallah.
The precarity of today's Indian politics is that there is no alternative to Rahul in the entire Opposition, unlike in the BJP, where there are some who could succeed Modi.
Of course, there is nothing wrong either for Modi or Rahul to do that even for just image enhancement.
Except for the tearing up of a government ordinance by Manmohan Singh back in 2013, Rahul hasn't exhibited a worrisome penchant for outbursts of the privilege of power.
A democrat in adversity
Actually, since then, he has come a long way to acquire the credentials of a genuine democrat courageously championing the cause of democracy against the most audacious assault on India's Constitutional ideals by Modi and his army of anti-Constitution henchmen.
And mind you, he is perhaps the only available such leader at the national level. The precarity of today's Indian politics is that there is no alternative to Rahul Gandhi in the entire Opposition, unlike in the BJP, where there are some who could succeed Modi if and when the situation may warrant.
Another point weaponised against the Gandhis is that it was Indira Gandhi who first imposed the Emergency and curtailed the democratic rights of citizens. So what? Should that rob her descendants of the choice to defend democracy?
Similarly, as regards his being surrounded by sycophants, it's a problem not just with Rahul and the other Gandhis but with many prominent politicians of all parties. The biggest example is Modi, who counts almost everyone in his party among his unabashed sycophants.
A democrat at heart
The question, however, is not whether being surrounded by sycophants is fine but whether that erodes and corrodes the party.
A recent example of choosing the Kerala chief minister bears the signature of a truly democratic process to arrive at one name among the three claimants. Had Rahul had a dynastic stranglehold, he would have chosen his close aide KC Venugopal without letting the party go through several rounds of discussions with all the stakeholders.
To some, it reflected poorly on Congress's ability to command and control its flock, but that would be nothing short of intra-party autocracy.
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The same goes for the Rajasthan and Karnataka wars of succession in the party. A dynast surrounded by sycophants would be a dictator by default and wouldn't allow such issues to be decided through several rounds of intense deliberations.
Who, if not Rahul?
So, should his being a dynast matter more than his identity as a democrat with a sworn commitment to the Constitution, especially when there is no better alternative available? Does it make any sense to dismiss him as a leader of little consequence when we need to rally around him as the only one available to push back against Modi's army of Constitution butchers?
Guha's advice in this regard — stop looking at Rahul as the principal source of hope — begs the question: who, if not Rahul Gandhi?
As regards Congress steadily losing ground under him, it is a fact that can't be solely attributed to the inadequacy of his leadership. Let's not forget that leadership alone is not a sufficient condition for any party to even keep its flock together, forget growing, in the times of a predatory BJP.
Even time-tested veterans like Sharad Pawar, Uddhav Thackeray, Mayawati, Naveen Patnaik, Arvind Kejriwal, and now Mamata Banerjee, have been reduced to virtual non-entities.
Fault the BJP
Instead of discrediting these leaders for their parties' decline, it makes greater sense to look at it from the point of view of the BJP's naked use of money and muscle power to reduce them se to a state of political bankruptcy.
Actually, we must not underestimate the 100-seat (including a supporting rebel) scalp by the party under Rahul's leadership in the 2024 general elections as a fluke. It was a result of a great deal of hard work in building a case against the BJP by Rahul Gandhi.
Let us also not forget that the Opposition's performance looks miserable, not because it has lost a lot of ground among the people. It is more so because of the fraudulent manipulations by the BJP in the electoral process, aided and abetted by the very institutions that are supposed to prevent them.
Why Rahul still matters
Counterintuitively, one needs to ask: if the Opposition has lost ground among voters, why would the BJP need to resort to such manipulations? It does so because it itself, not the Opposition, Congress in particular, has lost a lot of ground.
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Of course, charisma can make a difference, and Rahul doesn't have it. But then charisma is not everything. What should matter more in Modi's time is fearlessness and an unflinching commitment to Constitutional democracy. And these are the two most crucial qualities in short supply. No one else appears to have them as much as Rahul does.
Clearly, looking at Rahul Gandhi as the only available option to antidote the BJP's politics of hate and poison makes much better sense than dismissing him as an inconsequential dynast surrounded by sycophants. At least until we have someone else with a much better way of doing things than Rahul does to usher in a change all right-thinking citizens have become impatient to witness.
(The Federal seeks to present views and opinions from all sides of the spectrum. The information, ideas or opinions in the articles are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Federal.)
