Opposition in Bihar to counter Modi’s ‘mother insult’ charge with aggression

The Opposition's Grand Alliance (Mahagathbandhan) in Bihar has decided to launch a blistering counterstrike against the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) broadside over the August 27 incident where a man made his way to the stage of a public meeting that Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Rashtriya Janata Dal’s (RJD) Tejashwi Yadav had left moments earlier and hurled abuses at Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

With Modi weaponizing the incident that occurred in the poll-bound state’s Darbhanga district during Rahul’s ‘Voter Adhikar Yatra’ and equating the abuses aimed at him and his late mother to an “insult to all mothers and daughters of Bihar” and the BJP holding protests across the poll-bound state on the issue on Thursday (September 4), the Opposition had been compelled to respond to the blitzkrieg with equal aggression.

Grand Alliance's counterattack

Signs that the Grand Alliance has decided to set aside the caution it had agreed to exercise while responding to the row at first were clearly visible on Wednesday (September 3). Tejashwi, who practically declared himself as the Grand Alliance’s chief ministerial face when the yatra concluded in Patna on Monday (September 1), set the tone of the Opposition’s counteroffensive shortly after he convened a closed-door meeting of his party’s MLAs and senior leaders in the state capital.

Sources in the Grand Alliance told The Federal that their senior leaders did not want to react to the Darbhanga incident as “it had nothing to do with us” and because they felt that “responding to the BJP’s attack would only divert attention from the issues we wanted our campaign to revolve around, like the Bihar SIR and vote chori.

Also read: Tejashwi calls PM Modi’s emotional outburst ‘impure politics’

Describing Modi’s outburst at the Opposition during his September 3 address as “dikhawati” (for show), the RJD leader rattled off a list of past instances where either the PM had himself hurled invectives at women leaders from the Opposition’s ranks or had maintained a deafening silence on similar incidents involving other BJP leaders.

Tejashwi's tirade on X

Tejashwi also made a long post on X, raking up multiple past incidents to accuse the BJP leadership of “double standards” and claiming that the controversy triggered by the saffron party over the Darbhanga incident was a ploy to “divert attention” from the Opposition’s campaign against “vote chori” (vote theft).

Also read: Why Oppn wants to keep mum as Modi rakes up 'mother insult' row

While asserting that “no one should ever use abusive words against anyone’s mother, sister, or daughter”, Tejashwi recalled how the prime minister had campaigned during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections for former Janata Dal (Secular) MP Prajwal Revanna, “who raped women and girls”.

Modi's Sonia, Sunanda Pushkar remarks

The RJD leader also referred to Modi’s own personal misdemeanours of the past, reminding the prime minister how he had once referred to former Congress president Sonia Gandhi as a “jersey cow” and dubbed Congress MP Shashi Tharoor’s late wife, Sunanda Pushkar “50 crore ki girlfriend”.

Also read: PM Modi slams Congress, RJD for ‘abusing’ his late mother in Bihar

Taking a dig at leaders of the Janata Dal (United), who have been echoing ally BJP’s attack against the Opposition over the Darbhanga episode, Tejashwi recalled how Modi had once remarked that Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s “DNA is faulty”.

“Modi’s chief whip abused my mother in the Bihar Assembly a few days ago and Modi patted him on the back... when a BJP leader threatened to strip our spokesperson and rape her on the street, Modi honoured him by inviting him to his plane... In Manipur, were the women who were paraded naked by BJP supporters not someone’s mothers?… When Biharis are abused in Gujarat, the prime minister stays silent,” Tejashwi went on.

The former Bihar deputy chief minister’s decision to hold back no punches while countering Modi’s charge that Opposition leaders such as him and Rahul “abuse me because I am the son of a poor mother… while they were born into privilege” triggered a similar tirade from Congress leaders, who till a day earlier had assiduously avoided responding to the prime minister’s broadside.

'PM using his mother'

“It is extremely unfortunate that the Prime Minister is using his mother, who is no more, for this kind of dirty politics. Every mother and daughter of this country is worthy of the utmost respect, and if someone has abused the prime minister’s mother, he must be held to account by the law but I also want to ask Modi, what is the kind of language you have used in the past for the women of this country?” Congress’s social media chief Supriya Shrinate said.

Also read: Ground report: Rahul’s ‘hydrogen bomb’ may involve Haryana shockers

“You called Sonia Gandhi ‘Congress ki vidhwa’ (Congress’s widow) and ‘jersey cow’; you called Sunanda Pushkar '50 crore ki girlfriend’, you kept quiet when the mothers and daughters of Manipur were being paraded naked and being raped,” she added.

Surpnakha episode

Congress MP Renuka Chowdhury, who Modi had once likened to Surpnakha, Raavan’s sister in the Hindu epic Ramayana, on the floor of Parliament, told The Federal, “Disrespecting women is not part of India’s culture, it is not part of the Congress party’s culture but look who is crying foul; a man who has repeatedly used the filthiest of slurs for women, be it for Sonia Gandhi or even me… has Modi forgotten all that he said about Sonia Gandhi; has he forgotten how he called me Surpnakha in Parliament while BJP MPs laughed and thumped tables?”

Sources said both RJD and Congress have asked their party spokespersons and members of their respective social media teams to share videos on X and other social media platforms of BJP members mocking or abusing women leaders from the Opposition.

Also read: Ground report: Tejashwi projects himself as Grand Alliance’s Bihar CM candidate

“Ask any Congress or Opposition leader who has participated in television news debates and he or she will have a personal experience to share about the kind of abuses they have been subjected to by BJP members on live TV. A BJP spokesperson had used the filthiest language possible for my mother on a live primetime debate on a Hindi news channel. My colleagues like Supriya Shrinate, Ragini Nayak, Alka Lamba, and so many others face similar abuse from BJP spokespersons every other day,” Congress spokesman Surendra Rajput said.

“Forget Opposition leaders, do you remember the kind of language BJP leaders and ministers had used during and after Operation Sindoor for Colonel Sofiya Qureshi or for the daughter of our foreign secretary Vikram Misri or even for the widows of those Indians who were gunned down in Pahalgam by terrorists?” he remarked.

Also read: As Rahul’s Voter Adhikar Yatra approaches climax, the real test begins now

Confident Opposition

Sources in the Grand Alliance told The Federal that their senior leaders did not want to react to the Darbhanga incident as “it had nothing to do with us” and because they felt that “responding to the BJP’s attack would only divert attention from the issues we wanted our campaign to revolve around, like the Bihar SIR, vote chori, unemployment, migration, rampant corruption, and the crumbling law-and-order situation in Bihar under NDA rule”.

However, with Modi trying to marshal the Darbhanga incident for the BJP’s poll campaign in Bihar and the party announcing its state-wide agitation over the row, the Opposition felt its silence “could prove counter-productive” as voters may think that “we are on the back foot”.

According to sources, at the meeting he convened on Wednesday (September 3), Tejashwi told RJD leaders and MLAs that “there is no need to be on the defensive”.

The leader, who also chairs the coordination committee of the Grand Alliance, conveyed to his allies in the Congress and the Left parties that they must “aggressively counter Modi’s charge so that the BJP doesn’t succeed in exploiting the controversy to its electoral advantage”.

Opposition to stick to voter issue

“Our campaign will still evolve around the issues we have identified. At Wednesday’s meeting, Tejashwi outlined our future campaign strategy and said what must take immediate priority is that the booth-level agents of RJD and all our alliance partners must ensure that no voter is wrongly excluded from the electoral rolls because of SIR (Special Intensive Revision)," a senior RJD MLA said.

“At the same time, Tejashwi has also said there is no need for us to go on the defensive over what happened in Darbhanga because we are absolutely sure that the man arrested for abusing the PM has no direct or indirect link with any of the Mahagathbandhan parties. If the BJP wants to make its campaign all about this false propaganda, we will respond and rebut with the same aggression,” the legislator added.