Despite his recent success in grabbing the headlines, Rahul is still the BJP's biggest political asset

Is Rahul Gandhi the BJP’s biggest political asset?

Most BJP supporters think so, using the derisive “Pappu” nickname to dismiss him as a political threat. Shekhar Gupta, editor-in-chief of The Print online publication (www.theprint.in), thinks that Narendra Modi sees Gandhi as his most potent political threat. He argues that Modi’s support base thinks differently about Rahul Gandhi than their leader himself.

I don’t think Gupta is quite right on this, even though Modi may not be as dismissive of Rahul Gandhi as his followers. The difference between Modi and his followers is in how they view Gandhi. Where they actually agree is that as long as Rahul Gandhi heads the Congress, it will be easier to defeat.

There are two ways in which Modi views Rahul Gandhi. He knows that the dynast has the ability to surprise him and get under his skin. Some years ago, he suddenly walked across the Lok Sabha floor to hug Modi. The Prime Minister was not only caught off guard, but unamused by this antic.

Rahul also seems to have the ability to get under Modi’s skin. For example, when the former, in one of his first speeches in 2015 after the UPA coalition’s defeat in 2014, accused the Modi government of being a “suit-boot-ki-sarkar”. Modi could have ignored it as normal political rhetoric and focused on his own priorities. But he got his close confidant, Arun Jaitley, to rebut Rahul by saying that Modi’s government was a sooj-bhooj-ki-sarkar (a government which seeks solutions) and not suit-boot-ki-sarkar, beholden to cronies.

Modi then went out of his way to prove that he was no supporter of cronies: two extortionate (high-tax) voluntary disclosure schemes were launched before demonetisation, partly to prove that he was against businessmen who were looting the country by not paying taxes. He also spent the first four years of his first term avoiding all contact with India Inc, till he realised in 2018 that business confidence was at a low ebb. He then changed course.

However, there is a political side to Modi that wants Rahul to be his main adversary. He is one with his support-base in seeing Rahul as beneficial for the BJP to maintain its dominance.

Modi believes that Rahul is not a serious politician, and hence his stewardship of the main political party will often end up benefiting the BJP. Rahul tends to disappear for weeks outside the country, and is often ill-advised on his politics. He also has a poor attention span, which cost him his best talent (Himanta Biswa Sarma of Assam being one of them). Most of his political moves, even those that actually strike a chord with a section of the voter base, end up being wasted efforts. He went on a Bharat Jodo yatra in 2022, but in a walk spanning 3,000 km and five months, the one state he avoided was Gujarat, which was actually holding an election at the time of the yatra. He spent weeks in several states, but five days in Uttar Pradesh.  

Not that Rahul has no political instinct. He is often given good inputs to help him make his political decisions. But he squanders these opportunities. For example, he knows that the key to a Congress victory (along with allies) lies in dividing the Hindu vote along caste lines and creating a minority consolidation behind him and his allies. But he did this in the crudest of ways, by asking for the number of OBCs in the higher bureaucracy or the armed forces (both important vote banks), thus uniting Hindus against this kind of manipulation. He does not realise that trying to split castes can have its own negative consequences: since the bulk of the current quota benefits have been cornered by some jatis (example, Paswans in Bihar, Mahars in Maharashtra), other sub-castes within the same broad categories can be turned against them. It is ultimately easier for the BJP to build a coalition of sub-castes under the broader umbrella of Hindutva.

In the recent protests, one wonders who counselled him to lead a march to the Supreme Court, or demand the resignation of the Chief Election Commissioner. Any lawyer, and Congress has many of them in its fold, would have told him that the CEC can only be removed by a super majority in parliament, and trying to intimidate Supreme Court judges may well put their backs up against whatever Rahul may have been trying to achieve through the courts.

It is also not clear why a Communist student leader like Neha Bora should be such a highlight of his street protests. Does he lack enough Gen Z faces in his own party? And what happened to the last Communist youth leader he inducted into his party - Kanhaiya Kumar? He has been confined to the boondocks.

Modi believes that as long as Rahul calls the shots in the Congress, he is bound to make serious political mistakes. He may not be a dumb Pappu, but he can be counted upon to make miscalculations and cannibalise the opposition vote. In Bihar, his “vote chori” campaign ended up ruining RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav’s bid to wrest back the state last year. In Uttar Pradesh, he is trying to outshine Akhilesh Yadav by demanding too many seats, thus making the alliance weaker than it needs to be. The real vote chori happens when Congress eats into his allies’ base, and the latter see him as a liability, costing them votes.

Rahul, in a bid to prove that he can counter the BJP’s Hindu credentials, uses Hindu terms and folklore without understanding them. Recently, he used the terms Shivji ki baraat (Lord Shiva’s wedding procession) without knowing that apart from the Gods, the procession included ghosts, crackpots and addicts among them. He talked about his protests being something like Shiv ka tandav, whereas the actual tandav is a cosmic dance with rhythmic movements symbolising the continuous cycle of creation, maintenance, and destruction – and not just one part of it. You can count of Modi to make mincemeat of Rahul’s understanding of these Hindu phrases and terms in due course.

Modi, in fact, made his contempt for Rahul clear during one parliament debate, where he indirectly referred to his “bal buddhi”, or juvenile intellect.

We saw that the other day when Rahul had climbed atop a barricade, pleased as punch over his achievement. It reminded me of an attention-seeking kid climbing the jungle jim and shouting to his mother to seek her approval and praise. “Look Ma, no hands”.

Don’t make any mistake: Modi wants Rahul to lead the Congress, because he believes the Gandhi scion will lead it to disaster. The Congress party will actually be better off without him, and can then more easily make sensible alliances to defeat the BJP.