Check or checkmate for Opposition parties in India

How can the Opposition respond effectively to BJP’s cohesive strategy and its recent victory?

It is not easy being Rahul Gandhi and no one envies his position. For almost two decades, he has been called a variety of names: part-time or woolly-headed politician, a person with an ‘entitled’ aura around him despite having ‘achieved little’ of his own volition. And, the last one, that forms on the lips of readers, but is best not to put it down on paper.

But, is it fair to disparage just one person? Why should the entire blame for failing to put up a credible fight against the BJP cavalcade be placed at Rahul Gandhi’s doorstep? Should not the blame be apportioned to other Opposition leaders too?

These questions came to mind much before the flabbergasting verdict from the three Hindi heartland states was adequately perused. There were two triggers for this.

Firstly, news resurfaced that Rahul Gandhi would soon travel outside India for a few days. Although his plans were already in the public domain, most missed it due to the overpowering interest in the elections and their results. 

Secondly, almost at the same time, it became known that the scheduled meeting of top I.N.D.I.A. alliance leaders was deferred to the third week of December. While discussing these developments, a fellow journalist reminded me of the concluding scenes of Satyajit Ray’s film based on Premchand’s epic story – ‘Shatranj ke Khiladi’ (or chess players). 

In this tale, as scenes depicted the British Empire symbolically entering unopposed into the kingdom of Oudh (or Awadh), on the backs of gently swaying elephants, the scribe softly repeated the quietly observant child’s last line: ‘kauno ladat naahi, bandook kauno naahi chalawat’ (no one is fighting, no one is firing a gun).

Premchand’s short story, penned a century ago, was spun around events triggered by the chess addiction of two negligent and archetypal feudal lords, engrossed in their board game, even as the kingdom was taken over, with Wajid Ali Shah abdicating the throne without a fight. 

None of the Opposition leaders can be compared to the feudal lords of Oudh or its Badshah. Likewise, the BJP and its undisputed leader, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, are not being put at par with the representatives of colonial power. 

Yet, internal bickering within the Congress and verbal exchanges between Opposition leaders has parallels with the narrative of the Premchand-Ray classic.

Opposition leaders from every party appear as alienated from the political necessities of the day as Wajid Ali Shah was when his kingdom crumbled like a house of cards. 

The Badshah poignantly intimated the British representative that he may not have been a competent ruler, but at least the people had his poetry on their lips all the time — he was content with this. 

Likewise, party publicists or apologists say, Rahul Gandhi may have not succeeded in shepherding the Congress on the path of political resurrection, but at least hundreds of thousands flocked to his ‘Mohabbat ki dukaan’ in the ‘nafrat ke bazaar’. 

Similarly, many other Opposition stalwarts have their own yatras to showcase. But, barring a few regional supremos commanding reverence outside the party too, few have the necessary electoral support of the people. In pursuing inconsequential goals, these leaders seem to have forgotten their primary objective was to defeat the BJP. Strategic programmes and campaigns cannot be the ends in themselves, but only a means to achieve the primary goal.

BJP’s strike rate

Equations are stark. These three states collectively elect 65 members of the Lok Sabha. In 2019, the BJP won 61 of these seats, while one was bagged by a small sub-regional ally in Rajasthan. Can one expect the Congress to somehow pull back from this precipice of obliteration and win more than three seats from these states, or will the BJP pocket even these?

The situation is no different in several other states of the Hindi heartland, and a significant part of western India. The BJP had a strike rate of 100% in several states: Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana, Delhi, Uttarakhand, and Himachal Pradesh, besides several smaller ones with one or two constituencies along with a few Union Territories.

Besides these states accounting for 83 seats in the BJP tally, in 2019, the party also won an overwhelming number of constituencies in several states along with allies. Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Assam were some of these states that collectively elected 195 Lok Sabha members.

Bihar and Maharashtra are two states where the BJP performed very well, but with parties that are adversaries now. Future realignments cannot be ruled out, given mercurial characteristics and a lack of commitment to ideas and ideology. Barring long-standing partners like the RJD in Bihar and a few others in southern states, the Congress too, cannot bank on any party to resolutely remain opposed to the BJP. 

Even if those who have become part of the I.N.D.I.A. alliance do not jump ship, and the BJP has fewer allies of significance compared to 2019, the task is cut out for the likes of Nitish Kumar, Akhilesh Yadav, Lalu Prasad and his son, Tejashwi Yadav. A similar challenge also lies before sub-regional leaders like Jayant Chaudhary, those like Arvind Kejriwal whose politics is not identity-based and even Mayawati, who won 10 seats in the all-important state of UP but has chosen to remain outside of the alliance owing to personal animosity with Akhilesh Yadav. 

State leaders and parties

A data set analysed by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies showed that in Rajasthan, in 44 Assembly seats where the Congress was number two, the votes polled by candidates in the third position, from sub-regional parties or independents, were more than the BJP’s victory margin. A similar situation would not be difficult to find in other states. 

But if the central leadership had bulldozed its way past reservations of state leaders and got them to ‘yield’ to smaller parties, most would have attacked Rahul Gandhi, or the ‘family’ for slighting state leaders. It would have been asserted that he was forcing the hand of party president, Mallikarjun Kharge, into dictating strategy to satraps even though the actual campaign would remain their task. 

The likes of Kamal Nath, Ashok Gehlot and even Bhupesh Baghel need to accept that hubris got them. They overestimated their personal popularity and the success of their programmes. For them and all others, the message is loud and clear: Every Opposition leader must replace their inherent arrogance with unblemished humility, be it the most powerful in the Congress, or those like Hanuman Beniwal, who won the Nagaur seat in 2019 in alliance with the BJP but parted ways with it, seeing disastrous consequences for his fledgling party, the Rashtriya Loktantrik Party. 

‘United we stand, divided we fall’ and ‘divide and rule’ can no longer be treated as clichés. Instead, the former must become their motto. They must also know that divide and rule, as a policy, never went away with the colonial order. 

The rescheduled I.N.D.I.A. meeting is now slated for December 17. The phrase ‘it’s never too late to be what one might have been’ is apt to lift morale. But, time is running out for the Opposition. The game may still be on despite PM Modi’s declaration that this hat-trick shall be followed by another next year. 

But to play this game, and best the BJP in its own game, the ‘team’ has to be formed. ‘Perform or perish’ may be a management mantra that Modi has appropriated for his government. It will not be unwise for the Opposition to follow suit. After all, the PM has picked up several leaves from adversaries’ playbooks. 

(The writer’s latest book is ‘The Demolition and the Verdict: Ayodhya and the Project to Reconfigure India’. He tweets at @NilanjanUdwin)