Less than 48 hours to go before the first phase of polling in the Lok Sabha polls, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi invoked memories of his grandmother, the late prime minister Indira Gandhi, in Karnataka’s Kolar as the country goes into a general election like no other.
“I came here as a child with my grandmother and went to the Kolar gold field. I remember going down into the mine. It was very hot inside and meeting the workers,” Rahul said addressing an election rally attended by party president Mallikarjun Khadge, Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah and deputy chief minister D.K. Shivakumar among others, while campaigning came to a close in 102 of the 543 constituencies across the country.
“I learnt a lot about politics from my grandmother and I did not even understand she was teaching me politics,” said Rahul, who has projected himself as a challenger to Narendra Modi. “In all her lessons that she taught me there was only one lesson. She would tell me, 'Rahul, a leader has only one job and one technique'. All the leader has to do is search carefully for unfairness and where one spots it, without backing down, without fear must challenge it.”
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Indira Gandhi. That also marks the one and only time that a political party—the Congress under rookie politician Rajiv Gandhi – had breached the 400-plus seats mark, a target that Prime Minister Narendra Modi aspires to breach on June 4, when the results for the seven-phase elections are to be announced.
Forty-six years ago, a scenic Karnataka town surrounded by lush coffee plantations had paved the way for Indira Gandhi’s political rebirth since the stunning electoral defeat of 1977, when she won the by-election from Chikamagalur, around 315 km from Kolar.
Four decades later, the Congress has been out of power in Delhi for ten years, its leaders across states jumping ship, allies turning their backs in some states, its bank accounts frozen, battling for survival, which Rahul has time and again linked to the survival of India as a democracy.
In March 2023, barely two months before the Karnataka state Assembly polls were held, Rahul was expelled from the Lok Sabha (a Supreme Court intervention reinstated him as an MP).
The expulsion had followed a Gujarat lower court order that found him guilty of defamation for using the surname “Modi” during a campaign meeting for the Lok Sabha polls five years ago.
“In every single lesson she taught me this was the crux. If you challenge unfairness you will get hurt, you will be abused, you will be attacked,” Rahul told the crowd. “The more the abuse, the more the attacks, the better you are doing your job and your only duty is never to get scared, never to back down… and if you look at India today the government in Delhi is the master in spreading unfairness.”
What followed next in the speech was Rahul’s by now all-too familiar attack on Modi and the Prime Minister’s push for select industrialists, attack on the coopting of government institutions and the Congress’ own plans for reforms pan-India if, and it is a big if, voted to power.
Ahead of the 2023 Karnataka Assembly polls held in May, Rahul had spent 22 days in Karnataka during his Bharat Jodo Yatra which started in September 2022. Of the 135 seats in the 224-member Assembly that the Congress won, 15 of these were among the 20-odd seats that were along the route of the Bharat Jodo Yatra.
Ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, Rahul had similarly embarked on a Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra from Manipur’s Thoubal to Mumbai, covering some 6,700 km and passed through 15 states. In between, the party lost some allies in some states like the JDU and the Trinamul Congress in Bihar and Bengal. The party also found bitter foes, the Left and the Aam Aadmi Party, joining forces with it in Bengal, Delhi and Haryana, the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh, sealed the deal with factions of the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party led by Uddhav Thackeray and Sharad Pawar respectively.
“Rahul Gandhi logon ko jagaane ka kaam kar rahe hain (Rahul Gandhi is trying to awaken the people). In the course of his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, he is talking about unemployment, the BJP favouring the rich corporates at the cost of the poor, the minimum support price, caste census, more quota for the backward classes and dalits in government jobs and back-breaking price rise. But the media instead of talking about the people’s issues is hyping up the RSS-BJP’s narrative, bordering on crass communalism,” RJD leader and former Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav said over a month ago. “He is reaching out to the people, sharing their agony and distress. He is doing what a responsible Opposition leader should do. He is on the right track.”
In 2018, less than a year before the Lok Sabha polls, the Congress had managed to form the government with the help of the Janta Dal (Secular), which crumbled under “Operation Lotus” when 17 MLAs defected. In the Lok Sabha polls of 2019, the BJP had won 25 of the 28 seats.
For Modi to cross the 400-mark, the BJP would have to do a repeat in Karnataka and those states where it has already reached a peak, while breaching new territories.
Rahul Gandhi made no mention of what the Congress was seeking, rather what he had to offer.
“We are going to do an X-ray of India and place it in front of the people,” said Rahul referring to the poll promise of a caste census. “Every time I mention the caste census, Modi goes quiet. Is he for caste census or against it? This is the only way to give the rights to the people of India, the tribals, the backward classes, the dalits, the poor in the general caste.”
On January 6 1983, the late Chandra Shekhar had started a walk from Kanyakumari to Rajghat. By the time he reached his destination on June 25, coinciding with the imposition of Emergency, Shekhar was a week short of turning 56. Chandra Shekhar would have to wait for seven more years before he could become Prime Minister.
This year, on June 19 Rahul Gandhi will turn 54 exactly a fortnight after the Lok Sabha poll results are declared, almost two months after India starts voting.
