Seldom in recent years has a city swirled so effusively in political colours that have not belonged to Narendra Modi. Seldom in recent years has Narendra Modi loomed so large over his absence as in Bangalore.
Modi…Modi…Modi… it’s the one common migraine that grips the Opposition and has brought together an unlikely cast to divine a collective remedy. “United We Stand!” is the cry plastered across downtown; it takes no guessing against who.
Twenty-six parties and an even larger cast of personalities aiming at a combined enterprise that would evict the Modi project from power in 2024. “We are,” as Congress general secretary K.C. Venugopal put it, “united by a common purpose to protect democracy and constitutional rights and defeat the agenda of those who are killing democracy and the Constitution.”
To walk the avenues of central Bangalore today, it would seem the battle has slipped into countdown mode — the generals in position, their armies restive in readiness, the buglers about to sound the commencement of hostilities.
It’s tough to recall when last such a populous cast of adversarial actors adorned the sidewalks in hoardings of flex board and taffeta. A cast that gives literal truth to the Kashmir-to-Kanyakumari cliché.
Here’s a tally of a few who make up the diverse and often contrary tableau that the Bangalore street today is — Sonia Gandhi, Arvind Kejriwal, Mamata Banerjee, Lalu Prasad, M.K. Stalin, Nitish Kumar, Mehbooba Mufti, Omar Abdullah, Uddhav Thackeray, Sitaram Yechury, Akhilesh Yadav, Vaiko, Sharad Pawar, Dipankar Bhattacharya, Kader Mohideen.
Twenty-six parties, it was repeatedly underlined at a lead-in news conference this morning, and should you believe Jairam Ramesh, more may join the ranks. “We have already rattled the BJP,” Ramesh ventured, “suddenly we see efforts to reach out to other parties and revive the NDA.”
And so, is a bolder, bigger counterblast to the NDA in the offing as the fancy dress street rehearsal to Tuesday’s Bangalore Summit might suggest?
A reining-in would appear in order at this stage, of the metaphoric warhorses and of realistic expectations. D.K. Shivakumar, deputy chief minister, Karnataka Congress boss and host of this elaborate Opposition engagement following the Patna Summit of June, was clear that the box office matinee moment is further down the road, should it be travelled in unison.
“A great beginning has been made,” he said, “but I would say progress will be thinking together and success would be working together.”
Seated beside him, Venugopal offered a slightly upgraded formulation: “What we are trying will be a game-changer of the Indian political scenario.”
The Congress, the main Opposition party, has clearly upscaled its investment in larger unity; Sonia Gandhi’s presence here is the best proof of it. But could that mean a further scaling down of its ambitions to accommodate other parties?
“Look, we are in preliminary discussions at the moment, nothing more. Everything is on the table but everything is fluid,” a senior Congressman told The Telegraph.
“But if the agreement is genuine, we are ready to play our part in accommodation. Let us see where we head from here, it is clear we want to head somewhere with this.”
Nobody is yet sure what precisely, if anything, will float up from the summit discussions on Tuesday. A brand new entity? Committees to craft a brand new entity? A convener — or several — to structure and take the proposals from Patna and Bangalore onto the next summit? Broad principles of how the electoral pie will be divided, for that is what it will all come down to in the end — who gets to contest how many in the Lok Sabha stakes.
A tryst is taking shape in Bangalore, whose first stage was a dinner for the invited at the pleasure of chief minister Siddaramaiah.
For all the unanswered questions floating about in the nippy Bangalore breeze, nobody is lost on the urgency for such battlement building. It’s the one whose absence towers over the proceedings.
