That the inaugural session of the 18th Lok Sabha would be fractious and stormy was only to be expected. The Opposition, buoyant after a decade of parliamentary despondency, had enough reasons to want to score debating points and taunt the Bharatiya Janata Party for its perceived arrogance that had been partially punctured by the electorate. On its part, the BJP and not least the prime minister wanted to use the debate on the motion of thanks to the president’s address to demonstrate to both the country and especially its supporters that a reduced majority hadn’t affected the government’s energy and enthusiasm.

In a sense, both sides managed to fulfil the expectations of their support bases. Making his debut as leader of the Opposition, the Congress leader, Rahul Gandhi, evaded the temptation of trying to present himself as a shadow prime minister. Still in election mode, he was more interested in getting a few laughs from his jibes against Narendra Modi, particularly his alleged assertion in an interview during the election campaign that he saw himself as being propelled by a divine force. On a more serious plane, the Gandhi heir chose to use the occasion to elaborate on his understanding of the BJP’s Hindutva and why he saw it as a departure from lofty religious traditions. He chose to do it with the aid of some calendar art which seemed somewhat contrived. In any case, being an upper-class, cosmopolitan Indian detached from the rituals and everyday customs of practising Hindus, his critique of Hindu nationalism reflected his social standing. For him, the Hinduness that the BJP has championed is an alien phenomenon and quite outside his Westernised social experience. Consequently, when he attacked the BJP for not being true Hindus, he seemed to be doing so from the perspective of those who see good religious practice as being multi-faith ceremonies where a passage from the Bhagavad Gita, Bible and Quran are read one after another.

While the leader of the Opposition’s all-religions-are-the-same approach has an appeal among today’s secularists and Nehruvians, it could be missing the profound changes in the Hindu public consciousness that have been brought about by the BJP’s political interventions since the Ayodhya movement gathered steam after 1989. Rahul Gandhi seems to believe that the BJP’s loss of 63 Lok Sabha seats was a consequence of the people consciously rejecting the government’s overbearing Hindutva in public life. Among other things, this may have stemmed from the BJP’s loss of the Faizabad parliamentary seat (which incorporates the temple town of Ayodhya) and the reduction of Modi’s margin of victory in Varanasi.

The debate over what exactly contributed to the BJP’s defeat in Uttar Pradesh is bound to remain inconclusive. The CSDS-Lokniti post-poll survey that enjoys a lot of credibility in academic circles suggests that the principal reason cited by as many as 22.4% of the respondents to explain why they had voted for the BJP was the construction of the Ram mandir in Ayodhya. To this can be added another 6% that identified the promotion of Hindutva/sanatan dharma and Indian culture for their endorsement of the BJP. It is interesting that among the shortcomings of the Modi government at the Centre over the past five years, only 9.1% cited communal conflict and polarisation as the reason. As much as 34.3% saw the failings of the Modi regime as being primarily economic — a rise in poverty and unemployment. At the same time, nearly 66% of the sample expressed full or partial satisfaction with their own financial situation. This should also be read with the 15.3% that saw the principal achievements of the BJP as being economic in nature — reducing poverty, creating employment opportunities, and helping the economically weaker sections.

The CSDS-Lokniti survey findings may not be sacrosanct. In any case, in assessing situations, Indian politicians, unlike their Western counterparts, are only nominally guided by survey data. They tend to rely more on anecdotal evidence provided by their own supporters. In Uttar Pradesh, the survey data suggest that the core of the Congress-Samajwadi Party INDI Alliance was made up of en bloc support of Muslims and Yadavs. However, in this election, a critical incremental support was provided by the Dalit communities which were swayed by the whisper that the BJP’s drive towards a steamroller majority was motivated by a desire to change the Constitution and dilute reservations for Dalits and Adivasis.

That this perception may have been based on fake news, as the BJP now complains, isn’t very germane. What matters more is that the BJP’s sangathan may have been overwhelmed by complacency and the belief that Modi’s victory was a settled fact. This meant that the mobilisation necessary to rally all sections and get voters out on polling day was missing. Whereas the motivation among Muslim voters to defeat the BJP was very high, there was no corresponding motivation among the votaries of Hindutva. A little extra energy and organisational drive may have resulted in the BJP’s losses being far less.

Rahul Gandhi’s frontal attack on the Hindu nationalism of the BJP and the snide references of other secularist stalwarts to Lord Ram having turned his back on Modi and the saffron party flow from the political understanding of the Congress’s core vote base. Over the years and in different states, the social coalition that made up the Congress has dwindled. As opposed to the alliance of upper castes, Dalits/Adivasis and Muslims that gave the Congress a winning combination in northern India until the mid-1980s, the party has now been reduced to relying disproportionately on the support of religious minorities, particularly Muslims and Christians. It was the support of INDI Alliance partners such as the Samajwadi Party in UP, the Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar, and the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha in Jharkhand that gave the Congress a little boost in some states of northern India. Otherwise, the Congress performed disastrously in all the other states of northern India. Its tally of 99 seats implies it hasn’t been able to recover the ground of the UPA-II.

Under Rahul Gandhi, the Congress has continued the drift to the Left that began under Sonia Gandhi. It now seems that economic populism will be supplemented by an anti-Hindutva plank aimed at firming its support among minorities. The BJP’s strategic response to these developments is awaited.