What exactly is Rahul Gandhi’s politics? 2018 provided us sharp answers

Moving into 2019, we find the tone of the political discourse now has been pretty much set by the recent Assembly elections.

The Congress winning in the three Hindi-belt states has four important implications.

First, it shows a change of mood among voters towards the Congress. Significantly, it is the Hindi belt that holds the key to power in Delhi.

Second, the manner in which the Congress made its comeback is important — raising issues of rural distress, peasants’ problems, the concerns and complaints of subalterns and marginalised sections. These could be its poll plank for 2019 too.

Third, the results show that the BJP’s politics is fading and issues such as the Ram Janmabhoomi movement and efforts at religious polarisation — raised loudly and often by various outfits such as the VHP — are losing their appeal in contemporary times.

Fourth, the verdict also raises questions on the policies and directions that the BJP government is proposing for New India.

The BJP should certainly learn from these elections and re-strategise for 2019.

But most importantly, these elections have given us the space and the stage to understand Rahul Gandhi, as a politician and as a leader.  

For long, Rahul Gandhi was either written off or mocked at, without anyone — including, seemingly, his own party — being too clear on what politics he stood for. But during the Assembly elections, we saw and heard more of the Congress president’s strategy and vision.

So, what is Rahul Gandhi’s politics?

First, Gandhi picked holes in the BJP’s claims of development.

He tried to develop a narrative that in the four and a half years of BJP rule, many people had been left out of its ‘development’ bracket. Rahul Gandhi gathered these scattered ‘left-outs’ —peasants, rural artisans, the rural poor, urban small traders, people working in the informal sectors, and all others affected adversely by demonetisation and GST. He thus sharpened his charge of the BJP running a ‘suit-boot ki sarkar’ — a government apparently working for capitalists and the rich.

Gandhi is trying to fashion himself as a clear contrast — a leader whose vote-base would be peasants, labourers and the poor.

For this, he constantly attacked policies such as GST and demonetisation, claiming they were the result of a ‘nexus’ between politics and big money.

In this, Rahul seemed to look back at grandmother Indira Gandhi’s pro-poor politics.

To that, he added peasant issues, voiced by socialists like Ram Manohar Lohia and Charan Singh.

This also showed his efforts at regaining the Congress’ lost social base, which has always been the marginalised, the poor and the small peasants.

But there is a catch here, which Gandhi would do well to remember — the nature and aspirations of the rural poor have changed a lot since the 1990s. To retain their votes, the Congress needs to offer them much more than the ‘gift politics’ of loan waivers, etc.

Another interesting facet of Gandhi’s leadership seen during these elections was internal conflict resolution — he patiently tried to resolve contradictions and contests between the Congress’ regional leaders, and pushed them into elections together. Gandhi once said: ‘Congress hi Congress ko harati hai (It’s the Congress that defeats the Congress)’. This time, he seemed very conscious of this danger, and tried to minimise infighting.

But this united front might very well be a temporary thing.

Jealousies and negative competition do not seem fully removed among the leaders and the cadre. Gandhi should now try to build a new culture in his party, where such tendencies are better managed.

Also, this election saw Gandhi improve vastly in ‘performative’ politics. He was able to articulate the aspirations of the voiceless masses, helping him create an influential connect with the common people. Today, we largely see our politicians as performers — and TV channels have a big role to play in this. If we were to describe Rahul Gandhi’s politics in Vedantic symbolism, we might say that he has shown he can prove the ‘rope as a snake’ and the ‘snake as a rope’ coiled within him. His speech, laughter, crying, emoting, dressing style — all added up to an impressive performance.

During his entire campaign, Gandhi tried to fit into the mould of the ‘common man’ — wearing disheveled kurta-pajamas and developing a ‘karyakarta’ kind of image.

This might have been a conscious attempt to distance himself from the ‘naamdar’ image Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP try to project him in.

But importantly, Rahul Gandhi also took the 'karyakarta' image beyond optics, and actually started interacting with his party cadre well ahead of the elections, which helped him get a good feel of the pulse on the ground.

Many political pundits attributed the Congress’ wins to anti-incumbency against the BJP. But some credit goes to the Congress for effectively using this anti-incumbency. For example, in Madhya Pradesh, ‘Brand Shivraj’ was still popular. But Gandhi and his team highlighted the contradictions within the Shivraj-led path of development, and made them an electoral issue.

At the same time, in his various speeches, Gandhi targeted Narendra Modi and the central government’s policies, thereby using the state polls to prepare the background for the 2019 General Elections too.

Another very visible — and seemingly successful — part of Gandhi’s politics this time was the emphasis on his ‘Hindu’ identity — from his temple visits to his much-publicised ‘Shiv bhakti’.

While political analysts call this ‘soft Hindutva’, Gandhi claims this is the Hinduism of ‘love and affection’, as opposed to the BJP’s version of Hindutva, which he alleges is divisive.

But ‘soft Hindutva’ too is open to the same criticism. The amount and degree may be less, or different, but Gandhi has to admit he is essentially doing what the BJP does — pandering to majority sentiments using religious identity.  

So far, Gandhi's run seems to be fairly good as far as electoral politics is concerned.  

But his main challenge — and his real test — will be if he is satisfied with being a successful and pragmatic politician, or if he can actually become the transformative leader he claims he aspires to be.  

Also read: 2019: From TINA (There Is No Alternative) to AOBM (Any One But Modi)