Rahul must focus on the fight at home

IN his latest photo from Envigado, Colombia, Rahul Gandhi has exchanged his trademark white T-shirt for a navy blue shirt, puffer jacket and khaki cargo pants; he is standing in front of a Pulsar bike, made by Bajaj Auto. The comment on X reads, “Proud to see Bajaj, Hero & TVS do so well in Colombia. Shows Indian companies can win with innovation, not cronyism.”

But the Congress party’s most important leader must surely be aware that Rahul Bajaj, father of Bajaj Auto’s managing director Rajiv Bajaj — back in the licence-raj, pre-liberalisation days, when it was important to know the right people in order to cut through the awful red tape – was the last word in protectionism and fought long and hard against the idea of economic reform. The Bombay Club, of which Bajaj Sr was a card-carrying member, emphasised social and political connections over radical reform, an old-world cronyism over cut-throat ambition, but cronyism nevertheless.

Rahul’s social media comment is also notice that he is travelling across the first of four South American countries, including Colombia and Brazil — the Congress party hasn’t told us which others. On Thursday, he visited the EIA university in Envigado, where he talked about the BJP’s “wholesale attack on the democratic system in India.”

The remark has triggered a lot of criticism on why the Congress leader attacks the ruling party from foreign shores so often, which in turn has led to the following questions : Should criticism about domestic politics be restricted to domestic locations? Is Rahul Gandhi being wholly unfair by taking the fight within to nations abroad? And a third, somewhat unrelated question is, why is Rahul Gandhi in South America anyway — as well as in Malaysia a few months ago, in Boston in April, in Vietnam twice earlier in the year?

This article is not about the 247 foreign trips Rahul has allegedly made since 2014, as the BJP would like to tell us, dismissively — certainly, the Congressman has the right to expand his mind, tour new horizons as well as influence new audiences.

It is time, however, to confront the problem that has been uncoiling at the heart of India’s democracy for some years — which is the growing fracture between the ruling BJP and India’s most important Opposition party. The tension has been aggravated by the fact that the Congress has lost most elections in the decade since Narendra Modi came to power. But because it still remains the nation’s most important Opposition party — ruling parties in opposition to the BJP in the states, whether DMK, TMC, AAP or Left Front, simply don’t add up — it has been the target of dedicated and vicious attacks by the BJP. Even statesmen like Jawaharlal Nehru, who put the country on the path of a modern, secular republic are fair game.

Rahul Gandhi is even easier game because he is the most powerful man in the party, but refuses to sit on the leader’s chair of nails or wear its crown of thorns. He comes across as a man who seeks power without the responsibility that accompanies it. A man with a golden heart whose personal life tragedies have made even the gods weep — but one who refuses to step aside in favour of a better man (god, forbid), because he believes that as the Leader of the Opposition, or even without that post, he holds the centre. That if the centre doesn’t hold, things will fall apart.

And this is the fracture at the heart of Indian democracy today : Rahul Gandhi is that democrat who continues to pave the way that keeps Narendra Modi in power. The BJP does the rest.

Perhaps that’s a really harsh judgement. But the fact is that the country, transforming every day, demands an alternative to Rahul’s carping, especially when he’s abroad. In London, in 2022, he said India’s voice has been crushed; in Cambridge in March 2023, he said the BJP is carrying out an attack on the basic structure of Indian democracy; that Europe and the US must intervene and expose the reality of Modi and the BJP; in Washington DC in September 2024, he said the Congress will think of scrapping reservations only when things are more fair in India; in Boston in April this year, he said the Election Commission (EC) is compromised.

Question is, why take the fight to another country when the fight against Modi and the BJP is here? Rahul must know that American journalists, notably Vincent Sheean who left us many a record, came to India to watch how Mahatma Gandhi sharpened the instrument of non-violence, satyagraha, against the mighty British Raj.

So when Rahul focuses on the fight at home, it works much better. Last month in Karnataka, he showcased the irregular deletion of more than 6,000 votes from one constituency, Aland — the investigation made everyone sit up. Over the last few months, the Congress and other political parties as well as a vigilant civil society have forced the Supreme Court to take the EC to task over the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in Bihar. The EC has been forced to comply.

The moral of the story is that time is running out for Rahul Gandhi. If he wants the united Opposition to beat the BJP at its own game, he must stop being a part-time politician. He must stay every week in India and fight the good fight.

If Rahul believes he is somehow special, marked by both genetics and politics to lead both party and country — he must prepare, every day, to sharpen the cut and thrust of his argument both inside and outside Parliament. He must learn from the driving ambition that consumes the BJP — and from the mistakes of his own party. In the Haryana polls last year, for example, he gave in to the local Congress refusal to ally with AAP, although he was in favour of the alliance; but he was abroad, and he couldn’t push his will through. The rest is history. The Congress has never quite recovered.

We have just celebrated Dasehra. Diwali beckons. So does the battle for Bihar. Why go to South America at a time like this?