Views From India: Rahul as street fighter, chance to silence ‘Pappu’ jibe?
India's main opposition Congress party seems to have shaken off the stupor of a disastrous performance in Lok Sabha elections in May last year and a debilitating internal feud as Rahul Gandhi and his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra hit the streets on October 2, to protest against the brutal assault and alleged rape of a Dalit teenager by upper-caste men in Uttar Pradesh and her cremation in the dead of night. From October 3, Rahul was also set to travel to Punjab and adjacent Haryana states, considered granaries of India, to join the farmers' agitation against the farm laws of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government.
It was not the first time Rahul hit the streets since the Covid-19 lockdown was imposed in March. He had done so when he met distraught migrant labourers on the streets of Delhi on their way back home after being rendered jobless in different states in the wake of the lockdown. But that was a cameo appearance. The one on October 2 was a full-fledged political drama as Rahul scuffled with policemen and tumbled on the ground in sweltering heat in Uttar Pradesh's Greater Noida on his way to meet the family of the Dalit woman, whose cremation in the dead of night without her family's presence has triggered a nationwide outcry.
Rahul and Priyanka were prevented from going to the village of the Dalit woman in Hathras when their cavalcade was stopped en route after which the siblings had begun to walk. There was no illusion that they would not be allowed to reach the village not only because the village was still 142 km from the place where they had to get off their vehicles, but also because Uttar Pradesh authorities had clamped prohibitory orders there.
Video footages of Rahul walking with party workers, falling during a skirmish with the police personnel, and he and Priyanka being taken away in a police vehicle conjured up the image of agitation-savvy opposition leaders who are no longer willing to be held back by Covid-19 and content with issuing statements, online interaction and tweets. Nothing could possibly be a more reassuring signal for the Congress party and other opposition parties that wanted Rahul to take the lead in the fight against the organisational might of the Bharatiya Janata Party. It has been a matter of unstated unhappiness in the opposition camp that ever since the Lok Sabha poll defeat, the Congress, particularly Rahul and Priyanka, have not been visible much on the ground.
There appears to be three main objectives of Rahul's role as a street fighter. In the short term, the Congress sources hope, it would dent the prospects of the BJP and its allies in assembly elections in Bihar in October-November. In the longer run, it prepares the groundwork for the Congress for the fresh assembly polls in BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh due in 2022, seeking to recover the lost ground in India's electorally most crucial state. The Congress has over the years been marginalised not only by the BJP but also by caste-based regional parties like Bahujan Samaj Party and Samajwadi Party in UP.
The Congress is hoping that the UP government's handling of the Hathras woman's death would resonate among Dalits in the state as Dalits are a key component of the electorate in the state. There is already anxiety in the BJP, particularly its backward caste and Dalit lawmakers in the state, over the fallouts of the Hathras incident which is one more occasion when the BJP government in UP has come under fire over the law and order situation. Most importantly, Rahul in street combat mode could signal the start of a build-up towards his taking over as Congress President possibly early next year.
It is too early to say if the Congress has found its political groove in Rahul taking to street agitations. In the past, he had been accused by critics of not being consistent in this form of politics, by going into fairly long hibernation at times during the most crucial phases in and outside parliament. This time around, Rahul was apparently under pressure following his skipping the entire Covid-19-curtailed monsoon session of parliament recently for a different reason altogether: he had to accompany his mother and the Congress' interim President Sonia Gandhi to the United States for her medical check-up.
The Dalit woman's assault and the unrest among farmers over the farm law reform have come to Rahul on a platter when he returned to India. They provide him with a chance to silence the "Pappu" (a novice) jibe against him. Will he be able to seize it?
Rahul's street politics in Uttar Pradesh or in Punjab and Haryana cannot be just one- or two-off events. They need to be sustained over a long period to enable the party to mount a meaningful challenge to the BJP. There lies the real challenge for the Congress: to pick up the issues that have a direct connection with key segments of the electorate and keep up the momentum.
The ongoing farmers' agitation and the groundswell of protests against the Hathras incident relate to very important components of the society—farmers and women. A farmer-friendly image was one of the main reasons for the Congress' success in successive general elections in 2004 and 2009. The agrarian crisis and the attack on the BJP on this issue was a key reason for the Congress' victory in three heartland states Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh in November 2018, and saw the party putting up an impressive show in the assembly polls in Gujarat where the BJP's supremacy continues for the last two decades. Rahul is trying to tap into the discontent and misgiving among the farmers over the farm sector reform laws, passed recently by parliament.
Another party to take up the Hathras incident in right earnest, besides the Congress, is the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress. A day after Rahul and Priyanka made an attempt to march to Hathras, a delegation of Trinamool Congress leaders tried an encore and similar scuffles between the party's leaders and the police were on display. As part of the same strategy, Mamata has been stepping up her attacks on the BJP over the Hathras incident as well as the farmers' protest with the objective of pinning down the saffron party in the run-up to the assembly elections in West Bengal due early next year. When it comes to street politics, very few can beat Mamata, pandemic or no pandemic.
Pallab Bhattacharya is a special correspondent of The Daily Star. He writes from New Delhi, India.