Degrees of aggression in India’s Opposition

The stark reality is that sans the Congress, a non-BJP front is not viable. Numbers and chemistry are proof enough.
Image used for representational purpose only. (Express Illustrations)
Image used for representational purpose only. (Express Illustrations)

As the BJP plunged into a crash project to wrest 144 “difficult” Lok Sabha seats in the prelude to the 2024 Lok Sabha battle—with a clinical efficiency that is the hallmark of its functioning under Amit Shah, the home minister—to the extent of directing its senior ministers to prioritise organisational work over all else, the Opposition has not been inconspicuous. Inspired by his move to break ties with the BJP and return to the Mahagathbandhan(MGB), Nitish Kumar, the Janata Dal (United) leader and Bihar chief minister, is the fulcrum of the Opposition’s fresh exertions, backed by Telangana Rashtra Samithi president, K Chandrashekar Rao. Kumar’s recent visit to Delhi had a sense of déjà vu, a throwback to the past when coalitions were the order of the day to challenge either the Congress or the BJP. He met a gamut of regional chiefs, in or out of power, with a difference: he also called on Rahul Gandhi, a gesture that seemed out of odds with the no-no stand that some of his prospective friends adopted towards a headless Congress.

Kumar’s call-on might reflect a recognition of the stark reality that sans the Congress, a non-BJP front is not viable because arithmetic and chemistry militate against such a coalition coming into being independently. Numbers are not on its side, while individual temperaments and ambitions could abort its birth or shorten its tenure as it happened in the past. Having said that, the federal entities also know that some of them have to battle the Congress on their turf, unlike Kumar, for whom the party is an add-on to the MGB in Bihar. The face-off with Congress also arises from Congress’ proven unreliability as a partner. The history of Congress-backed coalition governments demonstrates that given its attitude and predilections, Congress refuses to shed the tag of a “Grand Old Party” and regards its allies as minions existing to solely foster its interests. A hint of dereliction and the Congress pulled the rug out from under a government’s feet.

Kumar is shy about proclaiming his national ambitions. Armed with a formal sanction from his party’s national council to strive for Opposition unity in “national interest”, he called on just about every non-BJP leader around in Delhi, including Sitaram Yechury of the CPI(M), Dipankar Bhattacharya, the CPI(ML) general secretary and a Bihar associate, Arvind Kejriwal, the Delhi chief minister, Akhilesh Yadav, the Samajwadi Party president, and O P Chautala, the Indian National Lok Dal leader. Kumar’s belief that the coalition will not be another front with a numerical prefix (Third Front, Fourth Front, etc.) but the “Main Front” was an admission of his perception that such endeavours have begun to look tired, unimaginative and not robust enough to challenge the BJP. Consider how the Samajwadi Party–Bahujan Samaj Party–Rashtriya Lok Dal triad that materialised in Uttar Pradesh before the 2019 elections with hype withered away by the time polling happened as a confident BJP more or less kept its 2014 numbers.

There’s a sense of déjà vu about Kumar’s enterprise, which is partly about knitting together the Samajwadi (Socialist) family. The Socialists, birthed by Ram Manohar Lohia, were a chip off the Congress block that fell out with Nehru. They were bound less by ideology and overwhelmed by their self-importance. The SP, Rashtriya Janata Dal, RLD, INLD and Janata Dal (Secular) and Kumar’s JD(U) are pieces of the Socialist mosaic that held together uneasily in the past but came apart as soon as they coalesced. Some walked away independently, while others partnered with the BJP and facilitated the saffron entity’s entry and rise in their territories on an “anti-Congress” plank. If the Socialists collaborated with Congress, it was out of expediency, a circumstance that infused discomfort in their equation. In this spectrum, Lalu Prasad, the RJD founder and leader, alone refused to make his peace with the BJP, however, extenuating the circumstances. His UP counterpart and senior Mulayam Singh Yadav was at times covertly in cahoots with the BJP to safeguard his interests.

Therefore, the relationship between the Socialists and the BJP and the Congress has a bearing on Opposition “unity”.

The BJP’s shadow dogs the efforts. The JD(U) cannot discard the long associations it had with the BJP, first propounded by the late George Fernandes and cemented later by Nitish. Indeed, recently, Kumar contrasted the “work” done by the Vajpayee government (in which he was an important minister) with the Modi dispensation and dubbed the latter as “publicity”—although Kumar wilfully walked out of the MGB on whose back he won the 2015 elections and then opted to go with Prime Minister Modi in 2017.

It was believed that the Centre’s perceived roughshod treatment of the non-BJP ruled states—primarily in the disbursement of funds, aid and statutory appointments that called for consensus—would revive the federal principle and re-group the states against the BJP. This hasn’t quite happened. If Chandrashekar Rao suddenly took up cudgels against Modi, he realised that the BJP was a more dire threat on the Telangana turf than the Congress and could potentially displace him in the next assembly polls. In neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy has struck a kind of equilibrium with the Centre as has Naveen Patnaik, the CM of Odisha, another contiguous state, which enables them to serve the rights and interests of their provinces while, ironically, thwarting the BJP’s emergence.

Uddhav Thackeray, the deposed Maharashtra CM who presently helms a small Shiv Sena faction, is preoccupied with staving off the BJP and his former party colleagues from thinking nationally. Mamata Banerjee, the Trinamool Congress Party leader and West Bengal CM, was poised to spearhead a countrywide anti-BJP grouping until the BJP cornered her ministers and functionaries in allegedly serious corruption charges which have grounded her in Kolkata.

In this medley, the Aam Aadmi Party is an outlier. Like the TMC, some of the ministers in the Delhi government were implicated in graft cases, but AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal refuses to stray from the path he has drawn for himself. That is challenging the BJP on its agenda. Kejriwal is clearly trying to be one up on the “development” storyline.

He’s clear he wants no truck with Congress. Where do the conflicting pulls and pressures leave Opposition “unity”?

Radhika Ramaseshan

Columnist and political commentator

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