It takes a certain audacity, one might say Vedic chutzpah, to redefine your opponent in your own image. When a government sends seven all-party delegations abroad to explain its anti-terror operations, you’d expect a display of muscular nationalism; perhaps a few generals, and a barrage of bullet-point briefings. It did dispatch ambassadors, but not diplomats; mostly curated politicians from across parties. The twist in the tail end? The BJP selected the best Congressmen the Congress didn’t want to send. Shashi Tharoor, Salman Khurshid, and Manish Tewari.
Tharoor, an ex-UN diplomat and global literary and society darling, has more air miles than Jaishankar. Khurshid, a seasoned lawyer and diplomat, once helmed India’s foreign ministry. Tewari, a national security wonk with a sharp legal mind, is among the few Congress MPs unafraid to speak truth to Il Familia. These men who have built reputations outside the echo chamber of the Gandhi goatshed will speak for India abroad.
Let’s call them the BJP’s Nehruvian Trinity.
They are everything the Congress once prided itself on: intellectual heft, international polish, public legitimacy. For this sin of self-authorship, they were benched by proxy party boss Mallikarjun Kharge. And handpicked by Narendra Modi. Philosophical irony, meet political theatre. While the BJP has spent a decade vandalising Nehru’s legacy, has it appropriated Nehruvian diplomacy now, decked out in Tharoorian wit and Khurshidian finesse? It’s Modi, not Rahul Gandhi who has sent India’s most convincing Congressmen to represent the nation abroad. Rahul, the Congress’s forever visitor-in-chief, is addicted to the global carousel of lecture circuits and expat selfies. Whether it’s Cambridge, Washington, or a quinoa café in Berlin, Rahul is abroad, always. Abroad in geography, abroad in thought, abroad from reality. His best contributions to global dialogue involve quoting Tolstoy in sweatshirts and soliloquies about love to bemused students. That, too, in a seminar room where half the attendees must’ve come for the wine.
Let’s not ignore the BJP’s own motley picks. Along with articulate spokespeople like Baijayant Panda and leaders like Daggubati Purandeswari, went the ideologue brigade: Nishikant Dubey, who once tried to oust Tharoor from the IT panel for asking real questions, and Tejasvi Surya, whose Twitter timeline reads like a recruitment manual for the culture war. But the real cherry on this diplomatic sundae? MJ Akbar, once star editor, Congress MP, and now Modi fanboy; a minister sacked in 2018 after more than a dozen women accused him of sexual misconduct during India’s #MeToo reckoning. Sending him is like the Vatican channelling Nero to explain celibacy. And yet, the most telling thing isn’t what India is saying abroad. It’s what Modi is saying at home by choosing his own version of the Congress: not the fawning courtiers of 24 Akbar Road, but the fiercely independent, mildly rebellious, internationally respected Congressmen who dare to be more than yes-men. It is the BJP, not the INC, that articulates a coherent Nehruvian worldview to foreign powers. Modi, who strips their party of power at home, then dispatches their best minds abroad. The BJP has not only absorbed India’s diplomatic voice—it has ghostwritten the Opposition’s biography.
As Congress stumbles between nostalgia and nihilism, the BJP is doing something remarkable: reshaping the Opposition while controlling the narrative. In the battle of global perception, the government is not just speaking for India—it’s speaking for the Congress too. And, with exquisite irony, doing a far better job of it. Who knew that in order to be the perfect Congressman, you had to be chosen by Narendra Modi?