Political victimhood is a shortcut to entitlement on the road to victory. If amplified, it becomes an emotional magnet that binds the victim with those who matter. And the street matters. In the rhetoric of revolution, the martyr gets top billing as a champion of the masses who tilts at the windmills of injustice and misgovernance. In the countdown to the general elections, Rahul Gandhi and his party are playing the victim card with the chutzpah of gamblers betting on having aces up their sleeves. Their game is to target Narendra Modi by betting on a backlash: gather sympathy for their leader in his new avatar as India’s hirsute messiah en route to political redemption.
Last week, the Election Commission scrutinised Rahul’s speeches and sent him and his cohort notice seeking explanation for making derogatory and defamatory personal remarks against Modi. The BJP’s complaint to the EC read: “Calling any person... a jaibkatra (pickpocket) not only amounts to vicious abuse and personal attack but also a character assassination of that person against whom such remark has been made with a clear intent to harm his reputation and mislead the public.”
The Congress predictably called the EC’s move a conspiracy to tame and cripple Rahul’s newly acquired oratory and electoral skills. This is not for the first time Rahul has been asked to explain his remarks. He lost his Lok Sabha seat and government bungalow due to a defamatory remark he had made against Modi’s surname. He got back both through the court. Instead of deterring him, it emboldened him to attack the PM and his colleagues more ferociously. His advisors perhaps think playing the victim card and taking Modi head on would bring Rahul wider acceptability and enhanced visibility by pitting him as the only rival to Modi’s mesmerising mass magic.
Never in the history of political battles has the nation ever seen such bitter and long-lasting personal rivalry between two individuals. This egregious enmity has spread a sulphurous stain of abrasive abuse on the fabric of debate, whether in parliament or at poll campaigns. As the campaign for the five state elections concludes and a new, bigger pitch begins for the 2024 Lok Sabha race, the toxic tenor of attacks against leaders of the national parties has intensified. Strangely, regional parties by and large have restrained themselves by confining the battle to ideological narratives. But both national parties are blasting their enemies with personal attacks.
Rahul sees an electoral windfall in attacking Modi consistently at every platform. At a rally in Rajasthan he said: “Panauti, panauti, panauti (bad omen). Our boys were well on their way to winning the World Cup but panauti made them lose. The people of this country know.” He provoked the BJP again by adding, "The pickpocket never comes alone, there are always three people. One comes from the front, one from the back and one from the distance. Modi's job is to divert your attention. He comes on TV from the front and distracts the public by raising Hindu-Muslim, demonetisation and GST. Meanwhile, Adani comes from behind and takes the money.” At a previous gathering, he jeered at Modi’s development claims by saying, “Look at the tags on your mobiles, shirts and shoes, you will find ‘made in China’ written there. Have you ever seen ‘made in Madhya Pradesh’ written on your camera or shirt?” The PM was not one to take Rahul throwing shade lying down. Modi sneered, “Yesterday, a wise Congress person was saying that people of India had only made in China mobile phones. Arre, murkhon ke sardar (leader of idiots) in which world do you live? I am curious what kind of glasses he wears that he can’t see the progress made by India, which is the second largest producer of mobile phones in the world.”
This disastrous discourse is not confined to venomous verbal ventilation. The poster and meme wars were nastier. Last month, a Congress poster circulated on social media had the PM’s picture along with a caption ‘The biggest liar’. The next one had photos of Modi and Amit Shah with the caption ‘PM Narendra Modi and Jumla Boy (boy who makes false promises)’. The BJP resorted to Ramayana and released a poster depicting Rahul as the 10-headed Ravan and captioned it, “Ravan, a Congress party production, directed by George Soros. The new age Ravan is here. He is evil. Anti-dharma. Anti-Ram. His aim is to destroy Bharat.”The Congress quickly termed the personal attack a security threat to Rahul. K C Venugopal, a Gandhi loyalist and Congress general secretary, said: “Their nefarious intentions are clear, they want to murder him. He, who lost his grandmother and father to assassinations. They withdrew his SPG protection to score petty political points.”
For a party like the Congress, struggling to reclaim its lost political space, the excessive attention given by the ruling party to Rahul has come as a boon. Their leaders feel elated when the PM and his A-team unintentionally promote Rahul in their speeches by exaggerating the threat. They are concerned that Rahul, who was their best asset as a political parvenu, has turned the tables with his underdog trope. The Congress is so bolstered by Rahul’s public traction that it has started releasing social media posts to advertise his growing popularity as the wronged victim of a vindictive establishment. The party is certain it can project Rahul as a colossus on social media since TV channels aren’t giving him the desired airtime.
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Though Rahul has fewer followers on X and YouTube than Modi, the Congress is releasing posts smartly and selectively to keep Rahul in the limelight. For example, the party claimed more people had watched Rahul’s speech at the last session of parliament than the PM’s—3.5 lakh views against Modi’s 2.3 lakh on Sansad TV; on YouTube, Rahul's speech garnered 26 lakh views, while the PM’s scored 6.5 lakh.
Rahul suffered from a credibility deficit and leadership lag for almost a decade. The BJP’s political victories owe much to its portrayal of Rahul as a ‘Pappu’, thanks to his off-the-cuff remarks and unexplained disappearances at crucial moments. After 2019, he seems to have rediscovered himself. Over the past two decades, individuals have replaced issues in the Indian public space. After the success of Bharat Jodo Yatra, Rahul has chosen a confrontationist course against Modi to become the leader of the future, if not the present. In the library of political strategies, the thesaurus of vituperation is poisoning the vocabulary of victimhood and defiling democratic discourse.