Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi’s speech in the budget session of Parliament is likely to set the tone for the BJP’s campaign in the upcoming general elections. He listed his government’s record in office, sounded confident of re-election, and even predicted the party’s tally (370) in the next Lok Sabha. However, the focus of his speech was the Congress, more than the Opposition or the INDIA bloc in general. The familiar tropes were invoked — Nehru, Indira Gandhi, dynasty, and Rahul Gandhi — as PM Modi accused the Congress of “cancel culture”, which he elaborated as the latter trying to cancel out all of his government’s, and by extension, India’s achievements.
Clearly, the PM wants to position the Congress as his party’s primary opponent, which is understandable since it is a national election and the Congress retains a pan-Indian presence even if is a pale shadow of the giant it used to be: Since 2014, the Congress tally in the Lok Sabha is in two digits, the bulk of it coming from southern India. There is no sign of this pattern changing anytime soon. Why would the PM then insist on firing at the Congress? Is it that the BJP needs an Other to distinguish itself as a party distinct from the outfits that crowd the political spectrum? It could even be that the compromised secularism of a diminished Congress continues to be the ideological Other to the BJP’s Hindutva nationalism. Anti-Congressism emerged as a distinct strand of Opposition politics in the 1960s; it culminated in the Janata Party post Emergency, in which the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), the precursor of the BJP, had merged under the persuasion of Jayaprakash Narayan. When the BJS re-emerged as the BJP in 1980, it imbibed anti-Congressism and emerged as its most vocal proponent. The Ayodhya movement saw the BJP embracing Hindutva: Party ideologue LK Advani would call the Congress pseudo-secular to discredit its ideological stance.
PM Modi wants to frame the 2024 elections as a BJP versus Congress battle, perhaps also to emphasise the TINA factor: If the Congress is a throwback to a past of underachievements, the BJP is the new kid on the block taking an aspiring India to greater heights. The onus is now on the Congress to pick up the gauntlet, a task many of its INDIA allies also want it to, even as they worry that it is not up to the challenge.
