Rahul Gandhi to allies in INDIA bloc: Can you win an unfair election?

Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi began his speech to INDIA bloc allies by recalling a conversation with a “friend”. Without revealing the person's identity or explaining what had happened, Rahul Gandhi said he had told the friend that what he was doing was unfair. The friend replied, “It is an unfair world; get used to it.” Rahul Gandhi then suggested that many allies in the INDIA bloc had yet to come to terms with that reality.

Invoking the Shaiva tradition, Rahul Gandhi said he had learnt to take criticism and humiliation directed at him and the Congress in his stride. Stressing that he was not interested in fighting friends and allies, he said the Congress understood its responsibility to keep the INDIA bloc united and its partners together. Drawing a parallel with Lord Shiva consuming poison, Gandhi said the Congress was willing to "swallow poison" — accepting criticism, attacks and humiliation from allies if that helped preserve opposition unity.

The allies, however, appeared to suffer from the ‘confusion’ that the old rules still applied, that they can fight the BJP on a level playing field, which has been taken away.

The challenge before the Opposition, therefore, was not how to win the next election. In a fair election the BJP would lose anyway because of the pent-up anger among the people. The challenge, however, was how to resist an unfair election. Friends in the Trinamool Congress, he recalled, were confident that the party was sweeping the assembly election held last month. He recalled telling them that they were living in a ‘dream land’. Even now, he said, Mamata Ji and Uddhav Tackeray Ji are only 40 per cent certain that elections were stolen from them; Tejashwi Yadav too is 90 per cent sure that the election was manipulated in Bihar.

It was time to shed all doubts, the Congress leader said. Elections are being stolen 100 per cent by the BJP. He had seen it in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Haryana and in other states. The allies however still seem to be doubtful. This confusion must end, he said, adding, “You will not have a fair election”. Old political tools will no longer work. He warns allies that normal electoral politics, caste arithmetic, state-level strategies and traditional political instruments worked only when institutions were neutral. The neutrality no longer exists.

BJP, he went on to suggest, wants to project the opposition as weak He says the narrative that INDIA bloc is divided, depressed or uncoordinated is a BJP-created story, amplified by the media and the alliance

must stop internalising it. Nitish Kumar, he asserted, did not leave the INDIA bloc because of him or the Congress. As for the DMK, he could vouch for the regional party; that when it comes to safeguard national interest, everyone from the DMK would be in the same room.

His terse response to the letter addressed to the Congress President, and released to the public by CPM, was that he would not hug the former Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan because he had an ongoing political fight with him. The comment received wider publicity and evoked a sharp reaction from CPM and Vijayan himself. Rahul Gandhi had hugged Narendra Modi in parliament and was free to hug whoever he liked, said Vijayan; but his approach was weakening opposition unity.

Both CPM and Vijayan appear to be riled at Rahul Gandhi’s statement during campaigning that the CPM in Kerala was acting like the B team of the BJP. Referring to the ongoing investigation by the ED against Vijayan and the now-defunct firm of his daughter, the Congress leader had asked in rallies why the ED appeared to be so lenient with Vijayan while arresting other opposition leaders on mere suspicion.

Ironically, Vijayan himself was no less harsh during the campaign. “Rahul Gandhi is a national leader, yet he lacks the basic awareness of even a common local worker of Congress in Kerala; he simply refuses to learn from experience or mistakes. It is hard to understand how such a downfall is happening to him. Rahul Gandhi

and his Congress are the ‘B-team’ of the BJP in the country, and yet its stance is being adopted across India,” he had said. So, the jury is still out on who between the two have done greater damage to opposition unity.

To return to the speech, Opposition unity, the Congress leader said, did not mean fake harmony Allies would have local fights and contradictions, but on defending the idea of India, everyone will come together. ‘Unity does not require pretending there are no differences’.

With the BJP and the RSS controlling the bureaucracy, the legal system, the intelligence agencies, and even the Election Commission, how will the Opposition function? Social media is not fair either, he said pointing out that opposition leaders’ accounts are suppressed and BJP's online dominance is not organic. The entire digital architecture, according to him, is tilted to protect the ruling government.

Resistance against injustice and an unfair system is what the Opposition ought to work on, he suggested. Resistance does not need bureaucracy, media, agencies or political architecture, or neutrality of the state. It needs courage and moral clarity. Resistance must become a daily political practice, citing the CBSE evaluation fiasco, NEET leaks, the Great Nicobar heist and the simplicity of the Bharat Jodo Yatra. Resistance is bigger than politics and bigger than elections, he suggested, ending by framing struggle as a spiritual and moral duty, not an electoral project.