Rahul Gandhi too is trying to be the Amitabh Bachchan of his party, in the sense of taking on multiple roles. Like Amitabh Bachchan in Coolie, Rahul too became one recently. The aam aadmi nonentitled leader who wants to project himself as one who is mingling with those who don’t usually get traction. Like the carpenters he met in Kirti Nagar or the gig workers during Karnataka polls in Bengaluru. Party observers feel this would negate the prince tag he has been given by the Bharatiya Janata Party. The BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi spare no chance to make Rahul Gandhi out to be a privileged dynast who is out of sync with real India. What Rahul Gandhi has tried to do is to project himself as the messiah of the downtrodden.
This is where his obsession with the caste census and OBC reservation begins. In fact, this is a do-or-die battle for 2024 for Rahul Gandhi. While he has age on his side, these elections are the litmus test for all that he has been fighting for. Bharat Jodo Yatra, mingling with different sections of people, interacting not with mainstream media but with YouTubers.
It’s also the time to show whether this attempt at image makeover has worked. So with this pitch for OBCs, Rahul Gandhi is trying to correct the blunder of the past. The BJP has shown Rajiv Gandhi’s statements where he opposed caste-based politics. In fact, Rahul Gandhi himself had opposed it. But at a press conference recently, Rahul Gandhi asked some seated journalists whether they knew their caste. He was making the point that if one never knows one’s caste, one can’t reap the benefits of reservation.
The issue is once again of image versus real politics. Rahul Gandhi’s image as a progressive, forward-looking youth leader takes a hit as he too has pulled out the caste card for the sake of extra votes. Rahul Gandhi and his party’s calculation is that about 40% of the OBC and SC/ST voters could swing the narrative in their favour. Rahul, sources say, spoke with his family and convinced Sonia Gandhi that this was the way to go.
In 2004, the Sonia-led party came to power on the back of the slogan “Congress ka haath aam aadmi ke saath“. The Congress was projected as a party that cared for the poor and downtrodden as opposed to the India Shining narrative of the BJP under Atal Bihari Vajpayee. It clicked. And the National Advisory Council was set up to push this narrative further. The Food Security Bill and MNREGA were part of this narrative.
Taking a leaf out of his mother’s book, Rahul Gandhi this time wants to play the same card: of the “aam aadmi ka crusader”. UPA was a quaint mix of the progressive economist Dr Manmohan Singh with the crusader and NGO-style politics of Sonia Gandhi. Rahul Gandhi would want to bring this role to the table in 2024.
The UPA, however, had a shelf life and had to grapple with this inherent contradiction. Will Rahul’s politics have to deal with this too? Won’t his image of a young game-changer who wants India to move beyond caste politics be dented? The BJP certainly will make this point.
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