Why 'colonial' Congress could lose battle of 2024

Congress and the Opposition's Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) bloc are in danger of losing the perception battle even before serious campaigning for the 2024 Lok Sabha election begins.Instead of drawing lessons from the drubbing Congress received in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, allies within the INDIA are taunting each other.The gau mutra slur by DNV Senthilkumar of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) directed against “northern” states is an affront to the DMK’s Bihar allies Janata Dal United [(JD(U)] and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). #WATCH | Winter Session of Parliament | DMK MP DNV Senthilkumar S says "...The people of this country should think that the power of this BJP is only winning elections mainly in the heartland states of Hindi, what we generally call the 'Gaumutra' states..." pic.twitter.com/i37gx9aXyI

— ANI (@ANI) December 5, 2023 Leaders from Tamil Nadu and Telangana have said their DNA is better than the DNA of leaders in states in the north. This juvenile rhetoric could tighten the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP's) grip on northern and western India, consolidating its hold on other backward castes (OBCs) and Dalits who deeply resent casteist taunts. "Telangana DNA is better than Bihari DNA" "KCR is Kurmi (OBC) of Bihar"

This is how Telangana's Congress CM elect Revanth Reddy is insulting Bihari Kurmi (OBC) DNA.

Nitish Kumar is Kurmi and has alliance with same Congress. Will @NitishKumar speak? pic.twitter.com/UT5JNIA3jP

— Ankur Singh (@iAnkurSingh) December 5, 2023 Congress has labelled Prime Minister Narendra Modi panauti (ill omen) and claimed that the recent state assembly election results are proof that the BJP can win elections only in northern India.Congress and its allies even got their maths wrong on the artificial north-south divide. In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, of the 129 parliamentary seats on offer in the five southern states, the BJP won 29 seats. Congress won 27.For Congress to use a manufactured north-south divide against the BJP is self-destructive besides being politically amoral. It creates an artificial cleavage between states based on religion, geography, culture or language.That was a nefarious tactic the colonial British employed to divide and rule India. Congress and its allies are doing themselves and the country a disservice by emulating an exploitative former colonial power.For the Congress, Gandhi family members are akin to colonial viceroys. Rahul Gandhi has the final word on all tactical decisions. Priyanka Gandhi is the royal arbiter, repairing ties with rebellious allies.When necessary, Sonia Gandhi, as the senior vice-regal, is called upon to quell dissent among party factions and whip allies into line. Sonia or Rahul Gandhi were Congress president since 1998 for a combined 24 years till Mallikarjun Kharge was elected president in 2022 in a phantom contest with Shashi Tharoor.The 2024 strategyThe four key members of the 28-party INDIA grouping are Congress, DMK, Trinamool Congress (TMC) and JDU. Between them they held 113 seats in the Lok Sabha as on December 12, 2023. The other 24 members of the alliance together held less than 25 seats.Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Akhilesh Yadav was right when he said Congress erred by not allocating seats to allies in three recent state assembly elections. So while Congress vote share remained steady, BJP vacuumed up votes that could have gone to allies had there been multi-cornered fights.The most significant example was Madhya Pradesh where BJP increased its vote share by eight per cent to 49%, leading to a landslide victory.What hurt the Congress in the Hindi heartland was the constant belittling of Sanatan Dharma. Congress has now boxed itself into a corner where its survival depends on minority votes. Without Muslim and Christian support, the Congress would not have won 15 out of its 52 Lok Sabha seats in 2019 in just one state: Kerala. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r=0;r Rahul Gandhi, anticipating defeat in Amethi, had to seek political insurance by contesting in a second seat in Kerala’s Wayanad where over 55% of the electorate is Muslim and Christian.Congress has meanwhile abandoned its soft Hindutva which paid it dividends in the 2017 Gujarat assembly election. Temple-hopping helped Congress cut BJP down to 99 seats, a slender majority of seven seats in the 182-seat Gujarat assembly.Defections, the entry of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and BJP’s quick change in state leadership turned the tide with the party winning a 156-seat landslide in the 2022 Gujarat assembly poll. Congress plunged from 77 seats in 2017 to 17 seats in 2022.Gujarat is a proto-Hindutva laboratory. The 2022 assembly election result should have been a wake-up call for Congress. Instead it continued to taunt BJP’s Hindutva while allies vilified Sanatan Dharma.In the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Congress had under-estimated BJP and dismissed Modi as a chaiwala (tea seller). It plunged to its lowest ever parliamentary tally of 44 seats. BJP won 282 seats.In the 2019 Lok Sabha poll, Congress accused Modi of corruption with the epithet “chowkidar chor hai”. BJP won 303 seats; Congress crawled to 52 seats.Error-prone CongressWhat mistakes is Congress likely to make in the four-month run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha poll?First, it will use Gautam Adani as a proxy to discredit Modi. It will rally around Mahua Moitra, citing her expulsion from the Lok Sabha as proof that the BJP is beholden to Adani. medium105957904The Adani group is a longtime donor to both BJP and Congress. So are other business houses: Ambanis, Birlas, Mittals, Jindal, Vedanta, Tatas. Targeting only one business group bespeaks vested interest. Like chaiwala and chowkidar chor hai (the watchman is thief), the obsession with Adani, who creates jobs and wealth for ordinary Indians, could backfire.During multiple recent television interviews, I was asked to rate the chances of BJP winning a third successive term in office in the 2024 Lok Sabha poll.I said the election was poised 80:20 in favour of BJP. But, I added, if the Opposition INDIA. allocated seats efficiently among themselves, the election could be closer. After the Opposition’s failure to agree to a unified seat sharing strategy in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, the odds for a BJP victory have risen, not fallen.A divide-and-rule policy does not work in democratic India as it once did in colonial India. That is a lesson India’s vice-regal clones need to learn.Read more from the author here