Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr | Is it Rahul vs Shah now, and not Rahul vs Modi?

Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s ‘padyatra’ in Karnal, Haryana, on Thursday (November 5), which was an undeclared protest march with the slogan “Loktantra Bachao, Arajkta Hatao (Save Democracy, Remove Anarchy)” is a curious development.

Addressing a public meeting before the ‘padyatra’, Mr Shah responded to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s call to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to debate with him on the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) issue. He said that there was no need for Prime Minister Modi to enter the debate, that he will debate Mr Gandhi in a special session of Parliament.

There are interesting aspects to the Shah response. First, the ‘padyatra’ of the ruling party which is supposed to be a riposte to the protests over SIR. The semantic nuance differentiating a ‘padyatra’ from a ‘political protest’ is worth noting. Secondly, Mr Shah seems to have forgotten that there was a debate over SIR in the Lok Sabha last December, in which Mr Shah and Mr Gandhi clashed. Things have moved much beyond the justification of SIR. In the post-Indian Express phase, SIR is about irregularities, constitutional and legal, apart from democratic, in the manner SIR was carried out.

Mr Shah has stuck to his earlier argument that SIR was to detect the infiltrators, while the burning question that has emerged is the disenfranchisement of eligible voters, through bureaucratic bungling or oversight. And the Election Commission is doing what it can to correct some of its acts of omission and commission, which is an admission that the SIR programme did not work out properly.

The more interesting part of Mr Shah’s ‘padyatra’ and verbal rebuttal is that Mr Shah is now standing in for Mr Modi. While Mr Gandhi’s challenge for a debate is addressed to Mr Modi, Mr Shah has stepped in as a sort of a second in the purported duel. It should not come as a surprise because it is a known fact that since 2014, Mr Shah has been Mr Modi’s Man Friday. In a larger context, it can be seen that Mr Shah is placing himself as Mr Modi’s legatee, his potential political successor in the party. There is lively speculation about ‘Who After Modi’ that is doing its round among the commentariat. This is the first time however that Mr Shah has accepted a challenge on behalf of Mr Modi. Mr Modi, on his part has been attacking the Opposition, the INDIA bloc, the Congress in a manner of speaking, and avoiding singling out Mr Gandhi in the process.

What this indicates is that in the eyes of Bharatiya Janata Party’s power duo, Mr Gandhi is no more a pushover. The time, especially between 2014 and 2023 when the BJP leaders could laugh him off as ‘Pappu’, are over. They are forced to reckon with Mr Gandhi as the undeclared leader of INDIA bloc and of the Congress. The 2029 showdown is two years a way — which is like a aeon in electoral terms — but it is clear that it will be Rahul Gandhi versus the BJP, and whoever is going to lead the BJP in the next Lok Sabha election. Mr Modi has recently declared that he would continue to serve the country till his last breath, which implies that he will continue to be the Prime Minister for a long time to come. Mr Shah has said in one his recent remarks that Mr Modi will lead the party in the 2029 election. Meanwhile, Mr Shah is placing himself as one who will jump into the far to respond to Mr Gandhi as and when the occasion demands.

The anti-Neet protests which resulted in the resignation of Mr Devendra Pradhan as education minister in July, and the anti-SIR protests that followed, have shown to the BJP leaders, especially Mr Modi and Mr Shah, that the party is not invincible in terms of its public image. There are cracks in the triumphal march of the Hindutva party. There is, of course, the sweet irony that the BJP cannot declare its Hindutva agenda because it wants to be seen as a non-sectarian national party — a space that the Congress had occupied for more than a century now of its existence — but it is forced to resort to the Hindutva agenda as the default mode to win elections. This is, of course, the BJP’s existential dilemma which it cannot afford to transcend.

What seems to be clear is that we will be hearing Mr Shah’s voice more in the place of Mr Modi’s, and every time Mr Gandhi hits out — trenchantly, verging on bluntness — at Mr Modi, we will hear Mr Shah’s voice in response. In 2019, Mr Modi took on Mr Gandhi directly, and the media had portrayed the clash as that of a seasoned Modi against a greenhorn Rahul, and the media predetermined the outcome in favour of Mr Modi. But there has been an inflection point after Mr Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra in 2023 and the Lok Sabha election of 2024. The pro-establishment media, which translates into pro-BJP media, has not acknowledged the rebuff BJP received in that election, and the media still does not count the rise in Mr Gandhi’s stature as the veritable Opposition leader, something that Mamata Banerjee, Akhilesh Yadav, and the Left parties have conceded. Mr Arvind Kejriwal is still holding out, and may prefer to continue on the margins of INDIA bloc, unable to decide as to where he would want to place his party with regard to the BJP.

Mr Gandhi has emerged as the clear Opposition leader, and he answers the media’s query who is the face of the Opposition. The BJP, for its part, has moved into the transition mode. Mr Modi is no more the emphatic face of the BJP that he was in the 2014 and in 2019 elections. The transition has begun, though the succession issue remains to be resolved. Until then, Mr Modi remains the care-taker leader. And in this period, Mr Shah will be the face and voice of the BJP.

Mr Gandhi cannot any more confine his criticism of the BJP to Mr Modi, and he seems to recognise the fact. He has now included Mr Shah, along with Mr Modi, as targets of his criticism. The Congress party has been waiting for this moment, when a member of the Nehru-Gandhi family is in the lead, and he stands tall in the political ranks. In 2014, Mr Modi had stood tall among then Opposition ranks. Times have indeed changed. 2014 is not 2026.