No more a Pappu: How Rahul Gandhi made most of an impossible situation

In his speech, Gandhi got under the skin of BJP MPs by attacking Amit Shah and PM Modi, turned self-deprecating when he said he didn't mind people calling him 'Pappu', and went on to Modi

On the eve of the no-confidence motion, Congress strategists understood well they had none in their ranks who could match up to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s communication skills. The Congress, therefore, went about planning an ambush – to rile Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members and make them come across as hysterical and full of hate, and then go about showing the difference between the Sangh’s divisive ideology versus the Congress party’s ‘all embracing’ ideology.

In his speech, Congress President Rahul Gandhi checked all these boxes. He got under the skin of BJP MPs by attacking their party chief Amit Shah, brought up the Rafale fighter jet deal to attack the PM, turned self-deprecating when he said he didn’t mind people calling him ‘Pappu’, but then did the unimaginable when he crossed the well of the Lok Sabha to literally embrace Modi.

It is likely that the PM’s reply might eclipse the speech of the Congress president, but Modi would now be under tremendous pressure to do one better than Gandhi to wrest the initiative. Unless Modi says or does something stark, the next few days of social media narrative would belong to the speech of the Congress party chief and the hug he gave Modi.

It isn’t a first for Gandhi to have succeeded in riling the BJP, but those occasions have been few and far between. In the past four years, Gandhi has left the BJP seething on a couple of occasions. His ‘suit boot ki sarkar’ remark gutted the Modi government’s land Bill in 2015, while his description of GST as ‘Gabbar Singh Tax’ forced the government to announce a slew of tax cuts in the run-up to the Gujarat assembly polls in December 2017.

The Congress chief has been a Lok Sabha member since 2004, but this was the first time in his 14-year-long membership of the House that something he said made the Speaker adjourn the House. The adjournment was a brief one, but underlined that the BJP is wary of Gandhi after the Gujarat Assembly polls.

The Congress president began his speech by terming Modi’s promises as ‘jumla (slogan) strikes’ – the promises of Rs 1.5 million in each bank account, 20 million jobs each year and doubling of farm incomes. Gandhi repeatedly brought up Modi’s purported camaraderie with a handful of big industrialists. His sharpest attack was reserved for the Rafale fighter jet deal, and he accused the PM and Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman of telling “untruths” to India about the deal, and how it benefitted an industrialist who had never built an airplane in his life.

But his parting shot was the most interesting. Gandhi said the PM and the BJP chief were unlike any other political leader, including those sitting in the Lok Sabha. He said most politicians were okay with losing power, but for reasons known to all, the PM and the BJP chief could not afford to lose power and that was why their politics stemmed from fear, which generated anger. Gandhi said the Congress party, the rest of the Opposition and even some in the BJP would ensure the defeat of Modi and Shah.

Gandhi said he was thankful to the BJP and RSS that they had taught him the meaning of being a Congressman, a Hindu and a devotee of Shiva. To the BJP, the Congress chief said they probably hated him, and he might be a ‘pappu’ to them, but he would extract love from their hearts and convert them to the Congress ideology.

That looks a tall order, but Gandhi did what Modi frequently talks about. The Congress chief thought out of the box, and ambushed Modi.