Handcrafting A Resurgence

Rahul Gandhi Remains The Congress’s Best Bet To Resuscitate Itself. But It Would Take More Than A Decisive Leader To Tackle The Sundry Challenges Facing The Party.

- Pratul Sharma

In October 2017, two months before he became Congress president, Rahul Gandhi told a gathering in Gujarat that the loss in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections was the best thing to have happened to him. “The BJP thrashed and abused me so much that it opened my eyes,” he said, in a rather self-reflective tone.

The lesson he learnt from that rout stayed with him, and he would repeat it in his subsequent interactions. He projected himself as an antithesis to Narendra Modi, and his campaigns in the assembly elections in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh put the Congress back on track.

But Modi used Gandhi’s antithesis-driven strategy to his own advantage in the Lok Sabha elections this year. An astute politician, he wove a narrative of naamdaar versus kaamdaar (dynast vs worker), which won overwhelming support from the electorate. The Congress’s defeat this time has been harsher for Rahul, who had led the party from the front. He took “100 per cent responsibility” for the poor show, which saw the party winning just 52 seats. Rahul said he would step down as Congress president, but the announcement only deepened the crisis in the party.

A month after the results, THE WEEK spoke to party leaders who are yet to come to terms with the rout. “I feel we really don’t know what is happening in politics,” said former external affairs minister Salman Khurshid. “This defeat is so undeserved. What did we do to entail such a terrible defeat?”