RAHUL RECAST

The Congress scion's performance as Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha and outside it has won him new admirers, but the Opposition needs to do much more if it has to take the fight to the BJP

- KAUSHIK DEKA

IT was a monsoon-heavy July afternoon in Delhi, and the Lok Sabha was abuzz with anticipation. Members of Parliament, the seasoned and greenhorns alike, straightened in their seats in anticipation as Rahul Gandhi took the floor. His presence, once dismissed as inconsequential, now commanded the hall's full attention. In fact, his first speech in the 18th Lok Sabha drew interventions even from Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

If the first speech was about how religion teaches non-violence-and how the Modi government's 10-year-old reign has been promoting "hate politics"-in his second address, Rahul built his narrative around the Mahabharata, a tale as old as Indian civilisation itself. He spoke of Abhimanyu, the young warrior who was trapped and slain by a coalition of his enemies-men who bent the rules of war to ensure his defeat. The parallels he drew were debatable, but the newfound confidence in his tone was unmissable. Rahul likened Abhimanyu's plight to that of today's India, with the government of the day and its industrialist allies cast as the rule-bending warriors.

This was not the Rahul of old, the one who occasionally fumbled through speeches and shied away from confrontation. This was a man transformed. The rigours of two yatras across the length and breadth of India, the numerical strength of the Opposition alliance and the results of 2024 Lok Sabha election, which left the ruling BJP short of the majority mark, have added a new sense of purpose to Rahul's political journey. Often criticised for not having a coherent discourse, he has learned the art of storytelling, wielding it as deftly as any weapon in his new political arsenal.