In a move up a notch, the party has been hard on Gandhi, saying he’s out to make an anarchy of things and unseat Narendra Modi’s administration within 12 months. Party spokesperson Sambit Patra put it to them on Sunday, setting the stage for a contest between stability and chaos.
What set this off
Patra is basing his line of attack on some words he says Gandhi let slip at a Congress Minority Department advisory council on Tuesday. The Leader of the Opposition is said to have made it plain to his people that the Modi government’s days are numbered.
To drive it home, Patra put out a post on social media. In it, he made the case that Gandhi was not just being bold for show, but was laying out a plan to use anarchy to oust the government.
BJP’s charge: foreign influence and anarchy
Then there is the matter of outside interference. The BJP leader has it that Gandhi is running a foreign script. He even named George Soros as one of the overseas backers, and pointed to foreign firms he says put up the money for Gandhi’s trips abroad.
As Patra sees it, all of this is about chipping away at India’s democracy. He put it bluntly: Gandhi is trying to rattle the country with riots and anarchy to get the government to budge.
You can sum up the BJP’s position like this:
– Rahul has put a one-year mark on the government’s fall
– A plan for anarchy is in the works, per the BJP
– He is following the lead of foreign interests, Soros among them
– Overseas companies are footing the bill for his travel, they say
– It’s all to do some damage to Indian democracy
A call for constitutional order
Patra didn’t just level accusations; he made a pitch for some good old-fashioned civic pride. He has faith in the common sense and spiritual side of the Indian public, and he’s not sure if any amount of provocation can really stir them to violence.
He made a point of the rule of law and how the Constitution is what counts. “This is the government of 140 crore Indians,” he said, and no amount of meddling from abroad is going to change that.
For proof that you can’t rouse the public so easily, Patra looked at the way the polls in West Bengal and Assam went. Those results, he would have you believe, show that any attempt to work up the voters is a non-starter.
Governance in a time of global flux
With the world in a bit of a tangle from conflicts here and there, Patra has the PM and his government as the steady hand. It’s a way of putting the ruling party in the role of a caretaker, not a source of the trouble.
He left it at this: as long as the people are behind us, we will be in office. It’s a way of saying that staying in power is about the will of the people, not some passing political storm.
Why it’s in the news
Now the one-year timeline Gandhi is reported to have given has become a kind of litmus test. The BJP is making it out to be a plot for mayhem. And when it comes from the opposition, it puts a finer point on their tactics and talk.
It gives the BJP a chance to reiterate their story of a strong, resilient nation. For the voter, it’s a choice between two very different takes on where India is headed: one of order and the other of a do-over.
