Links: What does Rahul Gandhi's disqualification mean for 2024 and beyond?
'Bottom-up tyranny'?
Few expect India’s General Elections, due in 2024, to be competitive.
I don’t mean there aren’t likely to be tight races. To borrow a phrase from football, we can expect interesting battles all over the pitch – from the Bharatiya Janata Party’s efforts to expand in the South to the effects of the ‘caste census’ demand on politics in the ‘Hindi heartland’ to the fallout of the ‘coup’ in Maharashtra to pick just a few, and those are just the ones that involve the ruling party. a
But the broader sense as it currently stands is that the BJP should be handily re-elected next year, giving Prime Minister Narendra Modi a third consecutive term in power.
That is vital context to the events of last month, when Rahul Gandhi – the face of the Congress party, and as a consequence, the most prominent Opposition leader – was disqualified from Parliament and barred from contesting elections for a period of eight years.
More specifically, it may tell us a little bit about why not everyone is seeing this development, which sounds like it comes right out of the despot playbook, as an inflection point in Indian politics.
Background: Gandhi was convicted of criminal defamation for saying, in 2019, “Why do all the thieves, be it Nirav Modi, Lalit Modi or Narendra Modi, have Modi in their names?” Nirav Modi is a jewellery designer and diamond merchant accused in a major bank fraud case, while Lalit Modi was a major player in Indian cricket administration and business circles before he too was accused of financial irregularities. They are unrelated to each other and the prime minister.
The complaint was filed by another BJP politician named Purnesh Modi, who claimed that Gandhi’s remark amounted to criminal defamation of everyone who shared the last name. The local court in its judgment agreed, though legal experts believe that the case is unlikely to stand up to appeals at higher levels. Gandhi was then given a two-year jail sentence – a rarely awarded maximum penalty, that just so happened to be the exact punisment that would attract disqualification from Parliament under existing rules. This disqualification was then processed in record time. Gandhi has since been granted bail, with his sentence suspended as he appeals the matter.
There have certainly been protests as well as efforts from other Opposition groups to project unity in the face of growing authoritarianism from the ruling BJP. Yet it is not being read as the kind of singular moment that brings clarity and momentum to those seeking to take on the BJP.
Some of that has to do with Gandhi himself. Far from being a fresh face, Gandhi is a known commodity – the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family, unsuccessful contender against Modi in 2014 and 2019 – and a politician whose inability to project authority even within his own faction-ridden party, never mind drawing in allies, has often been at odds with the image that the Congress seeks to depict, of a natural leader of the Indian people.
Last year’s Bharat Jodo Yatra, wherein Rahul Gandhi walked 3,500-km across 12 states in order to spread a message of peace and unity as an effort to contrast it with the BJP’s frequently communal and divisive rhetoric, went some way towards altering his reptuation as little more than a political ‘nepo baby’. But while it helped Gandhi’s image, it also wasn’t a big enough success to help him resolve internal inconsistencies within the Congress, convince other parties to hitch their wagons or even confirm that the ‘love vs hate’ narrative would sufficiently strike a chord among the public in the run-up to the 2024 elections.
As Rasheed Kidwai writes, “in the days after the verdict against Rahul and his subsequent disqualification, Congress protests in various parts of the country have been patchy and perfunctory, even failing to get the local media’s attention… The big question is whether Rahul would be able to rope in civil society groups in his latest make-or-break survival campaign. The possibility of drafting student unions, trade unions and lawyers’ bodies is even more daunting.”
Some of it has to do with the court case itself – and how to read its significance. Was this a case of the BJP plotting to use a flimsy complaint to ‘neutralise’ Gandhi and divert attention from the questions he was raising about Modi’s proximity to the Adani Group, as Congress leaders have alleged? Or was this a case of overzealous local officials out to impress the leaders in Delhi, even if the actual actions could backfire politically?
Either implication would be bad for Indian democracy, and the answer may not neatly fall into one or the other category – i.e. the case itself may have involved ambitious local players, but the hasty disqualification from Parliament also indicates subsequent tacit approval from the top (though others have argued that there was no discretion on this count). Yet the lack of certainty meant many were unsure how to understand and respond to this undoubtedly major development.
Moreover, the BJP subsequently pushed the line that the conviction was a genuine punishment for Gandhi insulting an Other Backward Class community. We wrote a few weeks ago about how some elements of OBC politics are likely to be a big part of the Opposition’s platform in the run-up to elections in 2024. The BJP’s attempt to spin Gandhi’s conviction as ‘justice for his attack on OBCs’ indicated how it wanted this development to be perceived. Whether the Indian public buys this line, rather than seeing it as political targeting by the ruling party, remains unclear.
Finally, some of it has to do with the BJP’s gradual tightening of the electoral space in ways that make each fresh event seem like business-as-usual relative to the last, though the same move might have been seen as much more alarming a few years ago. The Gandhi disqualification coming soon after the arrest of Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia is case in point: The BJP’s alleged abuse of investigative agencies to kneecap Opposition leaders is so routine now that it seems to barely register among the wider public, though the judicial action against Gandhi may cause more to sit up and take notice.
Each of these elements, when combined with the general sense that the BJP and Modi remain highly popular and that their brand of majoritarian nationalism will be hard to dislodge, has meant that a development that might have once galvanised a bigger response and sparked off major mobilisation has instead been received with a fair degree of fatalism.
This doesn’t mean the Gandhi conviction and disqualification amounts to nothing. Efforts to use this move to rally the Congress base, for starters, and eventually the rest of the Opposition and the masses may yet gain momentum. Indeed, as we will see below in the links, a number of commentators believe this move was a misstep from the BJP and could work to Gandhi’s benefit. But for the moment, its main effect is to add to the long list of developments that form part of the story’s of India democratic backsliding over the last few years.
Below, I’ve collected a few links – not all that I agree with necessarily – on the implications of Gandhi’s disqualification:
What this means for India’s democracy:
“Institutionally and psychologically, we are already inhabiting a tyranny, even if its violence is not in your face. A regime that is paranoid and full of impunity will overreach. But what is the threshold of overreach? The threshold seems to be shifting higher and higher. Communalism was unleashed. No reaction. The information order collapsed. No reaction. The judicial heart stopped beating. No reaction. The Opposition is being vanquished by unfair means. No reaction. Such is the logic of tyranny that the ogres of oppression roam free, while we look on indifferently as justice and freedom are tied in chains.”
“Bad as it was, Delhi’s ire is no longer confined to dissenting artists, intellectuals, writers, minorities and civil society organisations. Now, the leaders of the Opposition are also in the line of fire… The barely concealed aim of this thrust is to weaken non-BJP parties — by jailing their popular leaders, or by creating a climate of fear. As a result, the 2024 elections may not be free. In control of state power in Delhi and having immeasurable resources, an all-powerful BJP may face emaciated Opposition parties, radically diminishing electoral contestation. Such diminution will undermine the electoral democracy claim.”
“What makes a political regime democratic is not merely how elections are fought and power wrested. It is also the extent to which it adheres or not to democratic norms while in power. When the tools of democracy and the law are used to gain political advantage, it constitutes an abuse of power.”
“The defamation case against Rahul Gandhi then goes to the heart of Indian democracy. It gives the room temperature of the world’s largest democracy, for sure. It also tells us once more the true state of rule of law…”
“Vishwaguru democracy loudly declares that India leads the world in democratic ideals. What it does not declare quite as loudly is that it does not encourage questioning of its claims – or any questioning at all. In sum, India’s vishwaguru variant of democracy is exquisite irony, quite the opposite of what it claims to be: it teaches the world not how democratic norms can be strengthened but insidiously dismantled, with popular support.”
Was it top-down or bottom-up?
“Democracy in India wasn’t assassinated by Modi, as the pundits are claiming. India’s situation is more a slow growing cancer that is infecting everything. India’s illiberal laws, a biased judicial decision and the Indian Supreme Court’s flawed guidelines on legislative disqualification, created a situation ripe for political opportunism.”
“In other words, no council of BJP elders appears to have met in New Delhi last week and decided Gandhi had become so great of a threat that he needed to be driven out of Parliament. Rather, what this sequence of events illuminates is how unchecked populism can hollow out and undermine the structures of liberal democracy, from courts to legislatures…
For the BJP’s central leadership, up to and including the prime minister, this is a source of danger. What might be called bottom-up illiberalism makes India look like a Hungary- or Russia-style banana republic rather than the “mother of democracies” it claims to be, complicating Modi’s relations with Western leaders he has carefully tried to cultivate over the last decade.”
“The more plausible explanation, however, is that the decision to remove Rahul Gandhi was made not on Modi’s command but in order to impress Modi. This is not as sensational as a strongman dispatching his rivals. It is even worse. It suggests irreparable institutional decay—a system in which officials are tripping over themselves to propitiate the strongman by decapitating his critics.”
Why this is legally problematic:
“The “class of all persons in the world bearing the surname Modi” is a similarly indefinite and indeterminate group. Not only that, Mr. Gandhi’s remark did not even insinuate that every person bearing the surname “Modi” was a thief, by virtue of that surname. How, therefore, an individual was able to prosecute the case on the claim that he had been personally defamed by Mr. Gandhi’s remark, is extremely bewildering; and the fact that the trial court was willing to entertain the claim, even more so.”
“Therefore, the Lok Sabha Secretariat cannot perhaps declare him disqualified without referring the case to the President under Article 103 for a declaration, which is the normal procedure followed there. The authority to declare a sitting Member disqualified on the basis of the Court’s decision is not vested in the Lok Sabha Secretariat, either under the Constitution or the RP Act 1951. That power is vested in the President under Article 103.”
“The swiftness with which Congress’s top leader Rahul Gandhi was disqualified after his conviction in a criminal defamation case and the possibility of being disqualified from contesting an election for six years after his sentence ends is in stark contrast to how the law was recently circumvented by a regional politician to become a state chief minister – with the help of the Narendra Modi government, and also the Election Commission of India (ECI).”
This will actually work in Rahul Gandhi’s favour…
“After 10 years in power, the BJP has done everything to change the mindset of India. It is still not sure if that change will remain in the face of more systematic ideological opposition and particularly in the absence of state power. Rahul — by design or by accident — represents a challenge to both its ideological position and its brazen exercise of state power. This has put the BJP in a bind. To ignore Rahul would mean conceding space to him and to a counter-ideology. The BJP is averse to that co-existence of differences. But to continue to target Rahul can only lead to expanding the space he can occupy. By ignoring him, the BJP risks the reconfiguration of collective conscience of India and by suppressing him, it risks the stirring of precisely that collective conscience. Either way, it faces a “pappu aa gaya centrestage” moment.”
“Indeed, as a patent victim of a wilfully vindictive regime, Rahul Gandhi can now speak in a different tone. He could refashion himself in the manner of Jayaprakash Narayan, a voice of political reasonableness and wholesomeness.”
“In case he is jailed, it may result in the shift of the victimisation repertoire from one side of the political spectrum to the other… But in case Rahul is not sent to jail, he will continue to be on the street.”
“The refusal to let Rahul speak in Parliament, the first attempt to get him thrown out of the Lok Sabha over his remarks in the UK, and then the disqualification at lightning speed following the Surat court verdict, all suggest that for all its sneering, the BJP is worried about Rahul Gandhi. All this works to his advantage. For once, he seems to have gotten under the skin of his opponents.”
Or will it?
“Many have noted the absence of large crowds at Opposition rallies. In a sharply worded interview against Rahul Gandhi’s disqualification, former home minister P Chidambaram admitted he felt “despondent” that people were not coming out to protest as they used to. In her fiery speech at Rajghat, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said: “Public kya dekh nahin rahi kya ho raha hai?… Ankhe kholiye (Can’t the people see what’s happening around them?…Open your eyes).”
The message is clear: either there’s is a disconnect between the Opposition and the “public” or the Opposition hasn’t been able to make a persuasive case. It has not been able to convert “democracy in danger” into an emotion the voter can relate to.”
“As no CWC has been constituted even after a month after the 85th Plenary at Raipur, a motley group of senior leaders and favoured junior functionaries huddled at the AICC headquarters for over two hours that evening even as the party did not announce either a political action plan or showcase its legal roadmap. It was a rain soaked evening—the AICC office had a handful of workers loitering outside, outnumbered by media persons. The next day, when Rahul addressed the media, there were a few hundred party flagbearers in the AICC premises—but Rahul chose to drive away in a huff, without even acknowledging their greetings.”
“Three days into Rahul’s disqualification, his Wayanad constituency has been missing the heat that the Congress has built up over the issue in Delhi, where the entire Opposition has rallied round the top Congress leader… What seems to have been missing in most parts of the constituency is a visible display of public solidarity with the beleaguered local MP disqualified over a year before the conclusion of his term. The issue seems to have ebbed away from the countryside.”
Can’t Make This Up
The Indian state can often be accused of micromanaging things, but this…
… seems to take it even further than usual.
That’s it for this edition of India Inside Out. Expect more links on Indian politics, foreign policy and more in the next edition.