Recall that after Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra left Kerala and Tamil Nadu behind, the Congress effortlessly shifted to Hindutva-bashing and adopting a ‘I am Hindu’ strategy. Karnataka was going to polls in 2023, and there was hijab, halal and Hindutva to test the waters.

Maharashtra gave BJY the opportunity to rub the salt in. The Savarkar-bashing was deliberately primed to hit the right nails. Strangely, the BJP appeared to have no counter-attack strategy. And when Bharat Jodo Yatra crossed into Rajasthan, it was too late. Gandhi’s ‘Mohabat ka Dukaan’ was opening all over the place.

In J&K, the country’s most eligible bachelor at 52 effectively sowed seeds of doubt in the minds of the Kashmiri Pandits. The ‘KPs’ listened as Rahul Gandhi kept his ‘Mohabat ka Dukaan’ open for all and sundry to walk-in.

The Congress strategy appears to be to cover all the bases. Five years on, the reinstatement of Article 370 will be the promised low-hanging fruit to win the Valley back. The Congress is working on a strategy: Keep the Hindutva pot boiling by accentuating the Hindu-Hindutva divide that Salman Khurshid and Shashi Tharoor helped spread, perhaps for the long-term and 2024 is long-term enough to qualify.

With his newfound political acumen tested and tried in the crucible of the Bharat Jodo Yatra, Rahul Gandhi is on a mission to discredit the Hindutva stock of the BJP, especially the ruling party’s twin Hindutva icons, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

Both have to be discredited to defeat the BJP in 2024. The twin attacks on the two are going hand in hand. And it is not coincidence; or chance happening. “What’s Modi to Adani?”, and “Yogi is no Hindu, but a common thug” has become the centre-piece of the Congress strategy which has caught the imagination of the electorate.

It took a long time, a total of nearly nine years, but finally, ultimately, the ‘Mr. Invincible’ of our times appears cornered and nearly convinced that his time at the helm is on the brink. Just like iron cuts iron, a Hindu backlash must be the answer to Hindutva. What if a majority of the electorate comes round to the thinking that there are far better Hindus in the country than those in ‘bhagwa’?

That being said, Rahul Gandhi’s “savage attack” on Yogi Adityanath might boomerang though for now, it has given Congress workers and Congress supporters the much-needed adrenalin-kick. And it has made the Yogi mad enough to retaliate from election-bound Tripura, from where he hit out at the Wayanad MP for playing with the “sentiments of the Hindus”.

Taking on the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, especially questioning his Hindutva credentials, isn’t the wisest of strategies. The Congress carries the baggage of alleged anti-Hinduism, and on which the BJP came to power, especially in Uttar Pradesh, the impression created that the Congress is pro-Muslim.

Note, however, that while the Congress is shedding its reluctance to woo the majority community, afraid that the biggest minority community will desert it if that reluctance is shed, the Bharatiya Janata Party has been assiduously courting the pasmanda Muslims. Prime Minister Modi is fully convinced that this section of Muslims will fall for his lures, while also believing that the Hindutva lot will not desert the BJP for making “Muslim appeasement” the BJP’s calling card.

Bottom-line, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP are taking a risk bigger than that which Rahul Gandhi and the Congress are taking. Rahul and the Congress want the “real Hindus” to join the Muslims and Christians in voting the Congress, while the BJP continues to peddle “sabka saath, sabka vikas” with Modiji and Yogiji’s “prayas”. Year 2023 will resound and rebound with Hindu-Hindutva and caste discords to set the stage for 2024. (IPA Service)