THE so-called confession of Congress leader Mr. Rahul Gandhi that his party overlooked the interests of the Dalit and the backward people after 1990s, is nothing but a political ploy to mollify the edgy public opinion on that count. In other words, the Congress leader is seeking an escapism from the guilt of having ignored an important constituency. In still other words, he now wishes to tell the Dalit and backward people that from now on, the Congress party will start taking care of this important segment, and so those people must keep faith in the party and support it in the future battles. Mr. Rahul Gandhi has made a carefully calibrated and near melodramatic statement on the issue, stating, “if I don’t say this, I will be lying”. And that is all he is capable of doing and has been doing for many years -- relying mostly on short public memory and unsuspecting innocence, in an attempt to draw more people to the Congress party. True, some of those efforts did give him some positive results though in a limited measure.

 

Yet, on most counts, the voters in general have been rejecting the Congress party in the streets and at the hustings because its leadership has never shied away from indulging in lies and melodrama of ‘Mohabbat Ki Dukaan’. True, the Congress party did step up its Lok Sabha tally from 54 (in 2019) to 99 in 2024. It also gained control of a couple of States in legislative elections, as well. Yet, those exceptions apart, the voters have rejected the party in most elections it fought in the past ten-plus years.

 

owever, these repeated rejections by the voting public does not seem to have deterred the Congress party of its leadership. They have continued their games of escapism or lie-telling or melodrama -- possibly because they have no other method of countering the BJP juggernaut led by Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi. They seem to feel that maligning the Prime Minister’s image is the only way they can foist themselves on public mind. The latest statement of Mr. Rahul Gandhi about the Dalit and backward people having been ignored by the Congress party is yet another attempt in the old, outdated political gamesmanship. Another valiant attempt by the Congress party in particular and the Opposition in general to claim the mind-space of Dalit and backward voters was by pushing the idea that the Modi-led Government and political front were all eager to fiddle with the Constitution of India framed by (the late) Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar.

 

That attempt did pay some dividends to the combined Opposition in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, all right. But that advantage got washed away when the Bharatiya Janata Party started giving systematic response to the falsehood of the Opposition. The most critical message of that retaliation from the Modi-led National Democratic Alliance was that no falsehood and mere propagandism would sustain itself in the face of stark logic and sensible expression of emotion. It is obvious that the combined Opposition has understood the fallacy of its narrative. Yet, it does not seem to be ready to learn its lessons. Hence the latest attempt by Mr. Rahul Gandhi. He appears to believe that the Dalit and backward people can still be misled to trusting the Congress party and returning favour to it. There is every reason to believe that this a gross miscalculation by the Congress party, and it is not likely to curry any benefit from this latest exercise. Of course, it is pointedly true that the Congress party played with the sentiment of the Dalit and backward classes for years. But this confession is not likely to draw those segments back to the Congress fold since everybody realises the hollowness and falsehood in the new narrative.