After 12 years of PM Modi's reign, protests seem to show BJP struggle in narrative control

So far, Narendra Modi's party has controlled all mechanisms to shape public perception, suggest what should appeal to the people, stir up emotions and, critics allege, even construct reality

When Rahul Gandhi climbed atop a barricade put by the Delhi police blocking him and others from reaching Nirvachan Sadan, the office of the Election Commission of India, Union minister Kiren Rijiju posed a question to the Lok Sabha leader of Opposition.

"Why the drama," Rijiju asked. He advised Rahul to take a leaf out of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's book and learn about "seva" (service), the theme invoked by the BJP to celebrate the Prime Minister's 76th birthday and 25 years in public life, starting from the time he first became Gujarat chief minister.

But even amid what was aimed at a coordinated celebration of Modi, the BJP fielded three more leaders in a span of six hours to mount an attack on the 56-year-old Rahul.

As the Opposition continued with its guerrilla tactics and staged a sudden march towards the now heavily barricaded Jantar Mantar, which has for decades been the capital's designated protest site, BJP national president Nitin Nabin took the field on Wednesday.

"I want to clearly tell the people of the Congress royal family today that the princes of your family reached politics from backdoors, but Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the first prime minister who came before the people and whom the people, through their mandate, took to the Red Fort in Delhi," Nabin said at an event in Modi's constituency of Varanasi.

On Thursday, the BJP accused Rahul of "inappropriately" touching a female officer of the Delhi police during Wednesday's scuffle, sharing a video clip on the party's Facebook page.

For 12 years, the BJP has controlled all mechanisms to shape public perception, suggest what should appeal to the people, stir up emotions and, critics allege, even construct reality.

But ever since this July, less than three months after the BJP finally came to power in Bengal, the party's control over political narrative across India seems to be loosening.

Political narrative is selective, character-driven and action-guided.

Like Modi thundering "hum ne ghar mein ghus ke maara" on the occasion of his 25 years in public office on Wednesday. The applause resounded this time too at the Indira Gandhi Indoor stadium in New Delhi.

But the applause is being directed at the Opposition too. And this Opposition is not restricted to the conventional political parties. It includes a fledgling youth organisation, the Cockroach Janta Party which was born out of protest against a remark made by the Chief Justice of India.

Such was the force of the protest launched by the CJP and the Left-backed students' bodies in July against question paper leaks that the Modi government was forced to blink for the first time in 12 years.

Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan had to go.

The carefully cultivated strongman image of Modi extended to his ministers as well, making them immune from questions raised by the people. But Pradhan had to go.

What the youth movement also achieved was to weaken the strong digital network developed by the BJP for more than a decade now, through reels posted on social media and mass Whatsapp messages.

The BJP's attempts to counter the spontaneous sloganeering and songs with scripted videos did not cut much ice with even its own supporters.

The students and youths and most of the opposition parties have now time marked Gyanesh Kumar, the chief election commissioner and main architect of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.

"Gyanesh bro, it's done," has become a catchphrase.

From CJP leader Abhijeet Dipke, AISA leader Neha Bora to Rahul, everyone is chanting the same slogan.

On September 27, about a dozen chief ministers held press conferences in their states to counter the allegations made by Rahul on his findings of "vote chori" (theft) and CEC Kumar.

Union home minister Amit Shah and BJP chief ministers like Devendra Fadnavis, Yogi Adityanath, Samrat Choudhary have used near-similar vocabulary to dismiss the Opposition's charges against Kumar.

It did not help the Modi government that the investigative reports published by The Indian Express revealed "dissent" within the Election Commission on the SIR issue.

While CEC Kumar went on silent mode, the BJP's defending the EC has led to questions why the ruling party is speaking out for an independent, constitutional authority in charge of conducting elections in India.

Sambit Patra, the BJP MP from Puri, has cited 20 Assembly seats from Bengal where the highest deletions took place and 13 of these seats went to the undivided Trinamool and only six landed in the BJP's kitty.

Like with all political narrative-setting, Patra omitted that in almost 50 per cent of the seats won by the BJP the deletion of voters exceeded the victory margin.

That is how the BJP is trying to restore the political narrative around the SIR.

It does not seem to be working fully. Even global media outlets have now begun to question the SIR exercise.

Some of the older tactics that worked before, like painting protesters as anti-national, also seem to be losing their efficacy.

A Delhi policeman's media interaction in which the cop was seen crying profusely and asking if being a policeman was a crime was soon punctured by social media users who dug out the cop's past to show that he had been arrested in an extortion case.

Is Rahul Gandhi finally setting the political agenda and the narrative?

Data compiled by DataBeings (an analytic and technology consultancy firm) for late August and early September for YouTube showed the Congress's YouTube channel had about 54 per cent of the 95 million views garnered by Indian political parties - accounting for 51 million viewers. In comparison, Narendra Modi's channel had 13.1 million and the BJP had 4.5 million, despite having higher follower counts on X, Facebook and WhatsApp groups.

On Thursday, Rahul and the Opposition are hitting the streets of Delhi again. For now, India's politics is unveiling on the streets. And Rahul is the face there, even if not the only one.

To be clear, all of this does not mean the BJP is fighting a losing battle. Brand Narendra Modi still remains strong.

But the battle for his party is evidently becoming more pitched.