Rahul Gandhi has not changed, India has

The streets and the chorus you hear are an indication that India is at a new tipping point, writes Ashok Swain

Rahul Gandhi's emergence as the great new hope of Indian politics is often misrepresented as the arrival of 'a new Rahul Gandhi'. That interpretation gives too much credit to nearly two decades of relentless caricaturing of this leader with a big heart. If this is an inflection point in the discovery of his politics, of what he has been fighting for, let that belated realisation not be confused for the emergence of a new politician.

RG's appeal has grown no doubt and if you scanned social media in the wake of the rousing march of 12 October, you'll even have seen new young converts professing their love for him, of how they distrusted him earlier but now know better what he is about.

The core of Rahul Gandhi's politics -- his unshakeable belief in social justice, his championing of India's youth and their legitimate demands, his clear and fearless articulation of the dangers to the Constitution from the RSS-BJP's majoritarian agenda, his crusade against electoral manipulation -- acquired definition a long time ago. So, pundits who see this moment as the arrival of 'a new Rahul Gandhi' are possibly coming to terms with their own late realisation or are rationalising their past reservations.

What is changing is India's perspective on the Modi government's authoritarian politics, its (mis)governance record, its capture of India's democratic institutions, its misuse of investigative agencies to hound the Opposition, its subversion of electoral mandates by engineering defections, its desperate bid to cling to power. Rahul Gandhi has been flagging all this for longer than many media pundits care to remember; what has changed is that more people are now lending him their ears.

.What our liberals don't get about Rahul Gandhi. Let's track back and review. Before the Jantar Mantar 1.0 agitation became the firestorm that forced the government to capitulate and former education minister Dharmendra Pradhan to resign, Rahul Gandhi had been talking about exam paper leaks and the betrayal of students whose families sink all their savings and take loans they can barely repay to prepare their wards for competitive examinations.

He has connected these scandals to the employment crisis in India. For hundreds of thousands of young Indians and their families, these exams are the only way out of precarity, and a broken and gamed education system cuts off their only way out.

Before the Indian Express investigation revealed that even election commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had flagged irregularities and brazen illegalities in the SIR, a series of exposés in independent media had presented enough evidence that the electoral rolls were being manipulated at scale.

Rahul Gandhi took this up in Parliament and outside long before other Opposition politicians were any the wiser. The government and their media mouthpieces made it look like sour grapes until the recent revelations made it impossible to sustain that line of argument.

The latest round of protests have made it clear that now, finally, every Indian knows, including the Modi government's apologists, that the Election Commission of India under current CEC (chief election commissioner) Gyanesh Kumar and his predecessor Rajiv Kumar was up to no good.

Rahul Gandhi is not claiming sole ownership of a movement that has multiple spearheads but it is only fair to remember that less than a month ago, he was still being mocked for questioning the SIR before the rest of the Opposition or civil society at large was willing to back his story.

.The time to rally behind Rahul Gandhi. This is not to argue that Rahul Gandhi arrived as a fully formed politician. His self-assurance has grown with time, experience and sustained engagement with the people. His ability to simultaneously engage and challenge the media, to address public gatherings of any size, to break down complex governance matters in everyday terms for lay audiences, his ability to command attention in the House and on the street have all grown over time.

His ease with the people, both young and old, and his ability to engage without apparent preparation stands in stark, even comic, contrast to the Supreme Leader who is being lampooned today for his inability to speak without a teleprompter. This man, who can't speak without a prompter, was leading the pack that hurled all sorts of slurs at Rahul Gandhi while media controlled by his cronies joined the name-calling with glee.

Not many will remember Gandhi's many prescient warnings -- about the infamous lockdown of 2020, the demonetisation of 2016 or when he first attacked the crony nexus of Modi's 'suit-boot ki sarkar '.

On 12 February 2020, when India had recorded only three coronavirus cases, Rahul Gandhi warned of a serious threat to public health and the economy. He urged timely action even as then Union health minister Harsh Vardhan questioned his credibility and insisted that all necessary precautions had already been taken. A week before Modi imposed a surprise national lockdown, RG warned of 'an economic tsunami' affecting millions.

. An early official estimate soon after showed the GDP contracting by 24 per cent year-on-year.

The farm laws provided another clear test. On 14 January 2021, Gandhi predicted the government would have to repeal them, and it did eventually happen on 19 November. The victory belonged to the farmers but unlike the Modi government, which reckoned their resistance would slowly fade, Gandhi foresaw the denouement.

The grand spectacle of the recent protests can easily obscure the quiet political work that underpins this movement.

Shaken and stirred as it now looks, the Modi regime is still in power, lying in wait for the next opportunity to pounce. It won't go down quietly.

But if the posters and slogans on the streets, the memes and gags on social media and the faces of thousands of defiant young Indians is any indication, the end is not so far away.

There isn't a shadow of doubt anymore that the face of the political alternative, an alternative grounded in pluralism and social justice, is Rahul Gandhi. He did not become a thinking, empathetic leader when people began to listen. If more people are listening today, it is because the politics many had pinned their hopes on has failed to deliver the opportunities it promised.

Ashok Swain is a professor of peace and conflict research at Uppsala University, Sweden. More by the author here