The Congress’ pointed and relentless attack on the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party over its alleged collusion with Facebook makes for good headlines, but it also shows how the directionless party is barking up the wrong tree yet again.
It is precisely because of its inability to spot the problem and tendency to waste time finding peripheral reasons to blame the BJP that things have come to such a pass for the Congress. The futile drama that unfolded Monday at the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting, with Sonia Gandhi quitting and then staying on, is proof of the party’s floundering in the face of the Modi storm.
The Congress has developed an unenviable knack of attributing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rise and electoral wins to all kinds of misplaced excuses — from hack-able Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) to the BJP’s deep pockets, the timing of the Balakot strikes to a fake propaganda machinery. And now in the latest, Rahul Gandhi has reportedly termed the letter written by party leaders against Sonia Gandhi as “ill-timed”, suggesting it could have “helped the BJP”. Facebook is yet another addition to this long, and often, myopic list.
A news report in The Wall Street Journal about Facebook’s alleged bias in controlling hate speech by BJP leaders on its platform has propelled the sleepy Congress into action. The party has accused the social media site of being controlled by the BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which Rahul Gandhi alleged use it to “influence” the Indian voters.
But the fact is, Modi wins because of Modi. Period. One doesn’t have to be a fan of his brand of politics, his self-aggrandisement, narcissistic tendencies, Hindutva hate spewing or his party’s toxic majoritarian agenda. You may even find it deeply disconcerting. But there is no running away from the fact that Modi’s popularity at the national level is almost unprecedented. His victories are because the voter wants to see him win, not because the EVM is acting up or a social media platform has favoured him. What acts as a multiplier effect is how the BJP gets its arithmetic and on-ground strategy right.
Nobody has been able to crack the code to beat him. And the last thing that is likely to work is the Congress’ misguided reasons for his wins.
Also read: Former civil servants ask Facebook to audit hate speech policy without Ankhi Das’ ‘influence’
The many excuses
There can be little denying that the allegations against Facebook, if true, are appalling. Social media platforms are supposed to be spaces for free speech, and a neutral venue. Of course, there’s a lot of toxicity nowadays. There is also little denying that hate speech has no place in a civilised society and no platform — social media or otherwise — should tolerate it.
But the problem is that with this fresh ‘revelation’ in The WSJ, the Congress will find yet another reason to justify its electoral drubbings and the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duo’s rise. The party will not look within, will not acknowledge that the internal crisis has led to its downfall. Its failure to reimagine its politics and connect with the masses, and to give itself a credible sheen, have been its nemesis — not EVMs or Facebook.
It is insulting the voter’s intelligence to reduce her political preference to a social media message. Facebook may well have favoured the BJP, turning a blind eye to all the venom spewing its leaders engage in. But the Congress is once again losing sight of what really makes the PM win, which only makes defeating him out of the realm of possibility.
Look at the pattern so far. The Congress took a leaf out of the BJP’s book when it started crying hoarse over EVM tampering. Every election it lost, and the BJP won, the party attributed it to the EVMs being hacked. The elections it won, the Congress went deafeningly silent on the EVM claim.
This has essentially meant that instead of introspecting and self-reflecting, and thus, course correcting, the Congress has found an easy way out to tell itself that it was defeated not because it didn’t deserve to win, but because its rival ‘cheated’.
More recently, take the 2019 Lok Sabha election. The Congress wanted to believe that the time of the Balakot air strikes, along with Hindutva hate, were reasons for Modi’s massive win — if not publicly, then in private conversations. It is not as if the Congress would have won the election in the absence of the cross-border strikes. Balakot was just a propeller, not the core.
And then there is the more general claim about how Modi’s sweet talk and the BJP’s false propaganda are getting the better of the Congress.
But hyper nationalism, lies and Hindutva rants can only take you so far. It is foolhardy to believe they are enough to help Modi-Shah win election after election, and conquer even unexpected battlegrounds like Left fortress Tripura.
Also read: What we don’t know about the crisis in the Congress
Facing the truth
By ascribing a multitude of convenient reasons to Modi’s electoral winnability instead of acknowledging and understanding why the voter loves him, for better or for the worse, the Congress is constantly ruining its chances of actually making a comeback.
But more importantly, the Congress will refuse to accept that Narendra Modi is a genuinely popular leader who enjoys massive goodwill among the electorate. His wins have been because of the heady cocktail he has put together — of his own personality cult, his framework of welfare, pro-rural policies, smart ground strategy during elections, making the most of the BJP/RSS cadre network, and, of course, garnishing it with a generous dose of nationalism and religion.
The more the Congress attacks Modi by questioning the genuineness of his popularity and attributing it to external factors, the more the voter feels motivated to prove this wrong and the stronger the PM becomes.
The Congress needs to wake up from its deep stupor, more so now when the party seems to be all but imploding, and face the bitter truth. It has failed because it got its politics wrong and Modi has succeeded because he got it right. No amount of EVM or Facebook bashing can change this.
Views are personal.