The just concluded winter session of Parliament will be remembered less for the informative and engaging debate on the Constitution and more for what happened thereafter. Unfortunately. But as a student of contemporary politics, it is in our interest to explore why events which transpired in the last couple of days took such an ugly turn.
First, the facts. Union Home Minister Amit Shah was replying to the debate on the Constitution in the Rajya Sabha. During his address, he tried to show a mirror to the Congress by underscoring some of their party leaders’ political moves which clearly showed that the Congress humiliated and opposed Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar on several occasions. HM Shah argued that just glorifying Ambedkar and chanting his name a hundred times was fine but one must know what was the Congress party’s real attitude towards Babasaheb.
In this context, HM Amit Shah narrated the situation leading to resignation of Dr. Ambedkar from Jawaharlal Nehru’s cabinet and how the latter had claimed that the resignation would not have an impact on the government. HM Shah also narrated that Dr. Ambedkar left the cabinet as he felt his views were ignored on major policy issues such as Article 370, foreign policy and the treatment of SC/STs.
It is now common knowledge that a very small chunk (eleven seconds to be precise) was culled out of the detailed address and circulated widely across media. Without the relevant context and following sentences, the chunk gave a wholly mischievous and contrarian sense of the HM’s remarks. About an hour and a half after HM ended his reply on the floor of the Upper House, Congress media department started posting the eleven-minute chunk to claim that Amit Shah had insulted Ambedkar. A senior Congress MP gave an adjournment motion in Parliament next morning. Shortly thereafter, party president Mallikarjuna Kharge demanded that the PM remove Shah as minister.
Other opposition allies of the Congress joined in raising the issue further. In a short while, the issue was built into a big media controversy. This is turn, fuelled protests in some parts of the country. Those protests have since subsided but the session ended on an acrimonious note as two MPs of the BJP (one of them a septuagenarian) were admitted in hospital as they were injured allegedly after being pushed by Rahul Gandhi in the Parliament premises.
By now it is amply clear that this whole campaign was built on a shoddy, mischievous, cut-and-paste job. So can a campaign based on a lie ever succeed? Well, the Congress party and few of its allies certainly seem to think so. Why else would they put it in so much effort and time on this campaign when the entire speech is available online for everyone to verify?
The reason may lie in the recent political developments in the country. The Congress party had invested a lot of political capital in the Haryana and Maharashtra assembly elections. Coming within months of the Lok Sabha elections, these polls had given hope to the Congress that Modi govt’s popularity would get diminished and thus create trouble for the centre. The contrary happened. With back-to-back defeats in Haryana and Maharashtra, the Congress not only lost what bit of political mileage it had gained in the Lok Sabha but the stocks of its leadership also nosedived. From the South to the North to the West, alliance partners openly questioned Rahul Gandhi’s ability to the lead the opposition block. This reality check came as a major setback.
It was in this backdrop that the Congress members pounced on the eleven second chunk of the HM’s address to fuel unrest in the minds of those who revere Dr. Ambedkar.
But here is the thing. A campaign based and built on a lie cannot last long. On the contrary, it has compelled the BJP to enumerate all those insults that the party claims was heaped by the Congress’ top leadership, namely, PM Nehru on the Father of the Constitution. For the Congress, therefore, this is turning out to be another zero sum game.