The INDIA bloc, Mamata said, should have a PM candidate or a convener to lead it and Kharge was the best choice. Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwalwho had already had his say, interjected at this point and supported his Bengal counterpart’s idea, saying having the Dalit leader as its face would help INDIA wrest at least 58 seats from the BJP — in Karnataka and Scheduled Caste (SC)-dominated constituencies in other parts of the country.
Rahul Gandhi who spoke after Mamata did not respond to her suggestion. But Kharge did. He deflected Mamata’s googly by stating the obvious — that the Opposition parties first need to win the elections. “If we do not have MPs, what is the objective of talking about a PM? After winning, our MPs will follow the democratic process (to elect the PM),” he said. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumarwho has been seen by some as a PM probate, later responded to Mamata’s suggestion by repeating his public position: that he was not in the prime ministerial race.
Banerjee’s suggestion came a day after she held a meeting with Kejriwal. It is conceivable that the idea was the brainchild of the politically savvy Kejriwal. For, only a day earlier, Mamata said quite the opposite — that she was not in favour of the INDIA alliance projecting a PM face before the parliamentary elections. Also in the loop was Uddhav Thackeray who, according to informed insiders, “was also on board”.
Politicians in India are adept at playing the “signal game”, hoping to create through it a web of perceptions that can get them votes. Kharge is only an idea that has been floated. Its protagonists may hope that it will send a signal to the southern states that if they stand solidly behind INDIA power could devolve to the South once again. It happened in 1991 when PV Narasimha Rao from Andhra Pradesh became the PM and then again in 1996 when H D Deve Gowda from Karnataka took over the top job.
It would, they would have calculated, help deflect attention from Rahul Gandhi. Even though Rahul is believed to have told Nitish Kumar that he was not in the reckoning in the Lok Sabha elections, the narrative keeps going back to a Modi versus Rahul formulation, with the BJP constantly harping on it. It puts the opposition at a disadvantage even though many leaders do not want to state this openly. With some heavyweight regional satraps now rooting for Kharge, the leadership question opens up.
The Dalit card
The protagonists of the Kharge move are also playing the Dalit card for India has never had a Dalit PM and the possibility of having one could enthuse SC communities. Babu Jagjivan Ram, the seniormost Dalit leader of the Congress who was in the Cabinet of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi — he parted company with her in 1977, joining the Janata Party that went on to defeat her — came close to PMship on four occasions and lost it by a whisker.
In 1977, when Morarji Desai became PM, Jagjivan Ram remarked bitterly, “A Dalit can never become prime minister in this country.” A majority of Janata Party MPs favoured him but Jayaprakash Narayan and J B Kripalani who were tasked with deciding who would be PM opted for Desai. Earlier too, in June 1975, when Indira Gandhi was disqualified from Parliament by the Allahabad High Court for electoral malpractices, for some hours there was talk about Jagjivan Ram taking over as PM in the “interim” till the court acquitted her. But she ruled it out. It was not a risk she was prepared to take. For there was nothing like an “interim PM” in politics. Instead, she declared Emergency. Indira Gandhi believed that if Jagjivan Ram became PM, it would be very difficult to dislodge him given his administrative experience.
Throughout his political career, Kharge has chosen not to wear his Dalit identity on his sleeve, at least not so far. Will his name have traction among Dalits? In his own state Karnataka, possibly yes. In the South more than in the North, where he is not so well known. For it to have had any chance of happening, the Congress should have tried to build a cult around his persona from the time he was made the Congress chief as it has done with members of the Gandhi family.
Kharge as PM could also galvanise the promise of a caste census by giving it a national face. It could be difficult for regional parties in the South to oppose a PM candidate from the region if Kharge’s candidature was announced openly, with all the might of the 28 parties of INDIA behind the effort. But that is not the case. Above all, INDIA faces a formidable foe in Narendra Modi who is as popular as he was a decade ago, which can be said about few global leaders at present. Kharge may not be a match for Modi today. But he could be the best option that INDIA has.
(Neerja Chowdhury, Contributing Editor, The Indian Expresshas covered the last 10 Lok Sabha elections. She is the author of How Prime Ministers Decide)
