HOW NOT TO HAVE AN OPPOSITION-LESS INDIA

IF Narendra Modi wins for the third time, equalling Jawaharlal Nehru's record, he will be realising a long-cherished personal dream.

- C P SURENDRAN

In historical terms, it could also mean the end of Nehruvian India in one specific sense: the withering of the Congress as a national party. That is why 2024 is a crossroads election.

Last Sunday at Mumbai's Shivaji Park, when Rahul Gandhi ended his second yatra, all opposition leaders on stage said, not without a touch of nostalgia, that a third term for Modi would be the end of India as we know it. Yet, the problem is that in the matter of seat allocation, regional parties cannot be too generous with Congress because it would hurt their existence. This dilemma is a direct result of the weakening of the mother party, which is what the Congress was for a good while.

The BJP's stated objective of a Congress-free India is a potent one, not just because they would like to free modern Indian history that lionizes the roles of the Nehrus and the Gandhis—that is, free it from anglicised dynasts and their equally colonised cohorts. The BJP, naturally, would like to rewrite history with a more indigenised ink. Out of that ink flows new names, new people and an alternative history. For history is not always what happened, it is what is written. As Gabriel García Márquez said, it is not what happened, it is how you remember it. The dramatis personae of a Congress-free India are led by Modi.