Checkmated BJP needs to move on after Congress lands a ‘dhappa’ with ‘shirtless protest’

New Delhi: The shirtless protest at the India AI Impact Summit and Arvind Kejriwal’s discharge by a Delhi court caught the Narendra Modi government by surprise within a week.

While the government and Kejriwal will continue to play Tom and Jerry for several years from one court to another and from one agency to another, the establishment must accept the Congress’s “dhappa” in a sporting spirit.

For those unfamiliar with the term, “dhappa” is a commonly used local dialect word in the game of hide and seek. When the seeker finds a hider, they touch them and shout “dhappa” to indicate they are caught.

And the hider’s feeling after that dhappa could best describe the government’s feeling after the shirtless protest.

On the other hand, the Congress party’s desperation appears to have peaked to a level where a feeling of freedom struggle has started to develop.

While India took nearly 200 years to realise it was time to end British rule, Congress appears to have reached that level of frustration in 12 years of Narendra Modi as Prime Minister.

This comparison may appear odd, but it sounds familiar if one looks at attempts to compare protests from here and there to the “shirtless protest” at the AI Summit.

The “shirtless protest” makes Congress under Rahul Gandhi appear like the garam dal of the pre-independence era, when protests had turned violent and targeted high-impact venues on crucial occasions.

Just that the Congress appears to be mistaking the Modi government as an invader like the British or the Mughals, and not an elected government.

Moreover, Congress supporters on Friday were seen pushing a narrative in support of the arrested Youth Congress workers, using a 14-year-old Aaj Tak video clip about an RJD supporter who staged a similar “shirtless protest” against PM Manmohan Singh during an international conference in Delhi.

The narrative being pushed with the video said the protester’s name was Santosh Kumar and Manmohan Singh gave just one calm order: “Santosh should not be harassed.”

It left people perplexed and questioning: how much has changed!

A large part of the country appears miffed at the grand old party for resorting to such activities, which look ‘anti-India’ on face, and a lot of claims and counter-claims are doing the rounds across every possible touchpoint.

Courts decide on evidence and arguments, and cases can run for years from a lower court to the High Court and the Supreme Court. That is how legal battles stretch, as is evident from the Kejriwal matter as well. 

Public judgement, however, moves much faster. People deliver their verdict far more frequently, as the conduct of political parties shapes perception and momentum.

In such a situation, a measured reaction by the BJP is more likely to help it electorally than a reaction driven by anger.

A section of people is of the view that the government and BJP should react in the manner the hider reacts after the dhappa, with a feeling of embarrassment, not that of revenge or punishment.

They expect the BJP-led government will eventually take this matter in the same fashion it accepts defeat, with grace.