How BJP made ‘Pappu’ a Leader!

Every great magician needs an assistant. Every great villain needs a fool. And for a full decade, the BJP’s publicity department needed “Pappu” — the harmless, giggling understudy whose only job was to make the 56-inch hero look taller by comparison.

There was just one problem. Nobody told the assistant he was in a magic trick. And somewhere along the way, he mastered to turn his clownish grin into a stinging fang.

Give credit where it’s been long overdue: if Rahul Gandhi is Leader of the Opposition today, the engraving on his trophy should read “Manufactured with pride by the BJP Media Cell.” You cannot call a man a clown for ten years without eventually teaching him comic timing. Repetition is rehearsal. And rehearsal, given enough time, becomes a performance.

From “Suit-Boot” to About-Turn

The dress rehearsal happened early, back when nobody was watching for it. In 2015, the Government proposed changes to the Land Acquisition Act and defended them with full throat. Rahul Gandhi, freshly returned from one of his celebrated sabbaticals, lobbed a single phrase across the aisle — “suit-boot ki sarkar.” It stuck to the Government like chewing gum on a shoe.

Lok Sabha resisted, farmers resisted, the Rajya Sabha resisted, and the ordinance was quietly allowed to expire, taking the amendments down with it!

Somewhere in the BJP war room, a very inconvenient discovery was made: the rabbit had bitten the magician. For an outfit that had spent a decade advertising Rahul as a harmless mascot, this was less a political setback than an identity crisis.

The Farm Laws: U-Turn!

Next came the three farm laws — announced as historic, defended as visionary, and eventually retired like an actor nobody wanted to recast. For nearly a year the Government’s message to protesting farmers was essentially: this is wonderful for you, you simply haven’t understood it yet. Rahul Gandhi, meanwhile, kept predicting a repeal with the smugness of a man who has already read the last page.

On 19 November 2021, he was proven right. Modi appeared on television, and the “historic” reforms became history in about four minutes!

If Man Mohan Singh’s government earned the sobriquet ‘Scam Sarkar’, Narendra Modi’s has earned its tag as ‘U-Turn’ Sarkar!

One imagines Rahul reaching for the remote: “Did I accidentally switch to a comedy channel?” To be fair, it was the farmers’ agitation, not Rahul’s oratory, that forced the retreat. But Congress had backed the protest loudly and consistently, and history doesn’t do nuance — it does photographs. And the photograph showed the immovable object moving.

Modi 3.0: Coalition-Compatible Edition

Then came 2024, and with it a full majority evaporated into thin air. Modi remained Prime Minister, but the sentence “government decision” now came with a new dependent clause: subject to the mood of NDA allies.!

Look what happened to the ‘Lateral Entry’ into the bureaucracy! UPSC advertised 45 posts. Rahul and the Opposition objected on reservation grounds; JD(U) and LJP, allies, not adversaries, quietly agreed with them. Three days later, they withdrew the advertisement. Just three days? Amazon’s return policy is stingier.

Rahul Gandhi could be forgiven for wondering if he’d been quietly appointed to a constitutional post nobody mentions in the Government of India Act: Leader of the Opposition and Honorary Chairman, Government Returns & Refunds Department!

The Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill drew fire over its treatment of digital creators — withdrawn for “reconsideration.” The Budget’s property-indexation proposal drew fire from homeowners — quietly softened. At this rate, North Block might as well install a revolving illuminated signboard: ANNOUNCE → DEFEND → FACE OUTRAGE → RECONSIDER → RETREAT. Repeat as needed.

The Jester emerging as a Tester!

Here is the delicious part: Rahul Gandhi did not become Demosthenes. He still says things that leave his own party scrambling for context and news anchors scrambling for airtime. His parliamentary style remains, charitably, “spirited.” Nothing about his rhetoric improved dramatically overnight.

What has changed is the room. Earlier, when Rahul spoke, BJP leaders laughed — genuinely, unguardedly. Now they still laugh, but a beat later someone in the PMO leans over and asks, “Wait — what exactly did he just say?” That pause is the whole story. That pause is a promotion nobody signed off on.

The man built up for a decade as the BJP’s most reliable electoral asset has become an Opposition leader whose stray remarks now land on genuine public grievances rather than empty air. The Financial Times observed after the 2024 election that Modi now faces a sharper Opposition under Rahul Gandhi and tighter coalition arithmetic — a sentence that would have sounded like satire in 2019.

The Birth of ‘Cockroach’ Party at Jantar Mantar!

Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation amid sustained student protest has only deepened the sense of a Government that has learned, painfully, when to fold. Commentators have already filed it in the same drawer as the land law and the farm laws — the “reversal” drawer, which is getting rather full.

Nobody sensible would credit this to Rahul Gandhi personally. Students, protestors, allies and plain electoral arithmetic did the heavy lifting. But satire owes no one restraint, so picture Rahul walking into Parliament with a folder helpfully labelled “Today’s Government Decision to Be Withdrawn.”

A nervous aide whispers, “Sir, nothing has been announced today.”

Rahul replies, “No problem. Announce something first.”

The 56-Inch Paradox

Here is Modi’s peculiar predicament, entirely of his own making: an ordinary Prime Minister can revise a policy and call it consultation. Modi revises a policy, and the headline reads Retreat. Why? Because the brand was never “competent government.” The brand was decisive government — muscular, unbending, allergic to reverse gear. Balakot built it. Surgical strikes cemented it. Operation Sindoor reinforced it. On the border, the message was unambiguous: India hits back – deep and hard!

But domestic democracy carries a weapon no missile-defence system has ever intercepted: political arithmetic. You can send a BrahMos into an enemy installation. You cannot send one into an unhappy voter. You can neutralise a terror camp; you cannot air-strike the Leader of the Opposition. And infuriatingly for every government that has ever existed, EVMs remain immune to interceptor missiles.

That, in the end, is democracy’s private joke on all its strongmen.

The Verdict

Modi has not collapsed. Rahul has not transformed into a master strategist. Governments everywhere reverse course when the cost of holding firm exceeds the cost of climbing down — sometimes that’s cowardice, sometimes pragmatism, sometimes simply democracy doing its unglamorous job.

But the optics write their own headlines. The man once mocked as “Pappu” keeps landing punches he was never supposed to be capable of, while the man marketed as the “56-inch strongman” keeps discovering, one reversal at a time, that discretion is the better part of valour.

Perhaps the next BJP manifesto should carry a small statutory warning in fine print: “All bold decisions are subject to parliamentary arithmetic, coalition partners, public agitation — and the occasional sentence from Rahul Gandhi. Terms and conditions apply.” Because Indian democracy has quietly delivered its finest punchline yet: no chair is a permanent throne, no lion roars forever, and the machine built to manufacture a joke ended up, reversal by reversal, manufacturing an Opposition.

(Colonel Karan Kharb is a senior veteran officer of the Indian Army, an incisive thinker, author, and dedicated social worker. He commanded the 21 Bihar Regiment in the challenging terrain of the Indo-China border in Arunachal Pradesh, and played a commendable role in Operation Black Thunder-II, conducted by the NSG’s Black Cat Commando Group (51 SAG). He served as an instructor at the Indian Military Academy, Dehradun, where several of his cadets went on to achieve distinguished success, rising to the highest ranks in the Indian Army.

Karan Kharb is the author of five world-class bestselling books, with his sixth book currently in the publication pipeline. Having served as an advisor to two reputed corporate institutions, Colonel Kharb also successfully led rehabilitation and skilldevelopment projects in Kutch (Gujarat) following the devastating earthquake of 2001. He currently serves as Pradhan (President) of Arya Samaj Arun Vihar, Noida, where he remains steadfastly committed to nation-building and youth empowerment through Sanskar shiksha (character development), Yoga, skill development, and social awakening.)