'Must Think Why Youth Trusted CJP': Shashi Tharoor on GenZ, Dimagi Naxals & More
Tharoor: Gen Z protests have dented BJP’s aura, urging Congress to woo disillusioned youth and recapture lost voters
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"Congress thought of the student agitation much earlier. Chhatron Ke Gunde was our enterprise, and while it gathered momentum later, Cockroach Janta Party went on their own. They didn't come through us. Why was it? It wasn't ideology or anything like that. It was very simply they didn't see a path in," said Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, as he reflected upon the recent movement of the Cockroach Janta Party and other youth protests that are currently underway in the country.
For the first time since it came to power, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government was brought to its knees by a mass movement led by leaders of the CJP, ensuring the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan. However, the question remains – why did lakhs of youth, who showed trust in the CJP, an outfit formed just months ago, and not traditional Opposition parties?
The BJP has built a strong support base among young voters over the last decade, but critics argue that concerns around jobs and opportunities have created dissatisfaction. At the same time, Opposition parties like the Congress face the challenge of converting this frustration into political support.
From unemployment and exam irregularities to questions around representation and accountability, issues affecting young Indians have increasingly become a political flashpoint.
"We need to somehow be able to dismantle our hierarchies in a way that opens up the space," Tharoor believes.
We have with us Mr Shashi Tharoor, diplomat, author, politician and arguably the country's leading wordsmith. Which of these defines you best, and which limits you the most politically?
Politician limits me the most. Human being is all that defines me because everything you said is a different manifestation of my reaction to what I see around me in the world. My services at the UN, not so much, involved diplomacy in the classic sense of international diplomacy. I was trying to serve a larger cause of our common humanity. I don't see myself divided in any way amongst all of these. They're just different ways of reacting to the same phenomenon.
Most people want to know, how does Shashi Tharoor find the time and the energy to wear so many different hats?
You don't have to find time when you've lost it. I try not to lose any time. But one price I've paid is I don't sleep enough.
You're seen as a prominent Congress voice, not always a part of its mainstream. Do you see yourself as an eternal critic, a bridge to the undecided voters, or at some point, a political alternative voice?
No, I'm not an eternal critic. I've never hesitated to express, and I accept that my position may not entitle me to expect my views to be accepted. I know that in Indian politics, people don't always appreciate that. But I do feel that it's important, especially in a democracy like ours, all sorts of views should be heard, and I know that I'm not always heeded, at least I'm heard. I'm in no position to accept or disregard the party. The party, on the other hand, the leadership, is always in a position to decide how much of me they can put up with. At the same time, I would not be true to myself if I didn't let them know my views. It's been for some time now that I've said, so people know I've said this in internal Congress Party forums many times, that we have a real challenge. I've said this after each of the last three elections, I'm saying it again. We have a real challenge in that our vote strength has remained at a sort of core level between 19 and 20 per cent for three successive elections. Whereas when we last won an election in '29, where we formed a coalition government, so we were not the majority party, we got 26.8 per cent. So, there is that 6-7 per cent missing that we need to recapture. Who are these people? I don't believe they're andhbhakts of the BJP. They're not Hindutva true believers. They're people who, for whatever reason, felt that they might expect better governance elsewhere. I had similar reasons for going. If we can bring those people back to us, then I think we will have a very good chance of upsetting the political apple cart of this country.
What precisely does the Congress need to do to connect with the youth and bring them back?
Youth are a very important segment that we have really woken up to. I think today, as you and I are speaking, we have Rahul Gandhi defending the rights of a pellet gun victim from the Jantar Mantar protest. We are in a situation today where the Congress seems to have reached out more effectively to the youth than it had done earlier and than many of the mainstream parties have done at all. That's not the only segment we need to reach out to. I've argued that while we are very good at appealing to sectional interests, whether it's caste, religion, whether it's a specific kind of group that has been victimised, let's say tribals in a particular area, we also need, and this is what we lacked, to reach out on those issues that affect all Indians irrespective of caste or creed. Young people demonstrated at Jantar Mantar and elsewhere that this is something, an injustice of the system that let down all Indian students irrespective of how hard they'd worked, what caste they belonged to, what religion they belonged to. They were all victimised by the failures of a government that failed to deliver a fair examination system. In our cities, severe problems of decaying urbanisation, poor civic management, of things like basic services not being provided to people. We wonder, we are paying taxes, and yet those who can afford it are busy creating their own gated communities, their own electricity inverters, air purifiers. No public service seems to be reaching many of the people in our society. We can take such issues, which affect everybody irrespective of what religion you have, what caste you have, what language you speak, etc. In fact, the Gen-Z protests, one of the things that one noticed, heartening was that it was caste-neutral, religion-neutral. The young seem to have just changed the political calculus. I think some have arguably rightly said, but that's only a concern of your urban middle-class educated people. What about the farmers? What about the adivasis? What about the Dalits? What about the OBCs, etc.? And they focus their energies more on those things, and the students there were not just from elite backgrounds? No, they were not. Most of them were actually ordinary middle-class people, including many whose families had voted for the BJP.
Do you believe, as many have begun to do so now, that following the Gen-Z protests, that the government has lost its aura, and that fear factor has gone?
Yeah, the sense that the government was invincible, that it was a sort of relentless, ruthless juggernaut rolling down and eliminating any obstacle in its path, that has certainly subsided. I always recognise that they have demonstrated an organisational capacity, a deep and rich resource base, and a single-minded focus on elections. That would not be easy to overcome. Yet, Prashant Kishore showed us in Bankipur, and Congress showed us in Dhatia, that it can be overcome. I think what we're now seeing from both the CJP protests in Jantar Mantar and elsewhere, and those by-election results, and now the continuing energy of, say, Rahul Gandhi's efforts to mobilise people on the injustices of how they put down the protests themselves with their horrendous use of police brutality, these things are showing a different mood in the country. One of the great calling cards of this government was that they're delivering economic growth and making businesses happy and so on. I've now talked to a wide cross-section of business people. Corruption has never been worse in our country for the small, average, medium businessman as well as the big one. There are a handful of people in our country who are prospering under this government. A lot of others have nothing but complaints and dismay to offer.
Do you believe that the Gen-Z movement also reflects, in a certain way, a lack of confidence in established political parties?
There are some lessons we can learn. Instagram doesn't bring about change. You need to actually work with parties, institutions, courts, police, to move things along, change policies. I think to sort of take a little bit of a break after the resignation of the education minister, which was a very significant accomplishment. But they did not thereafter take up a single cause of movement. Now they're looking at the Bar Council of India's head, who behaved egregiously by sending an outrageous instruction that no lawyer from the NALSAR University should be admitted until he said so, because they should not be put into any bar, he had to withdraw that, and now his resignation is what seems to be next on the anvil of the Cockroach Janta Party people. Congress thought of the student agitation much earlier. Chhatron Ke Gunde was our enterprise, and while it gathered momentum later, Cockroach Janta Party went on their own. They didn't come through us. Why was it? It wasn't ideology or anything like that. It was very simply they didn't see a path in. We are established structures with hierarchies. Sometimes people feel there's a psychological barrier. How will we get in? Who are we in the party? We'll just be used to supply crowds, but we are not going to be heard. There are people with bigger names or family names or established patronage networks in the political party. They're the ones who will run the show. Here there was no energy barrier. Anybody could come up with posters and memes and mock the government and echo the demands. It was different. We need to somehow be able to dismantle our hierarchies in a way that opens up the space.
Do you think those lessons have been learned by your party?
Those lessons need to be learned. Whether they've all been learned, I wouldn't say, but I think Congress has, in all fairness, been quicker than most in learning those lessons. What Rahul Gandhi is doing there is for a Jantar Mantar protester. That may not have been somebody who would have come to the Congress, but the Congress has gone to him. You've seen the change in language and approach ever since these Gen-Z protests woke up. Next year is very promising in that regard. There are arguably six states in play, and if we even win half of them, whole narrative of the country will change. There's Punjab, there's Uttarakhand, there's Himachal, there's UP, of course, there's Goa and Manipur. Manipur has strong anti-incumbency. Goa has anti-incumbency. Punjab, the anti-incumbency is against somebody else, not against the BJP, but we can leap into that space before the BJP attempts to do so. That's been part of our challenge: we do have internal issues, and I certainly hope that the most able colleagues entrusted with these things will sort those out because clearly we have the possibility of reaching out to the public in a way that others don't have the history, the background, the rich, deep experience, or the strength to be able to offer the same that we can. Rahul Gandhi, he found his motive. And as I say, all we're hoping is that this continues and that the public imagination is seized by him until we can bring a significant change in the nation's governance structure. Many people who believed that 2029 was a done deal. Given the events, it's certainly not a done deal now. As I said, if we win a few states, we will change the narrative even in North India. South India is already completely hostile territory to the BJP. Of course, Andhra Pradesh is an ally of theirs. But that party has already broken with the BJP once before. And it could do so again. So I think the BJP has to now seriously ask itself whether it can even hold its own bastions.
There are some reservations within the Congress over the CWC's resolution for the decision to sing only the first two stanzas of Vande Mataram. Some believe that it will play into the BJP's hands. Where do you stand on this?
No, I think the question of Vande Mataram was regarded as settled for a very long time. The controversies about it were in the early stages of the 20th century. The BJP is accusing us of having appeased Mr Jinnah, nothing to do with that. Mr Jinnah was not in our party. It was a decision we made for our own minorities who are working with us and who felt that it was difficult for them to show reverence to gods of other religions. Rabindranath Tagore, who was the foremost heir to Bankim Chandra Chatterjee as the guru of Gurudev of Mongolian letters, he worked out the formula where he said, sing the first two verses which extol India as a motherland, the hills, the mountains, the beauty of our land, the people, and don't sing the verses that extol specific goddesses. And that principle is what the rest of us have followed. Jana Gana Mana has six verses. We only sing the first. We must understand there's a practical dimension. We can do the same with Vande Mataram without any disrespect. Now, while the Parliament was being disrupted and there was no debate, to actually pass a law mandating the entire version and everyone to stand respectfully and sing. The SC has settled this question of who sings what because there was a Jehovah's Witnesses case where some Jehovah's Witnesses said it was against their religion to sing the words of Jana Gana Mana because they couldn't extol any nation, only God. The SC said, as long as you stand up respectfully and show no disrespect to the song, so the Jehovah's Witnesses can stand during the national anthem. They don't have to sing it. They show respect to it. I think many in the Congress could do the same with Vande Mataram if they feel they can't sing along and express something which is anathema to their faith.
Your paradigm of parliamentarianism will break for a few. But Parliament appears to be becoming increasingly dysfunctional. Do you see a way out of this lockdown?
I've suggested a solution, I'll tell you. Other countries have simply embraced a formula under which one day a week or two hours a day, depending on the country, is allotted to the opposition to raise anything they want to raise. Why do we have disruption? We have disruption because the opposition feels there's some burning issue they want to raise. Government hasn't got that issue on their agenda and doesn't want to discuss it. This year, the exam paper leaks, Congress wanted to raise Chandachauri, Samajwadi too. In fact, they both wanted to raise both these issues. The BJP said, no, we'll only discuss A, B, C. The Congress tried to, and Samajwadi tried to adjourn the House to discuss their issues. Speaker rejected their adjournment motions. They said, in that case, we'll disrupt. Why should we let the government have their way? Now, this is the classic formula. The BJP did it to us when we were in power. I'm afraid that is the situation we're facing. What I suggest is that if you give the opposition time on a fixed period, it could be every Wednesday. It could be, let's say, from 11 to 1 every day, you pick a slot. During that time, government cannot object, you can raise your issues, but you have to promise, no disruption the rest of the time. That is a fair formula. If the government were to propose it seriously and the Speaker were to negotiate with the opposition parties, that could be a way of ending disruptions forever. The problem is, will any party be prepared to give up this too? We have, unfortunately, a situation where all parties seem to have chosen disruption as a preferred alternative sometimes to serious debates. Not just disruption. Confrontation, rather than compromise, seems to be the norm from both sides, but that has happened because of the extreme polarisation of our politics. When you have the government demonising opposition as anti-national, if you're anti-national, that means you're a traitor. How can you then, with any confidence, speak in terms of your opposition to things they're saying and doing? And we, on our hand, feel that we are sort of the outnumbered Pandavas facing this ruthless, over-financed, very powerful Kaurava army on the other side. This kind of, we don't really see any remedial qualities in each other. Everybody is seen as inherently evil. That kind of black-and-white politics is not good for our democracy either. When we were in power, our parliamentary affairs minister would spend more time in the opposition benches than on our side. Today, there's hardly any dialogue taking place between the government benches and us. Government benches don't go and tell their Speaker their views. And the Speaker seems to be ruling always in favour of the government. Now, the PM also appears to be adequate by speaking of intellectual nuisances. What does this mean? I mean, does this help in any way? It doesn't. I mean, the truth, what people think, what people imagine, what people even argue, that is not a threat to the nation. Subversion, violence might be a threat. But what you say with your brain, that is a matter for you to discuss. It is not a threat to the nation in a democracy when people disagree with you. I said so at the time when I was asked by some of our newspapers what I thought of it. I'm not suggesting that subversion or violence or hate speech should be condoned. I'm certainly saying that what people think and how they articulate their dissent should not be demonised in a democracy.
You've been a cognate diplomat, what is your view of the way Prime Minister Modi conducts his foreign policy? Do you believe hugs and vigorous handshakes are a substitute for a more nuanced approach?
There's no doubt that the PM has brought a lot of energy to the conduct of foreign policy. When he travelled in his first year to 27 countries and not one of them was a Muslim country, I condemned him publicly as a Congressman, saying that. Now he's taken your criticism to heart. He's been to UAE, the very second year he's been to 15 Muslim countries and what is more, many of my friends in countries in the Gulf, for example, tell me their relations with India have never been better. So there are definite pluses and I don't want to downplay. But if you look at policy outcomes, there are other serious problems. There have been missteps, like meeting Netanyahu two days before the missiles landed in Tehran. There have been some setbacks in our relationships with neighbouring countries. We're going through a needless scuffle with Bangladesh. Some of our most consequential partnerships have seen tremendous ups and downs, the relationship with Washington being a very good example of that. Some of our traditional friendships we seem to have neglected. I think of Egypt, for example, in the Arab world. I think of the African relationship. Many years we were supposed to hold an Africa summit, even this year one was announced and cancelled, and then Palestine. Where were we on Gaza? We were silent. What is the history of India's feelings on Palestinian rights and what is the humanity and morality for which Mahatma Gandhi always stood that is supposed to be our legacy? These specific substantive issues raise real doubts. I'm not criticising for the sake of criticising, I do believe ultimately all that matters is Indian national interest. I've always said there's no such thing as a Congress foreign policy and a BJP foreign policy. There is Indian national interest and Indian foreign policy, and I'm pleased that they followed our approach on strategic autonomy, multi-alignment, etc.
Does India have reasons to be worried about the new alignment between Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan? And what should be our response?
Right now, I'm not worried. But I think it's more a signal to countries like the US that the countries in the region are thinking of different security architectures for themselves because the traditional guarantees they had, for example, from Washington, have proved insufficient in the recent events around the Iran war and so on. So it is more a signal. The agreement is still confidential. The press release used that NATO language, Article 5 of NATO, which says an attack on one would be deemed, shall be considered an attack on the others. That is NATO language and in NATO it triggers an automatic response, but Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have had a pact before and they have not automatically come to each other's aid. In fact, Saudis asked Pakistani troops to help in their battle in Yemen against the Houthis. Pakistan did not do that. Pakistan has been at war with both Afghanistan and us. Saudis did not come to their aid. I'm not sure that we should expect that. Remember NATO, when people start talking about this is the beginnings of an Islamic NATO, it has a military structure. It has joint command, it has joint operations, it has interoperability of equipment, of officers. These guys don't even have a secretary for their new alliance. They are far away from waging war together. Doesn't mean we can be complacent, but it does mean that we need not sit around worrying.
After the recent crisis with Pakistan, how should India balance deterrence while keeping diplomatic channels open? And do domestic political considerations narrow the government's role from Manohar?
Domestic politics has its own place and foreign policy has its own place. Yes, the BJP has been extremely unhappy, and for good reason, I would say, after the betrayals that we underwent when Pakistan let us down from 26/11 onwards. Don't forget that in 2015 December, our PM made the extraordinary gesture of going off to attend Nawaz Sharif's birthday and his granddaughter's wedding, and he was rewarded three weeks later with an attack on an Indian base in Pahelgaon. Even then he reached out to Pakistan and said, you join the investigation. Even though many of our security people were horrified at the idea of Pakistani intelligence coming to an Indian airbase, they came and they went back and announced, oh, the Indians did it to themselves. After that, there was no question of trust in Pakistan anymore. The government understandably concluded that this government or any government in Pakistan would be either unable or unwilling to do anything about controlling or curbing terrorism. And therefore, from sort of early 2016 onwards, their attitude completely hardened, and they've not talked to Pakistan, to the best of my knowledge, at any level, anywhere. As you know, we don't even play bilateral sports with them because of this terrible sense of being betrayed and let down repeatedly by the Pakistani military establishment. Not talking is not a viable policy forever. But there could have been other areas we could have explored. More people-to-people contacts, business-to-business contacts, improvement of trade. There could have been some sectors like art, musicians, actors, cricket matches. We could have tried to open up the space in order to enlarge the constituency of goodwill that we need to have in Pakistan before our peace becomes truly viable, but we've not done any of that. Recently, head of the RSS has said it's time to talk to Pakistan. If a political leader who's the symbolic head of the Sangh Parivar is saying that it's time to talk to Pakistan, then the government has the domestic political power it needs to reverse its silence, its policy.