Amid 76th Independence Day fervour, Opposition finds new ‘coloniser’ in BJP

The Tamil Nadu government — currently formed by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), which is the Congress’ alliance partner — is an unabashed critic of the BJP.

When Rahul Gandhi deemed the BJP a coloniser during his 3 August speech in Karnataka, he was referring to cultural colonialism.

“The BJP wants to impose one idea on top of Karnataka. It wants to colonise Karnataka,” were Rahul Gandhi’s words.

Tamil Nadu minister Palanivel Thiaga Rajan’s take was along the lines of administrative and financial colonialism.

“The Union government thinks that states should become mere vassals and slaves, saying ‘yes sir, three bags full’,” Thiaga Rajan said, equating the Central government with “colonial powers”.

So, did the Opposition parties plan on building this narrative around the BJP and its style of functioning as a ruling party, and time it to suit the patriotic fervour around Independence Day, or was it all a mere coincidence?

“It wasn’t a planned narrative but just an honest description of what the Union government is. Its authoritarianism has reached the peak, and we are simply calling it out. If anything, we will continue to describe it as colonial more often now,” DMK spokesperson Saravanan Annadurai told South First.

Interestingly, it was Rahul Gandhi — a man who has often been ridiculed by the BJP for his Italian ancestry — who was the one to describe the saffron party as an imposing outsider: a coloniser.

Perhaps, it was a comeback of sorts for all the times BJP leaders deemed him and Congress president Sonia Gandhi “outsiders”.

Leaders of both the Congress and the DMK are keen on reiterating the “coloniser” charge against the BJP — a party whose general theme is hypernationalism.

Painting a picture of the BJP as a coloniser in the backdrop of his Bharat Jodo Yatra, scheduled to start on Gandhi Jayanti — 2 October — this year, is Rahul Gandhi planning to posture himself as the leader of a new “freedom struggle” against the Opposition’s newfound colonisers?