The Congress’s frontline leadership, including rebels who had invited the high command’s ire by asking for a radical change in the party’s organisation structure, have brainstormed at a chintan shivir in Udaipur to give an alternative to the BJP ahead of the 2024 general polls and state polls scheduled to be held later this year and the next. The 400-odd leaders strategised the way and means of making the party stronger, for enhancing its outreach and adopting certain policies that may help it retain the vote base which has shifted to the BJP and regional parties, most of which are the Congress’s own products. However, a critical issue that the Congress faced in Udaipur seemed to be the BJP’s agenda of Hindutva that has taken principal parties by storm.

Should the Congress adorn the BJP’s saffron, and how, if it were to do so? Some leaders demanded clarity on the ideology when the party is seen adopting soft Hindutva whenever the BJP lays trap for it and others that call themselves secular or some like the Shiv Sena who differentiates between their Hindutva and BJP’s Hindutva, knowing that they cannot displease the biggest vote bank of Hindus, which is split between the parties and has increasingly supported the BJP in the states, barring down south where the regional parties have come up at the cost of Congress’s depletion. The BJP may have the last laugh when the Congress deliberates at the shivir whether it should celebrate the Hindu festivals. The ruling BJP has set the priorities for the Opposition in the past eight years, notwithstanding their allegations of communal polarisation.