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RAHUL Gandhi’s chilling exposé of fraud in Indian elections offers far-reaching health benefits for Indian democracy even if it may not change the facts on the ground anytime soon. A change would require nationwide street- and village-level mobilisation, which is a big ask for the current state of the opposition. The revelations about the election commission’s involvement in preparing fraudulent electoral rolls that evidently helped the Bharatiya Janata Party to win successive elections is reverberating across the country.

Everyone other than Narendra Modi’s handpicked election commission and core supporters of the Bharatiya Janata Party is convinced that Rahul has found a treasure trove of evidence that hindutva’s rise as a fascist threat to India was about rigged elections and not mass support as many feared. Fascism rides on popular support, which Narendra Modi does not have, contrary to the myth circulated by the media with the help of suspect elections. Modi may remain a challenge as an autocrat, but the stories of his popularity are now shown to have been excessively cooked up. That is the evidence Rahul Gandhi and his core team of experts have found from a mountain load of polling lists they secured from a grudging and hand-picked election commission.

In one flourish, Gandhi may have helped to dissolve widespread fears of a religio-fascist takeover of India. Fascism is a terrifyingly popular phenomenon as Europe witnessed close to a century ago. Men and women — workers, capitalists, intellectuals and soldiers — and even schoolchildren were smitten by Hitler’s charisma. There was no need to manipulate EVMs or draw up false voters’ lists. It is the autocrats, on the other hand, that need rigging and that threat remains intact in India.

That the exposé came at the time of jubilations for Indian cricket, which triggered a nation’s reaffirmation of its waning legacy of multi-religious, multilingual and multicultural plurality is what this piece is about.

Cricket and cinema have had an influence beyond the ordinary on politics in India. Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh venerated their movie actors and scriptwriters who doubled as political leaders to determine the course of power and governance in the southern states. Bollywood has produced many members of parliament, elected and nominated. Of course, cricketers like Chetan Chauhan, Kirti Azad and Mohammed Azharuddin have also been members of the Lok Sabha by popular vote, for this or that party.

It was thus that Mohammed Siraj, India’s new bowling sensation and Shubman Gill, the young classy batsman and skipper of India’s cricket squad did something unknowingly together with their teammates at the end of the Test series in England that no one has done for the country before them. They reaffirmed faith not just in India’s cricketing prowess, which has gained respect since the days of MAK Pataudi, Sunil Gavaskar and Kapil Dev. The young duo and their cheering teammates may not have realised that they had helped to set back the fascist project for the Hindu rashtra for the foreseeable future. Siraj, the lion-hearted pace bowler, played all five Tests against England and bowled his heart out. His grabbing a win from the jaws of defeat with the last ounce of energy on the last day of the final Test at the Oval is now etched in the public psyche as a turning point for the future of Test cricket. Gill was declared the man of the series.

What made their contributions crucial for Indian democracy was the timing of it. Rahul Gandhi’s revelations, and the joy of seeing the players toast their colleagues, though unrelated, melded into a heart-lifting reality. Siraj is the son of a Muslim auto-driver from Hyderabad, and Shubman’s father is a Sikh farmer who wanted to become a cricketer himself but never could. Both players had faced trolling amid calls to remove them from the team on their lean day. We don’t have to go over the calumny and invectives that in recent years have been heaped on their respective communities by the majoritarian forces of the Hindu right, forces that form the backbone of India’s current ruling dispensation.

When the Sikh farmers were protesting their stolen rights, Sikhs were dubbed terrorists by Modi’s loyal media. When the 2024 elections were in full swing, Modi described Muslims as thieves, stealing Hindu women’s mangalsutra and their cattle. The cricket team would have none of that as they embraced and delighted in the glorious game as one team.

The duo captured the love of a billion-plus compatriots at a time when Rahul Gandhi had put his political career at stake and, many say, his life on the line to dissolve the worst fears Indians were confronted with in recent years — the fear of religious fascism supplanting democracy.

Modi changed the law recently about the nomination of the election commissioner. The prime minister, the leader of the opposition and the chief justice of India would select the chief election commissioner. He has done away with the chief justice in the process and appointed his home minister in the judge’s place. It gives him two-thirds control of the selection.

Gandhi’s questions to the election commission have not elicited a mea culpa. Instead, the poll body has embarked on a drive to delete hundreds of thousands of legitimate names from the voters’ list in Bihar, of those bearing officially recognised identity cards.

TV journalist Karan Thapar highlighted the dangers inherent in the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls presently underway in Bihar. The election commission has released the draft rolls confirming that 6.56 million names have been deleted, nearly nine per cent of those who lived there before the exercise began. ‘This is already disturbing,’ wrote Thapar.

Given Bihar’s high fertility rate it’s odd that the total number of registered voters should fall rather than increase in 2025, says Thapar. That’s one more proof should one be needed, that Hindutva has failed to conquer the imagination of Indians, and it needs to rig elections.

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Jawed Naqvi is Dawn’s correspondentÌýin Delhi.