Toxic Politics: How INDI Alliance's Dynasts Are Trading Civility For Survival

In the middle of September 2025, Ashok Mahto, a convicted criminal who is seeking a Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) ticket for his wife, repeated the loaded chant of BHURA BAAL SAAF KARO (clean up the brown hair).

In political parlance, it is a dog-whistle to eliminate Savarnas – Bhumihars, Rajputs, Brahmins and Lala (Kayastha) – from the political and social spectrum of Bihar.

The call is believed to have been given by Lalu Yadav, though he denied it after a decade, a period in which he reaped all the political advantages that could arise from the possible association with it.

Reinfusion of toxicity

Mahto is not the only one to have raised the slogan in recent times.

In July, Munarik Yadav, a senior RJD cadre person in Atri assembly constituency, said that it was the right time to bring back Lalu Yadav’s old slogan. In the same month, Munna Yadav, an RJDian and member of the legislative assembly from Minapur, also released an anti-Savarna statement.

These statements directly contradict Tejashwi Yadav’s new A to Z call of taking every community on board. They also enjoy tacit support from the party think tank, a deduction we can draw from the lack of condemnation.

The currency of toxicity

Across poll-bound states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, political language is turning sharper and more aggressive.

In one press conference, Samajwadi Party President Akhilesh Yadav indirectly threatened Avnish Awasthi, a senior bureaucrat in the Yogi government, claiming Awasthi had defamed him with the label tonti chor (tap thief).

Later, speaking on bulldozer actions, he warned: “You have demolished many people's homes. You have torn down the houses of Yadavs, Muslims, and Brahmins. But the day the weak get a chance, that day these will also be dealt with.”

Akhilesh also expelled MLA Pooja Pal after she expressed views on gangster Atiq Ahmed. She faced threats from SP leaders and warned that if anything happened to her, Akhilesh Yadav would be responsible.

Rahul Gandhi, his national counterpart in the INDI Alliance, has been even sharper. Threatening Election Commission of India officials for carrying out statutory duties, he declared: “I want to tell 3 election commissioners that when there’ll be an INDIA bloc govt, we will take action against you for vote theft.”

During his Voter Adhikar Yatra, Gandhi used disrespectful terms for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Amit Shah. Supporters and participants went further, abusing PM Modi and his mother on two occasions. It is as if behind the suave, sophisticated mask lies a rowdy form of politics that surfaces when the stage demands.

The verbal rawness, once limited to street politics, is seeping into television debates too. Opposition spokespersons like Supriya Srinate of INC and Priyanka Bharti (earlier Kushwaha) of RJD are taking the lead.

Srinate, infamous for calling Sambit Patra a naali ka kida, has only grown more aggressive in her later appearances on television and X. Both she and Bharti substitute policy debates with personal insults, verbal expletives, unparliamentary language, open intimidation, harsh epithets, caste-based abuses, and attacks on surnames. Their goal is not serious argument but short, ultra-aggressive snippets that circulate as reels and captions. In today’s media ecosystem, algorithms privilege outrage: outrage fuels views, views create traction, and traction can secure a political ticket.

The result is a politics trading in anger and spectacle rather than policy and programme. Unlike spontaneous outbursts, these episodes follow consistent patterns of timing, amplification, and absence of pushback from the party high command.

That suggests strategy. Raw, aggressive, identity-driven politics has once again become a tool.

Clean politics and its compulsions

The question is why leaders who invested in polished images are tolerating this. Is it that INC and its allies lack individuals who can provide concrete, to-the-point answers? Contrary to popular perception, no. Political consultancies routinely hire policy and communication experts for hefty sums.

Appointing such professionals became an imminent necessity in the wake of the BJP projecting itself as a party with a difference. The BJP’s formula and its timing in the aftermath of multiple UPA scams struck at the core of Indian voters who felt disenfranchised by existing systems. In that system, INC held the key to powerful positions at the centre while its political and ideological coalition partners were committing wrongs at state levels.

The BJP’s formula, in which highly articulate spokespersons and disciplined political rallies are the norm, uprooted a system that was constantly being seen as associated with mafia raj, absence of authority, scams and pilferage. The reshuffle forced almost all political parties and their leaders to mould their ways.

In the post-apocalyptic universe of the INDI Alliance, Akhilesh Yadav worked hard to remove his party’s associations with mafias. More often than not, he is seen taking credit for expressway construction, corridors and many other projects of state importance.

A similar trajectory is seen with Tejashwi Yadav, who went on a course correction mode and even apologised to people for past mistakes of his party and Lalu Yadav.

One apology was made in a programme organised by Ashutosh Kumar, recently inducted BJP functionary who has always projected himself as a voice of Bhumihars, the community seen as most victimised of Savarnas during the 1990s. Yadav pushed slogans like MY-BAAP and “A to Z”.

For Rahul Gandhi, he needed to find a way to remove the stain of poor judgement after the infamous Arnab Goswami interview. The imagery has stayed with him, and the INC’s efforts to field authors, journalists, and fellows is viewed as an attempt to restore its stature and avoid being perceived on par with regional parties.

Rahul, with his padyatras, constitutional rhetoric, and years of soft-image cultivation, tried to present himself as an empathetic, grounded leader.

These polished projections have met with their own versions of success. Akhilesh Yadav and Dimple Yadav getting traction among Gen Z is a good start. Tejashwi Yadav reads the 2020 assembly elections result as a success of his polished image. For Rahul, INC getting 99 seats is evidence that his efforts are working.

These results should have propelled them to continue, but they are not.

Polished projection failed due to inauthenticity

Insiders say that results do not have a strong cause and effect relationship with these efforts. Tejashwi-led RJD succeeded because Chirag Paswan-led LJP cut into JD(U)’s votes. Recent surge in Akhilesh Yadav’s soft image is more credited to the contrast presented by Dimple Yadav standing on a platform of a party known for keeping women’s expectations low on basic decency.

INC’s 99-seat success also has a similar story of how one statement by a popular BJP leader was blown out of proportion and a significant number of constituencies fell for a false propaganda of BJP planning to end reservations.

“They succeeded not because of Samvidhan Khatre mein hai (Constitution is in danger). For people, the danger to Samvidhan meant danger to reservation and hence basic human rights,” said author Mrityunjay Sharma.

The introspective question is where they went wrong in their efforts. It is worth comparing their journey with that of their fathers, who were successful in building a cult-like appeal.

Akhilesh Yadav’s father, Mulayam Singh Yadav, is arguably an undeclared mentor of backward politics in North India. A man wrestling between his passion for reading and his father’s desire to see him as a wrestler, he pursued both. His stated journey to school and college exemplifies the cliché underprivileged journey of Indian middle and lower middle-class fathers.

The “Chhota Napoleon” would detail his poor background as a connecting link to the masses. His first electoral victory of 1.03 lakh votes is directly attributed to door-to-door campaigning against Lakhan Singh, who relied on invoking Nehru, Shastri and the INC’s role in the freedom movement.

Mulayam Singh Yadav joined multiple emerging political formations, but his core appeal of kisan–jawan–wrestler and someone who was connected to the masses would not fade, until the Safai Mahotsav gave it a hit. To consolidate his vote banks, he timed his moves extremely well.

For instance, ordering to fire on Karsevaks was one of the most well-timed decisions to consolidate Mulayam Singh Yadav’s support among Muslims.

Correspondingly, in Bihar, Lalu Yadav did so by stopping the Rath Yatra and apprehending Lal Krishna Advani. In the aftermath of INC being perceived as ditching Muslims during the Bhagalpur riots, Muslims became diehard supporters of Lalu Yadav, who was already on his way to building his image as a representative of the oppressed in Marxist literature.

Lalu Yadav would break every barrier seen as a sign of elitism. From choosing the place of his oath-taking ceremony to stopping at a Dalit hamlet and bathing the children there, he presented himself as a leader of the oppressed.

A popular, though absurd, symbol of his early journey was wearing a vest over a shirt or T-shirt, which came to be seen as an act of revolt against the ways of upper castes.

For top-down messaging, Yadav would parade bureaucrats, most of whom were upper castes, and ask them to make tobacco and hold utensils in which he would spit. The experiment with language resulted in Yadav speaking Hindi in his local accent. This was actually a tool of political communication, which paid him rich dividends.

For their respective electorates, both Yadavs were more relatable than Rajiv Gandhi, whose popularity had different foundations.

Rajiv benefited from the poor base provided by Sanjay Gandhi, a man seen as brash, dictatorial, aggressive, no-nonsense and arrogant. When Rajiv entered politics, he had a humble image of being a soft-spoken professional pilot.

Even though belonging to the same family, Rajiv was seen as less overtly authoritarian, more modern, efficient, technologically optimistic, and youth-oriented in reform. Instead of forced sterilisation and locking up opponents, he would talk about corruption, computers and India of the 21st century.

His push for Panchayati Raj and eliminating feudal interference helped him gain popularity among newly emerging backward voters.

Despite coming from different traditions, all three, namely Rajiv Gandhi, Mulayam Singh Yadav, and Lalu Prasad Yadav, built their cult appeal on a shared formula of anti-elitism, personal symbolism, and timely interventions that resonated with excluded masses.

Each presented himself as accessible and relatable: Mulayam through his wrestler–kisan–jawan persona, Lalu by mocking elitism with rustic humour and symbolic acts like donning a vest over a shirt or humiliating bureaucrats, and Rajiv by appearing as a soft-spoken professional pilot who contrasted Sanjay Gandhi’s authoritarian image.

They all relied on simplicity, which was mostly performative, but nonetheless people saw it as authentic.

Where did their sons lose the plot

The second generation, however, has struggled to replicate the alchemy that made their fathers cult figures. Rahul Gandhi, Akhilesh Yadav, and Tejashwi Yadav entered politics with well-established vote banks, supportive senior leaders and massive cadre bases.

These human factors needed to see a spark of the original patron, and the biological embodiment of senior leaders would quickly be seen as a genuine political incarnation.

However, all three leaders came without the visceral connection to the masses and their grievances. Their elite upbringing, including English-educated friends, urban backgrounds, and visible detachment from rural rough-and-tumble, made the task of appearing relatable far harder.

Instead, after the BJP’s rise to dominance, they leaned into the idiom of “clean politics” and institutional reform, hoping to contrast themselves with what their respective parties were already being seen as authoritarian centralism.

Long-term observers of politics felt surprised when Akhilesh Yadav and Tejashwi Yadav showed some deviation from the core political messaging of their fathers.

A Haryana-born officer who joined Bihar’s administrative duties during Tejashwi Yadav’s tenure as deputy chief minister said, “I and many like me believe that Tejashwi Yadav would be a good choice in Bihar, but his partymen won’t let him execute it.” Akhilesh Yadav also held a similar perception, though he was ousted from power in 2017 itself.

The problem for all three of them is that the BJP had already captured that terrain with Narendra Modi’s personal austerity measures, anti-corruptionism, Swachh Bharat, and beneficiaries without vote bank bias. Rahul’s padyatras, Akhilesh’s development-centric pitch, or Tejashwi’s promises of jobs have failed to galvanise beyond their entrenched caste and religious bases.

More worryingly, all three of them are now contesting an intra-alliance competition since their core vote banks form overlapping sets during different periods.

Toxicity yields better short-term ROI

This further intensifies the competition and enhances the value of toxicity. The common inference which all these leaders have drawn from the history of their respective parties is that overt confrontation has a better return on investment than suave and civilised political messaging of clean delivery of civic services.

For them, the new generation of aspirant backward youth is different from the old generation. While the old generation did not feel the impact of power when it went to voting booths, the new generation sees its impact and is more likely to embrace confrontational attitudes when it sees top leaders doing so.

The raw aggression of BHIM ARMY in Uttar Pradesh consolidates this belief.

It is the re-emergence of confrontational politics in which the rhetoric of antagonism is dressed as empowerment. Confrontation is no longer an accident of street politics but a deliberate strategy of survival.

For leaders who failed to convert inherited legacies into fresh cults, toxicity has become the cheapest currency of relevance.