Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav on Monday turned a heated parliamentary moment into a pointed political message, invoking both symbolism and strategy as he sparred with members of the ruling BJP-led NDA during the Lok Sabha debate on the national song, Vande Mataram. What began as a routine interruption of his speech by treasury bench members quickly became an opportunity for Yadav to challenge the BJP on its own ideological terrain—Ayodhya, Hindutva, and the politics of nationalism.

As BJP members attempted to speak over him, Yadav stood his ground, but instead of responding verbally, he reached for the hand of Awadhesh Prasad, the SP’s veteran MP from Faizabad, who was seated beside him. Making Prasad rise, Akhilesh said, “Inko dekh leejiye. Baith jaaiye.” The seemingly light remark carried unmistakable political weight. Prasad defeated the BJP in the Faizabad Lok Sabha constituency—an area newly renamed Ayodhya by the Yogi Adityanath government, and a region that has long been a central pillar of BJP’s Hindutva mobilization. His victory remains one of the most visible symbols of the BJP’s electoral setback in the 2024 general elections.

The gesture also underscored Yadav’s broader narrative: that the electorate in Uttar Pradesh, particularly in the heart of the Hindutva landscape, had rejected divisive politics. “Our victory showed that communal politics will not work. Our people from UP ended communal politics where they started it,” Yadav declared, positioning the SP’s performance as a turning point in the ideological contest between secular and communal visions of Indian identity.

This marked the latest episode in a political shift that has seen Akhilesh Yadav repeatedly foreground Awadhesh Prasad. Of the SP’s 37 MPs, Prasad has been consistently placed beside Yadav in the Lok Sabha’s front row—an arrangement that is far from accidental. Prasad, a veteran Dalit leader from the Pasi community, represents not only the SP’s electoral strength in Ayodhya but also its renewed ideological emphasis on the “PDA” framework: picchde (Other Backward Classes), Dalits, and alpasankhyak (minorities). By amplifying Prasad’s presence, Yadav has crafted a visual and political counter to the BJP’s Hindutva narrative, placing caste justice and inclusion at the heart of his party’s alternative politics.

The symbolism is especially potent given the larger national context. Just days earlier, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had hoisted a new flag at the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya—a temple whose completion marks the culmination of decades of agitation and litigation following the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992. The BJP has for years turned Ayodhya into a political and ideological anchor, citing it as evidence of cultural reclamation and civilizational assertion. Thus, Prasad’s victory in this very terrain has emerged as a recurring motif in Opposition attacks against the BJP.

In the 2024 elections, the INDIA bloc—primarily the SP and Congress in Uttar Pradesh—won a sweeping majority of the state’s 80 Lok Sabha seats. It was this performance that played a decisive role in the BJP falling short of a single-party majority for the first time in a decade. Within that narrative, Prasad’s win in Faizabad remains one of the coalition’s most symbolic successes.

Turning back to the Lok Sabha debate, Yadav framed the BJP’s interruptions and assertiveness during discussions on Vande Mataram as part of a larger pattern of attempting to monopolize national symbols. He began his speech by paying homage to Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, whose composition became a rallying cry during the freedom struggle. He noted that the song reached millions through Rabindranath Tagore’s historic rendition at a Congress session in Kolkata—an act that grounded the song firmly within the wider currents of India’s independence movement.

Accusing the BJP of trying to “own everything,” Yadav suggested that the ruling party had drifted far from its own stated origins. He reminded the House that when the BJP was formed in its current avatar in 1980, it professed a commitment to a secular and socialist political path. “Tell me today, how secular are you?” he asked, turning toward the treasury benches.

His critique did not stop there. Yadav argued that Vande Mataram was “not merely meant to be sung, but to be lived,” and questioned whether the BJP had upheld the spirit of the song in practice. He accused certain groups who loudly proclaim nationalism today of having acted as informants for the British during the independence struggle. “Those who did not participate in the freedom movement, what would they know about celebrating Vande Mataram?” he said, in a pointed jab at the ideological lineage of the RSS and its affiliates.

The debate itself came amid an intensified political push by the BJP to foreground themes of nationalism, cultural pride, and historical legacy. Prime Minister Modi, during the same session, criticized Jawaharlal Nehru for purportedly believing that Vande Mataram might offend Muslims—remarks that further sharpened the ideological battle lines in Parliament. The BJP positioned its stance as an assertion of cultural authenticity, while the Opposition framed it as exclusionary and politically motivated.

Within this charged atmosphere, Akhilesh Yadav’s gesture of highlighting Awadhesh Prasad served both as a rebuttal and a declaration. It reinforced the idea that despite the BJP’s decades-long campaign around Ayodhya and the Ram Mandir, voters in the region had chosen a different path—one aligned with inclusion rather than majoritarian symbolism. It also emphasized the SP’s renewed focus on caste equity as a counterweight to Hindutva politics.

Observers have repeatedly noted that Yadav’s strategy of placing Prasad at the forefront is deliberate. Prasad’s personal history, his Dalit identity, and his constituency’s symbolic importance help the SP articulate a moral and political counterpoint to the BJP’s narrative. In a political climate where imagery, symbolism, and representation matter as much as policy, Prasad’s presence next to the SP chief in Parliament becomes a statement in itself.

Akhilesh’s larger point during the Vande Mataram discussion was that nationalism cannot be limited to rhetoric or symbolism. Instead, it must be reflected in governance, social harmony, and equitable development. By weaving together critiques of the BJP’s historical claims, its ideological inconsistencies, and its contemporary political strategies, Yadav sought to reframe the debate as one not about who loves the nation more, but about who embodies the values the nation claims to cherish.

In the end, his brief moment of levity—lifting Awadhesh Prasad’s hand with a smile—captured the layered nature of political performance in the Indian Parliament. It was at once a retort to hecklers, a display of confidence, and a symbolic reminder of an electoral victory that continues to rankle the BJP. And beyond that, it was a signal about the direction in which the SP and the INDIA bloc intend to push their political narrative: inclusive, caste-conscious, and defiantly resistant to what they describe as the BJP’s attempts to conflate cultural identity with political dominance.