As Rahul’s Bharat Jodo Yatra assumes pilgrimage’s hue, BJP tries to cover tracks
It is actually a spiritual hegemony of sorts built by the BJP and RSS that has of late been overpowering the minds of the majority of electorate through the vast swaths of the Hindi belt. The Sangh has assiduously built this through years, or rather decades, via Hindutva, to dominate over politics. But now it appears to be awaiting a challenge with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra. Thus, the BJP is making attempts to cover its tracks.
Though the yatra is yet to reach the double-engine BJP-ruled states of the north, Rahul’s journey to unite or reunite India has started attaining the hue of a pilgrimage as it meanders its way through parts of first Tamil Nadu and then Kerala in the south for past over two weeks.
The yatra will still take months to reach Kashmir where it is slated to conclude and, in between, will pass through parts of the Hindi hinterland. Yet, the BJP has started showing signs of coming under the heat that this may eventually turn on the ruling party’s well-entrenched and deepening hegemony over both politics and society through the bigger and politically more significant parts of the country.
Also read: Rahul Gandhi resumes Bharat Jodo Yatra from Thrissur
RSS overtures
RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s rendezvous with a Delhi Imam on September 22 and, a month before that, interaction with a few prominent Muslim community representatives, are being seen as parts of the Sangh’s efforts to mollify Muslims a bit and bring down soaring communal temperatures.
To cover its tracks further, the Sangh has also gone a step ahead in building a backward caste-savvy image. The RSS has invited ace mountaineer Santosh Yadav as main guest for its annual Dussehra day show at its Nagpur headquarters. A few weeks ago, Sudha Yadav was nominated on the BJP parliamentary board. The two Yadav women come from Haryana but the prominence being accorded to them can have effect in the larger Hindi belt over a caste group that has been known for making a political alliance with Muslim voters during elections in the recent past.
But, unfazed by these moves being made by the Sangh, the 52-year-old Congress bet trudges along in the distant south. While walking, he often hugs curious onlookers, plays with children he comes across and takes his benign and compassionate eyes to strangers he finds looking at him with hope. He often stops briefly to wave at them on the way.
Thus far his yatra has been compared with that of Mahatma Gandhi’s famous Dandi march. Other leaders undertook similar exercises after Gandhi’s march, for different or for their own reasons. Yet, wayfaring hermits have been pretty known since yore, or much before the Mahatma undertook the task to set the country free of the British rule by using or asserting people’s might.
Rooted in tradition
Ascetics since the time of Bhakti movement, or middle ages, roamed from place to place without visibly any good reason but with profound sense of purpose of raising the level of ethical and moral standards among masses and creating awareness about these through their spiritual appeal, strict austerity, unimpeachable conduct and high standards of their selfless devotion to public cause. The hymns of Kabirdas and Tulsidas are still etched in public mind and serve as bulwark against waywardness of any kind.
In fact, Gandhi and other freedom fighters enormously benefitted from the Bhakti and mystic traditions of the past. The present day’s Indian ethos, including the Constitution or basic laws, found roots in the compassionate and imaginative universalism as against narrow sectarianism, courtesy this great and historic tradition. This had also guided the people through the freedom struggle.
As opposed to this, it is a known fact that the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha (from which first the Jan Sangh and later BJP descended) have largely been indifferent to the struggle for India’s independence. Their staunch belief in ethnic purity, rather than Gandhi’s all-embracing universalism, came in the way of their warming up to Mahatma’s epic struggle for freedom.
Instead, they relied upon the British hegemony and its unfettered powers and became a player in its divide-and-rule strategy. The British had to accept their moral defeat and sailed back home amid mass uprising and sustained struggle by Indians. But the Sangh and Muslim League flaunted their respective ethnic roots and tried to trump over Congress, communists and socialists by blaming them of having no roots in the two staunchly religious milieus created by the departing British to be housed in two separate dominions via partition.
Also read: Bharat Jodo Yatra: Sonia, Priyanka to join Rahul in Karnataka
As a result, spirituality gave way to bigotry which the post-independence Congress fought with varying degree and gradually waning commitment with the result of losing power eventually; and losing it for the longest spell as of now.
It is in this backdrop that the Congress decided to undertake one of the longest foot-marches that the country has seen in its contemporary history.
Symbolism vs nitpicking
Before setting out for nearly 3,600-kilometre-long journey from Kanyakumari to Kashmir, Rahul visited his father, the late Rajiv Gandhi’s memorial in Tamil Nadu; and, in the tweet that had a picture of the spot where Rajiv was slain in 1991 Rahul wrote, “I lost my father to the politics of hate and division. I will not lose my beloved country to it too.”
Yet, no sooner than his yatra began after such a solemn though profound remark, nitpicking also began. A Union minister chided Rahul for moving out of Kanyakumari without visiting the 19th-century reformist and philosopher Swami Vivekananda’s memorial there. The Congress responded to this by issuing Rahul’s picture paying homage at the famed Swami’s statue built on an outcrop at the confluence of the Indian Ocean, Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea, off Kanyakumari.
And at the very start of the yatra from there on September 7, Rahul traced the idea of the BJP and RSS to British times by calling it to be akin to that of the East India Company. He remarked, “The idea (of BJP-RSS) is very similar to what the British used to do — divide India, make Indians fight with each other and steal from the Indian people. Those days it used to be called the East India Company; it was the one big company that controlled the all of India. Today there are three-four big companies that control India and policies like demonetisation, GST, the three farm laws, are designed to take away from the future of India, to take away from the poor people of India.”
Thus, Rahul is dwelling more upon history and its nuances rather than current politics through his yatra. He has shown little willingness to go into the intricacies of present-day politics. He addressed a press conference on September 9 at Puliyoorkurichy in Tamil Nadu, where he tried to downplay questions regarding the election of the next Congress president, the need for unity among opposition parties to take on the BJP and the itinerary drawn for his yatra focusing on a few states more than others, or those in the Hindi belt.
An image makeover
Subsequently, in another press conference held at Ernakulam in Kerala on September 22, Rahul emphasised the ideological nature of the post of Congress president. He again reiterated his resolve to stay away from the contest. This reflects a kind of penance that Rahul decided for after Congress’ defeat in 2019 general elections when he had led the party. He has also been indifferent to the hairsplitting that went on between the BJP and his party peers over his sartorial choices and similar other asinine issues raised by social media bots during his yatra.
Also read: Bharat Jodo Yatra: Rahul charms Kerala as BJP, Left watch befuddled
Such stoicism despite a sharp lens of media, critics and political rivals over his yatra, is indicative of Rahul’s and his close aides’ deeper strategy. This appears to be marked with Congress’ efforts to make him sound detached and selfless, though a serious and meaningful claimant for primacy in politics with the intent that he can well prove kind, considerate and benevolent to the people. The Congress plan with regard to the yatra looks like to make Rahul relate with the people better and also forge an emotional rapport with them. Thus far the plan appears to be working, if not fully succeeding.
This is why some of the BJP higher-ups have often betrayed signs of worry about Rahul’s yatra through the past two weeks or so. And, through the times to come, the Congress’ ambitious expedition of Bharat Jodo Yatra may well end up drawing clearer battle-lines between the two rival and bitterly opposed parties.