Bharat Jodo Yatra: Rahul hits first big political storm in Maharashtra

After two months of passing through Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka to a thunderous response, Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra entered Maharashtra 12 days ago. And soon, it got involved in a full-blown political controversy, something which had largely left the yatra untouched till now. At the centre of the whole hullabaloo was Rahul Gandhi’s statement on VD Savarkar, who’s held dear by the right wing.

Rahul, on Thursday, held a press conference at Wadegaon in Akola district, where he claimed that Savarkar helped the British colonials and wrote a mercy petition to them out of fear, thereby betraying Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel, Jawaharlal Nehru and other leaders of the freedom struggle.

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Two days prior to that, he had addressed a rally in Washim district organised as part of his yatra, where he called Savarkar a symbol of the BJP and the RSS. “He was jailed in Andaman for two-three years. He started writing mercy petitions,” the Congress MP had said there.

Escalating row

This stirred a hornet’s nest in Maharashtra, where the Congress is part of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance, of which Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena is a constituent. For Shiv Sena, just as for the BJP and its affiliates in the wider Sangh Parivar, Savarkar is an iconic leader. The Congress alliance partner did not take to Rahul’s statement kindly. Uddhav lost no time in disapproving of Rahul’s statement and so did just-out-of-custody Sanjay Raut, who in a press conference on Friday, warned that “What Rahul Gandhi said about Veer Savarkar will cause cracks in the MVA alliance.”

Also read: Maharashtra: MVA alliance on the brink after Rahul’s Savarkar remark?

It was no surprise that Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister and BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis came down heavily on Rahul, saying he has been “shamelessly lying” about Savarkar. Vandana Dongre, a functionary of the Eknath Shinde Shiv Sena faction, registered a case of defamation against Rahul Gandhi for his “derogatory” remarks in Thane. The offence was registered by the Thane Police under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 500 (defamation) and 501 (printing or engraving matter knowing it to be defamatory).

Alliances by nature are delicate, more so those alliances where the partners are ideologically different. Like the MVA alliance, where Uddhav’s Shiv Sena and Rahul’s Congress ascribe to conflicting ideologies. The survival of such alliances depends on partners keeping their differences on the back burner and working on mutually acceptable issues. Rahul’s Savarkar salvo has upset this delicate balance.

It makes no difference that Rahul has been consistently saying this in the past. But after the alliance came into being, the two parties had been avoiding to rake this issue. And, to make matters worse, the controversy over Savarkar has come when Rahul is in Maharashtra.

Bid to make amends

But, still there was an attempt – both by Raut and Uddhav – to shift focus on BJP. Raut said Uddhav had raised some relevant questions. “Those who did not participate in the freedom struggle are suddenly showing admiration for Savarkar. It is clear that the BJP is looking for political gains from Savarkar’s name,” he said. Raut also raised the issue of awarding the Bharat Ratna to Savarkar. “Why is the BJP shying away from awarding the Bharat Ratna to Veer Savarkar? We have been for years demanding that Savarkar should be bestowed with the Bharat Ratna but the BJP government, despite being in power for eight years, refuses to take any decision,” he said.

The Congress, too, is trying to sidestep the controversy. Though how successful its efforts are is a matter of conjecture. Congress’ media in-charge Jairam Ramesh addressed a press conference on the issue in Shegaon on Saturday. He tried to douse the fire by clarifying why Rahul spoke on Savarkar.

“What Rahul Gandhi said about Savarkar was in response to a question and it was a statement of fact and history that cannot be denied. Savarkar wrote mercy petitions and this is a matter of record. For Rahul, Congress and the Bharat Jodo Yatra, Savarkar is not an issue. There is no attempt at targeting anyone. The issue for us is the present and the future of the country, not what happened in history, 60-70 or 80 years ago,” he said.

Jairam Ramesh, too, repeated Raut’s charge on RSS that it not only didn’t participate in the Quit India Movement but actively opposed it. “Savarkar and Jinnah were the two fathers of the Two Nation Theory,” added Jairam.

He also directed fire at the BJP by pointing out that Jana Sangh (BJP’s earlier avatar) and Muslim League came together to form a government in Bengal after Syama Prasad Mookerjee’s consent and that Syama Prasad was one of the key leaders who lobbied for partition of Bengal.

Future tense

How far this will go in saving the alliance remains to be seen. But one thing is clear and Raut said it in his press conference. When asked whether this means that the MVA would collapse, Raut said, “The MVA would not collapse. It would certainly cause bitterness… there will be cracks in our alliance which is not a good sign.”

Also read: ‘Am not Rahul Savarkar, will never apologise for speaking truth’

Within the MVA, navigating the Savarkar conundrum while not compromising their strong views about him was always tricky for Rahul’s Congress and Uddhav’s Shiv Sena. The current controversy has only proved this once again. Rahul and his fellow travellers in the Bharat Jodo Yatra will leave Maharashtra for Madhya Pradesh in the next couple of days and the Congress is hoping that a change of state will end the ongoing kerfuffle.

While this may, indeed, happen, as Raut too asserted that Rahul shouldn’t have made the comments “while he is in Maharashtra”, Savarkar is bound to cause recurring problems for the Congress-Shiv Sena (Uddhav) ties. Moreover, as the Bharat Jodo Yatra enters prime BJP territory of the Hindi heartland, Rahul will need to be more careful about what he says against the countless icons that the Hindu right-wing ecosystem has sought to create over the past decade.