Bharat Jodo Yatra: Rahul’s harmony message steers clear of the ‘M’ word

At 6 AM on December 21 (Wednesday), Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra (BJY) will cross over from the interstate border in Rajasthan’s Alwar to enter Ferozepur Jhirka in Haryana’s Nuh district (previously called Mewat).

Less than 50 kilometres from Ferozepur Jhirka, still within the Nuh district, is situated a village called Ghasera. The BJY is unlikely to pass through Ghasera as it makes its way to Delhi on December 24 after walking nearly 3,000 km across eight states over the past 105 days. However, there’s both a stark similarity and an equally glaring difference that unwittingly binds Ghasera, indeed all of Nuh district, with the yatra and its message of unity and harmony.

‘The market of hate’ vs ‘the shop of love’

The district of Nuh falls within the Mewat region that includes contiguous parts of Rajasthan’s Alwar and Bharatpur districts as well as some areas of western Uttar Pradesh. The region lends its name to the unique ethnic minority of Meo Muslims or Mewati Muslims, who share their ancestry and several social practices and customs (even today) with Mewat’s Hindu, particularly Rajput, population.

It’s a region that has witnessed waves of ethnic cleansing in the period immediately preceding and following India’s Partition and independence. Exactly 75 years ago, when Mewat was wracked by communal violence, the Meo Muslim community was under pressure from the royal houses of Alwar and Bharatpur as well as organisations such as the Hindu Mahasabha to ‘go to Pakistan’; a phrase disturbingly familiar in present day.

On December 19, 1947, Mahatma Gandhi visited Ghasera, where Meos driven out of Alwar and Bharatpur had come seeking shelter. Making an appeal for peace while trying to assuage concerns of the community pouring into Nuh, Gandhi had called the Meos the “reedh ki haddi” (backbone) of India and gave an assurance that no harm would come to them. Gandhi’s words still resonate in Nuh’s Meo households and his visit to Ghasera is marked each year by the community as Mewat Diwas.

Also read: Raghuram Rajan joins Rahul Gandhi at Bharat Jodo Yatra

As Rahul Gandhi marches into Nuh on December 21 – even if it’s in Ferozepur Jhirka and not Ghasera – the similarity between Gandhi’s message of preserving communal harmony, syncretic traditions and unity and that of the BJY can’t be overstated.

Considering that Meo Muslims continue to be an easy target of recurring communal violence and Mewat an epicentre of anti-Muslim hate — Hindutva Mahapanchayats where rabid calls for anti-Muslim genocide are frequently made have become commonplace here in recent years — the region can, certainly, be likened to that “nafrat ka bazaar” (market of hate) where Rahul’s “mohabbat ki dukaan” (shop of love) must open.

But then, the similarities between Gandhi’s visit to Nuh in the December of 1947 and Rahul’s ongoing BJY end here; or so Rahul’s interactions with the media and public rallies through the past 105 days of the foot-march suggest.

Missing, the healing touch

It is pertinent to point out that though Rahul has been vociferously speaking about the need to combat the politics of communal division practiced by the BJP/RSS combine — a laudable thing, no doubt — he does so while steering way clear of any direct reference to India’s Muslims or the persistent attempts by the Hindutva brigade of demonising and dehumanising the community. In none of the over a dozen speeches that he has delivered at packed rallies through the course of the BJY has the Wayanad MP spent any time directly addressing the Muslim community or their concerns. Yes, he has denounced the politics of hate and communal polarisation but, unlike the Mahatma, without actually verbalising the word ‘Muslim’ or reaching out directly to a community desperately in need of a healing touch.

Instead, the BJY appears more like a campaign to paint Rahul as a ‘good Hindu’ who is an ardent devotee of Lord Shiva but one who, in contrast to the Hindutva brigade, is tolerant of people of other faiths as well as denominations within the overarching Hindu conglomerate. It defies the avowed spirit of the BJY when — while traversing through Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan — Rahul visits a string of mutts and temples, meeting Hindu religious or cult leaders, offering prayers and aartis, but keeps clear of mosques (Mysore’s Masjid-e-Azam being the only exception, so far), Islamic shrines and seminaries.

Last month, when the BJY crossed over from Maharashtra to Burhanpur in Madhya Pradesh, Rahul could have visited the one mosque in India that, arguably, is the best example of India’s syncretic traditions. Surely, Digvijaya Singh, the former two-term chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, the yatra’s national coordinator and the Congress’s in-house champion of a secular polity, could have told Rahul that the Jama Masjid in Burhanpur is perhaps the only mosque in India that has prayers inscribed on its walls in both Sanskrit and Arabic. Despite the demands of his tight schedule, Rahul could have accommodated a quick visit to the Jama Masjid and spoken about what he thinks about the co-existence of the two languages in an Indian mosque.

Fear of electoral backlash? 

Not visiting Islamic religious monuments with the same zeal and frequency with which he visits Hindu temples, however, is only a minor aberration in Rahul’s messaging. What is an even more glaring, and unjustifiable, omission from the yatra’s itinerary are places and people that have, particularly in the Narendra Modi years, witnessed communal assaults.

As Rahul proceeded from Burhanpur, he and his fellow yatris walked past Khandwa and Khargone. In April this year, Khandwa had witnessed communal violence directed at Muslims shortly after Ram Navami celebrations. Both Khandwa and Khargone remained tense for weeks while bulldozers rolled into Khandwa and demolished the homes of several Muslims who claimed to be victims of the clashes, but were dubbed by the state’s BJP government and local administration as the perpetrators.

Also read: Priyanka Gandhi, husband Robert Vadra join Rahul Gandhis Bharat Jodo Yatra in Rajasthan

As the BJY walked past Khandwa and Khargone, cutting the schedule in these two districts short to ensure that Rahul is in Mhow on November 26 to mark the Constitution Day at the birthplace of Dr. BR Ambedkar, it avoided the riot-affected areas. Those present at the yatra claim Rahul did meet a group of Khandwa locals separately and was told pointedly by one lawyer present at the interaction that the local Congress leadership and former Khandwa MP Arun Yadav had been of no help to the Muslim victims of the clashes. Yet, when Rahul addressed a massive public meeting in Indore’s Rajwada some days later, he made no mention of the riots or the need to provide relief to its victims.

Over the past few days, Rahul has been walking through Alwar; the district unfortunately known now not by its rich heritage or the delectably sweet Alwar ka Mawa, but by the lynching of 55-year-old Pehlu Khan by self-styled cow vigilantes in April 2017. It is in Alwar that Rahul, during a massive rally on December 19 that was also attended by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, first said, “Main nafrat ke bazaar mei mohabbat ki dukaan kholne aaya hun” (I have come to open a shop of love in a market of hate). Yet, his speech made no mention either of the atrocities on Muslims by the Hindutva brigade or of Pehlu Khan’s lynching.

Pehlu Khan belonged to Nuh, the place Rahul will now be entering on December 21. Several of Khan’s relatives still reside in Nuh and it remains to be seen if Rahul, while marching past Nuh with his message of love and amity, finds time to meet any of them and offers any succour.

It is plausible that Rahul’s refusal to utter the ‘M’ word even while speaking ad nauseam of communal harmony is the result of his advisors goading him against any gesture or utterance that might allow the BJP to accuse him and the Congress of that old charge of Muslim appeasement. Rahul has often advised others not speaking up against the BJP to ‘not be scared’ (daro mat). Sadly, Rahul’s own reticence in directly engaging with a community that has been systematically and tragically intimidated into silence also betrays a sense of fear – a fear of electoral backlash. If Rahul can talk against communal violence but not engage with the community that has faced the full wrath of such atrocities in recent years, usually with support from a majoritarian State, what really is the point?