Bharat Jodo Yatra | Marathon man’s journey is already legendary, but Rahul Gandhi must now walk the talk

The yatra, a mass contact initiative of the Congress, will cover a distance of 380 km in the Malwa-Nimar region of western Madhya Pradesh in 12 days before entering Rajasthan on December 4, as per the schedule announced by the party. (Image: Twitter @INCIndia)

Rahul Gandhi is beginning to look like Forrest Gump — that insanely-obsessed, eccentric superhero without a fancy headgear played by Tom Hanks in the movie that made a hurricane sweep of the Oscars. Aamir Khan’s Bollywood remake may have received a lukewarm reception, but Gandhi is stubbornly at it, and apparently the voluntary public participation in the Congress’ Bharat Jodo Yatra is staggering.

The 3,500-kilometre-long march that started on September 7 in Kanyakumari, Tamil Nadu, is an extraordinarily intrepid step by a much maligned and frequently disparaged former Congress President. In all fairness, Gandhi has been a lightning rod, absorbing a lot of the incendiary heat emanating from the party’s onerous historical baggage. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) successfully branded him ‘pappu’ for long, but Gandhi is demonstrating chutzpah; bring it on, he seems to be saying. If the reports emerging out of the Bharat Jodo Yatra are any indication, there is a groundswell of spontaneous, beyond just the Congress local machinery mobilising crowds to please their leader.

So are we seeing the Congress’ imminent national renaissance, or is this a mere strategy for burnishing, reimagining the damaged brand of Rahul Gandhi? The answer to that depends upon one’s time horizon for assessment.

We live in a world of transient news-cycles, and manufactured headlines. Thus, on December 8, when the results of Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh assembly elections are announced, we could experience seismic, cyclopean social media driven sabotaging of the Bharat Jodo Yatra if the Congress were to fare poorly.

I am not going to indulge in dip-stick prognostications, but while Himachal Pradesh could be a close fight, it appears that the BJP might once again romp home (for the seventh time since 1995, if you please) in Gujarat. The Right-wing ecosystem will come at Gandhi, full guns blazing in a virulent fusillade, trashing the Bharat Jodo Yatra as a mammoth debacle.

The Congress should expect that. It needs to have a plan to segregate the Mahatma Gandhi-inspired padyatra from electoral outcomes. Congress leader Jairam Ramesh has steadfastly adhered to that script. Of course, if the results defy dodgy opinion polls and perceived trends, Rahul Gandhi can still cock a snook, but honestly that prospect looks somewhat dim. But you never know.

In a nutshell, it will be imprudent to judge the impact of the Bharat Jodo Yatra in the short-term (Rahul Gandhi did not campaign at all, barring a late appearance in Gujarat). Politics requires humongous patience; after all the stakes are huge. It is the 18th general elections that Rahul Gandhi is working towards. It makes sense. While provincial elections are equally important (the Congress’ lackadaisical predisposition towards winning elections in the past is baffling), it is obvious that 2024 is the litmus test. The Bharat Jodo Yatra is a long-term bet. The BJP knows that.

In 2023, the Congress vs BJP battlefield will spread across Karnataka, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Telangana; among them comprising of nearly 100 Lok Sabha seats. While it is true that it will be careless adventurism to conflate assembly elections with the general elections, if a resurrected, refreshed Congress takes on a BJP that appears to stick to its tried-and-tested Hindutva formula of identity politics, will India spring a surprise?

Will polarisation continue to be a bulletproof ammunition in the BJP war-chest that effortlessly overwhelms the fundamental issues of raging inequality, poor governance, high unemployment, volatile agrarian unrest, communal animus, institutional paralysis, and democratic deconsolidation? Will the trifecta of Ram Mandir, Article 370, and the rising rhetoric on the Uniform Civil Code determine the saffron wave? The BJP definitely thinks so. Yet it is nervous. There were two visible manifestations of the ruling party’s apprehensions.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s unabashed attempt at rebirthing the ghosts of 2002 by talking about “teaching a lesson” ostensibly to the rioters, is a new loathsome page in the BJP playlist. Expect the party to become more flagrant in its execution of majoritarian populism. Inflammatory speeches and minority targeting will be a recurring theme.

For the Congress, this provides an exceptional, almost providential opportunity to take the BJP head-on; after all, isn’t the Bharat Jodo Yatra about vanquishing the politics of divide and rule, and uniting a fissured India, fractured at the core? In that case, the Congress must abandon soft Hindutva, and embrace unalloyed, undiluted secularism, which is not just embedded in letters in the Constitution, but probably best defines an average Indian, bushwhacked by years of a vituperative and venomous propaganda.

Which brings me to the second point: Why would BJP’s Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma compare Gandhi’s appearance with that of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein? You don’t have to be a genius to know that in such vacuous muckraking the focus is to draw parallels with Muslims. Both Shah and Sarma have betrayed panic, and that should delight the Congress.

The ball now is in Rahul Gandhi’s court. Instead of merely intermittently, perfunctorily addressing the Hindutva vs Hinduism debate by himself, he must help Congress as a political party and through institutionalised communication, reclaim its principal centrist, secular, big tent party credentials. He must take the bull by the horns. Ignoring BJP’s populist extremism is a certain kiss of death for the Congress.

The Congress must recapture the nearly demolished Idea of India, which is being reduced into an ignominious trash can. Merely pussyfooting around or prevaricating on the seminal challenge, only helps the borderline voter and confused secular liberals move towards a dubious, opportunistic Arvind Kejriwal.

The marathon man’s journey is already legendary. But now Rahul Gandhi must walk the talk too.

Sanjay Jha is former National Spokesperson of the Congress, and author of The Great Unravelling: India After 2014. Twitter: @JhaSanjay. Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.