By Sushil Kutty
It’s over. Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra, after 3750 km on the trot, from Kanyakumari to Kashmir in 134 days. News agency Reuters headlined it ‘India’s Gandhi ends 135-day march to revive Congress party in snowy Kashmir’. So, did Gandhi revive the Congress party? Opinion is divided.
By the way, there isn’t another Gandhi more known than “this one” at this point in time. That said, Reuters’ “India’s Gandhi” was flippant and could have been avoided. India’s Gandhi’s death anniversary fell on the day “this Gandhi” stepped up to the flagpole in Srinagar’s Lal Chowk. But “snowy Kashmir” was bang on even if snowfall is part of the drill in Kashmir this time of the year. Nothing unusual to the white blanket draping Srinagar. It is cold as Hell!
And after the abrogation of Article 370, hoisting the tricolour at Lal Chowk had also become a habit. Rahul and sister Priyanka Vadra celebrated by playing ‘Snowball’. Though Rahul Gandhi promised to reinstate Article 370 if the Congress comes to power in 2024.
Coming to the question of revival of the Congress, the answer is ‘yes’. For 134 days, with just a break here and there, the party remained on a progress trajectory. Ask people, not necessarily Congress workers or Congress supporters but ornery folk, and they will say the man changed before their eyes.
Not everybody had seen a sprightly Rahul Gandhi before September 2022. In the old avatar, Rahul Gandhi was mostly always in kurta with the left hand buried in the kurta pocket, slouching! Now, the slouch appears to have gone with the wind, and the snow. At least for now. The future’s not ours to tell.
One thing’s for sure, though, the BJP cannot cash the ‘Pappu’ cheque anymore. Come to think of it, the ‘Discovery of Rahul Gandhi’ can be the title of somebody’s bestseller on the Bharat Jodo Yatra. And if the Congress has any political sense over and above what was spent on planning the cross country march, it should not squander it on hate-bytes aimed at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which experience tells us almost always boomerangs, and is a vote-haemorrhaging faux pas.
Rahul Gandhi could have avoided targeting Modi, Amit Shah and NSA Ajit Doval in his Lal Chowk speech. Perhaps, he got carried away by the momentousness of the occasion, and the iconicism of the place. The BJP will be waiting for more “hate” to spew out of Rahul’s ‘Mohabbat Ki Dukaan’.
There are people who are referring to Rahul Gandhi undertaking the BJY as an ‘alternative political project’, as if it was a robot which covered the distance, the undulating terrain, ‘Kanyakumari to Kashmir’, 3,570 km in 134 days. Calling the BJY a “political experiment” is also fraught with downsides.
A ‘project’ lacks emotions. Ditto ‘political experiment’. And conjuring up another yatra, perhaps east-west, immediately after this one has concluded, wouldn’t fetch spontaneous positive reviews. The south-north yatra was easier planning the route. A west-east or east-west yatra won’t be.
Also, there are no visible signs of the Bharat Jodo Yatra reviving the Congress in states which are Congress-less. In BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh, for instance. And, in the TMC-ruled West Bengal. Ditto BJD-ruled Odisha, and AAP-ruled Delhi. To rule from the Centre requires more than just Wayanad in the thrall of Rahul Gandhi.
With BJY in his resume, will Rahul Gandhi be able to beat Smriti Irani in 2024, from Amethi? That will be the test of 2024, the key constituency and the big-fight, the ultimate grudge-fight, the ‘Royal Rumble’ of the 2024 general elections. Does Rahul Gandhi have the courage to walk through Amethi, after walking through India?
And ‘Mohabbat ka Dukaan’ sounds fine, but if BJY was all about marketing Rahul Gandhi, and the Congress, only certain states and constituencies are the test of the success of the yatra. For Rahul Gandhi, specifically, Amethi. Winning Wayanad will not win him any brownie points. For the Congress, winning Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh, as well as retaining Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh will tell us of a positive BJY impact.
The impact of the Bharat Jodo Yatra will be on test in the states which go to polls in 2023. If there were no assembly elections in 2023, the 2024 general elections would have sounded by far closer, and less difficult to make a hazard. With nine elections in between now and the big one in 2024, the impact of BJY is difficult to gauge from this time distance even though it is just a mere year that separates 2024 from today.
The BJY impact will also depend on how combative the Congress comes out as in the post-BJY period, right through the nine assembly elections and up to the 2024 general elections. Keeping the attacks going on the BJP relentlessly, and on point. At the same time, keep the hate out. If any one statement from the Bharat Jodo Yatra caught the imagination of the people at large, it was “my love against your hate”. (IPA Service)
