Soon after Ramakrishna Paramahamsa died in 1886, Vivekananda (then Narendranath Datta) began his Indian travels by rail, bullock cart, and foot. His travels lasted five years. Toward the end of 1892, when at Kanyakumari, he had a vision of ‘One India’. From his pronouncements, it is the same vision (Bharat Jodo) that drives Rahul Gandhi 130 years later as he launched his march from Kanniyakumari. He has been on his feet for over ten days; walking is a tradition in India pioneered by Buddha, Adi Shankara, Vivekananda, and Mahatma Gandhi. It’s a kind of meditation. You cease to be; you become the others you observe.
Rahul Gandhi is not an ascetic. If at all, he is the monk with the Burberry. But all day, he walks, a kind of Forrest Gump of Indian politics, a Lal Singh Chaddha among Indian politicians: he is different. Even perhaps a maverick. Who else would tear up his own prime minister’s ordinance in full public view? Remember the ordinance that Manmohan Singh came out with in 2013 that sought to protect convicted politicians? His party and the BJP put that act of acrimony and defiance down to Rahul’s immaturity. Perhaps it was. But it was also in keeping with his eccentricity of character, his natural and almost compulsive need not to play ball.
The general naivety (‘Pappu’) associated with Rahul was reinforced by Arnab Goswami’s interview in 2014, where his trusting nature led to his virtual slaughter. Nassim Taleb talks about the delusion of the naive well-fed turkey. The bird is taken care of for 1000 days. It is fat and happy. It believes the world is a lovely place. On the 1001st day, it’s killed and is dinner. The Times Now interview taught Rahul Gandhi he is not universally liked, contrary to what he was brought up to believe in the great and elite household of the Nehrus.
From there through 2016, when in Lok Sabha, when the oratorically gifted Prime Minister Narendra Modi famously painted Rahul in the colours of a clown, to the loss of his traditional Amethi seat in the 2019 elections, and the general condemnation of his senior compatriots in the Congress Party, by his admission, it has been a ‘rough ride’ for Rahul Gandhi.
But it has been a ride also where he has never stopped being quite human. In a 2018 meeting in Singapore, he said he had “completely forgiven his father’s killers”. He went on to say: “I remember when I saw Mr Prabhakaran (LTTE chief) on TV lying dead, I had two feelings: one was why are they humiliating this man in this way, and the second was, I felt really bad for him and for his kids.”
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This Gandhian aspect of Rahul’s personality keeps him still a potent force in a world that is pretty quick to seek vengeance for the slightest wrong. And, again, it is this trait that is on display in the idea of the long walk from Kanniyakumari to Kashmir, a distance of some 3,500 kilometres, which he plans to cover in five months. An exercise that Rahul Gandhi hopes will help him in his ‘Discovery of India’—the name of the book that his great-grandfather wrote in Ahmednagar jail between 1942 and 1945.
This is not just an innocent journey, one in which Rahul Gandhi would just heal divisive society just by walking and talking. The fact is structurally and organisationally, the Congress is an exhausted political force. It is not reasonable to expect a party used to the custom of being steered by a small group of Delhi-resident politicians—and their intellectual retinue, generational accomplices used to the comforts of a certain legacy—privileged, whether they are in power or not, to withstand the BJP.
A BJP that has, with great will and sustained ingenuity, tapped into the chimerical racial and religious subconscious of Hindu India so well that we have begun to look for our future in our past: once we were golden; now we are leaden.
The current woke fashion of victimhood externalises the individual’s inadequacy primarily as another’s fault. What the BJP is doing convincingly is that India’s low performance—victimhood en masse—across all sectors for centuries could be blamed on Mughals, colonial powers, and the Congress. The last for the BJP is just another face of the British, a substitute. Therefore, as a people, Indians are not at fault. The BJP has helped India to externalise her inadequacy. A reason has been found; now we can, the BJP says, address the question and find an answer. And that answer is in the past. Invariably, it will lead us to the purity question of race and religion. The BJP is woke in reverse. And it is working in this Age of Victimhood.
The Congress, with just 53 MPs out of 543, has no idea how to fight the BJP. The righteous outrage of the Liberals is just that. It does not help. The Delhi-centric cabal that used to run the party is still talking about ‘baithaks’. They talk of party elections and inner-party democracy. There was never such speaking when Indira Gandhi or even Nehru was in power. There were just the motions.
The truth is that the Congress worked on charisma and direct connection with the masses. It is not easy to attribute to Rahul Gandhi a hypnotic personality. But he can try to build a direct connection with the people, going over the heads of the other leaders of the Congress. Circumventing, in fact, the traditional course available to a political party. This is what he is doing.
By hitting the road, Rahul Gandhi is not just trying to break the spell that the BJP has cast over India. He is also challenging the way the Congress has come to function. Instead of the sitting-down culture of his party, he has chosen to walk out into the great outdoors; walk away from conference halls and well-fed, familiar faces. When you walk, you leave things behind. And if someone wants to keep up, he/she must follow him. Rahul Gandhi is finally saying with his feet that he wants to lead.
C P Surendran
Poet, novelist, and screenplay writer. His latest novel is One Love and the Many Lives of Osip B