For over a month now, a padayatra has been raising some dust on India’s southern highways—and the dust has been billowing way beyond, right onto the political main street, to the high-decibel traffic junctions of national media, all the way to those buzzing social media bylanes. As these words are being written, Rahul Gandhi is walking in Mandya, southern Karnataka, with the air of a prince who has renounced the throne to rejoin the people—and is, thus, indifferent to power like all renunciates. Perhaps he is, perhaps not. If you put that to vote, the nays may have it.
Either way, no one will doubt that the Bharat Jodo Yatra is fundamentally a political yatra. And no consensus can be had on how successful it is proving to be. “Massive public response”? Or “damp squib”? Partymen are right to be enthused—being close to the people is, after all, the only way to do democratic politics, and there has been a severe deficit of that in the Congress of late. But the sceptics have good reason to be sceptical, too, given the party’s state. In Indian democracy, the answer can only be a collective one, and we must await that.
And yet, judging by the sheer volumes of daily denunciations and words of belittlement, it seems to be setting off a kind of unexplained fear in rival camps. As if they are witnessing something primordial, something outside the playbook, something they potentially cannot control. What is the source of this fear? In a sense, it has nothing to do with the Congress per se. Nothing to do with Rahul or the state of Indian politics as it takes the bend for the home stretch to 2024.
It has to do with the idea of a padayatra itself. And a special form of this whose roots lie embedded in religion and spiritual practices. In the singular image of a pilgrim or spiritual mendicant, making his or her journey on foot, towards godhead or oblivion. In world cultures, India being an exemplary case, that act of humility has always encoded and granted a kind of grace—even a different kind of power, legitimacy and affirmation that cannot be thwarted. When a human being normally tied to a homestead leaves all that for a journey of the soul, even divinity is seen to be compelled to grant his or her wishes.
A military conquest is also a yatra. But of the other sort—directly related to territoriality. In the Ashvamedha Yagna, the journey itself maps all of the conquest. The wish fulfillment happens through force, it is not teased out of the cosmos. The history of Hinduism managed to blend both aspects with Shankaracharya—what he mapped out on foot was the span of a thought world, won via logic and tarka. Centuries later, Vivekananda was to do the same, with a spiritual journey shot through with the idea of nationhood. Already, one can see the religious beginning to form a chemical bond with the political.
It was Gandhi who turned it over unambiguously to the temporal world. His Salt March was enacted for a people. But no one could miss his ingenuity—what he was drawing on consciously, with the attire that could fit that of any ordinary Indian pilgrim, was that same reservoir of power. It spoke both to the people and to the oppressor. And a demand made thus, he knew, could not be thwarted. Thus he invented a new instrument of political action—and entered it forever into modern India’s lexicon.
Later practitioners have been many, both high and low, grimy and subtle—and the results have been as mixed as the cast of characters. But each time the weapon is deployed, there seems to be a strong trace of an action that wills itself to be successful. Vinoba Bhave did it with his Bhoodan movement: it did reap a harvest, even if it was, by general consensus, somewhat patchy. The Janata politician Chandra Shekhar did it memorably, in 1983, and even in an evolving polity, it lent him a certain aura that carried him to the pinnacle, albeit briefly. Even YSR did one, and in the wrestling-pit of satraps that Andhra Pradesh used to be, it elevated him.
The real efficacy of this instrument is seen when the people wield it themselves. Witness the Kisan Long March of 2018. As thousands of earth-coloured, sunburnt feet poured into Mumbai after 200 km on the road, the universal reception was one of awe and reverentiality. The Devendra Fadnavis government, which may have thought little of dispersing another form of protest out in the hinterland, had to treat this ultimate symbol of India—the poor farmer—with respect and submit to the demands. That this promise was reneged on is another matter. During UPA-II, the government panicked as an adivasi march wended its way to Delhi, and Jairam Ramesh rushed out half-way to meet them and persuade them to stop. Just two months ago, a Dalit yatra from Gujarat, headed to Rashtrapati Bhavan with a 10-tonne bronze coin with Ambedkar’s image engraved on one side, was stopped by the government at Rewari, Haryana. All they wanted was for the coin, minted with contributions from ordinary Dalits, to be placed in Parliament. A mass of the fabled ‘last Indians’ actually reaching Delhi from their humble abodes is something to be feared by all governments. It is as if their legitimacy is generated from some unseen reservoir—and cannot be thwarted. Whichever government it is, it appears, the only way to handle people on a journey to political selfhood is to feint or block.
There was another political actor who forged his politics on the road. This was Kanshi Ram, who, as the founder of BAMCEF, gave flesh and blood to his dream by cycling through countless villages. He was, of course, enacting, in physical space, what Ambedkar had done in a journey of the mind. All real journeys, after all, are conducted in an inner space. Advani’s rath yatra, that other epoch-changing yatra of our times, was, by contrast, more in the nature of a Reconquista—a reclamation project. The question Rahul might want to ask himself is: which road does he wish to take? A pre-charted highway? Or a life defined as an endless road to the countless Bhatta-Parsauls out there?