Rahul Gandhi, Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, and the facility of strolling
Because the Congress battles with its again to the wall, Rahul Gandhi has chosen to hit the streets a second time, earlier than the 2024 basic election, a battle that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Celebration, now a large election machine, appears properly positioned to win for the third time.
After the six-month-long, 4,500-kilometre Bharat Jodo Yatra from Kanyakumari to Kashmir final 12 months, Rahul is main one other street journey, this time known as the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra (BJNY), which started on January 14 from Manipur and is about to conclude on March 20 in Mumbai. It is a new course for the Congress occasion, which has over the previous few a long time prevented taking to the streets.
Sonia Gandhi’s tenure as occasion president had seen two main brain-storming classes—the Panchmarhi conclave in 1998 and the Shimla conclave in 2003—by which the Congress strategised on programmes and alliances. Nonetheless, the occasion was lacking in motion on the streets.
The problem this time is larger, given the Congress’ two successive debacles with traditionally low Lok Sabha seats—44 seats with 19.3 per cent of the votes in 2014 and 52 seats with 19.5 per cent votes in 2019.
French novelist Marcel Proust wrote: “The true voyage of discovery consists not in looking for new landscapes, however in having new eyes.” The desperation within the Congress camp is rising loud, and plenty of leaders who had been perceived to be near Rahul (Jyotiraditya Scindia, Ashok Tanwar, Jitin Prasada, Milind Deora) have give up the occasion. So have the old-timers, corresponding to former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad and media supervisor Tom Vadakkan, who swore their loyalty to Sonia.
Whether or not the 2 successive yatras and Rahul’s focused mass join programmes will assist the age-old political occasion revive its fortunes is the million-dollar query.
Rasheed Kidwai, political analyst and writer of 24 Akbar Street, which presents a brief historical past of the individuals behind the rise and fall of the Congress, says that Rahul’s second section of the yatra appears “ill-timed” and is doing extra injury than good to him, his occasion, and the reason for opposition unity.
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“For a practising politician, yatras are supposed to carry larger good and electoral dividends. In BJNY, the reverse is going on, resulting in the collapse of the INDIA bloc and bitterness among the many constituents,” Kidwai instructed Frontline. “Rahul’s lengthy absence from Delhi implied the close to halt of electoral preparations for 2024, lowering Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge’s grace and heft that he was to hold inside and out of doors the Congress. With Sonia voluntarily preserving herself out of alliance constructing and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra travelling overseas, the Gandhis appear to be abdicating their political management and duty. Briefly, BJNY is politically suicidal for the grand previous occasion, and an actual risk of a vertical break up in Might 2024 is staring forward.”
Because the yatra was underneath means, the INDIA bloc obtained a jolt with key associate Janata Dal (United), led by Nitish Kumar, snapping ties and becoming a member of palms with the BJP in Bihar, and Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress staying in INDIA however deciding to go it alone in West Bengal.
Rahul Gandhi in Purnea, Bihar, the nerve centre of the JP motion, on January 30.
| Photograph Credit score:
PTI
Because the yatra reached Purnea in Bihar, the cradle of social justice politics and the nerve centre of the JP motion—its “Sampoorna Kranti” name led to the ouster of Indira Gandhi in 1977—Kharge, in a written message, mentioned: “The approaching Lok Sabha election is being fought to save lots of the Structure and democracy.”
The Congress, which refused the invitation to attend the Ram temple consecration ceremony on January 22, calling it not a non secular however a political occasion of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is flagging training, employment, poverty eradication, and healthcare as actual points, with a layering of identification politics—Rahul has pitched a caste census as an “x-ray” of society, which is able to decide the share of Different Backward Lessons (OBCs) and Dalits in energy and sources in proportion to their inhabitants.
Highlights
- Rahul Gandhi is main the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, a street journey from Manipur to Mumbai, protecting 6,200 km in 85 districts in 14 States.
- The Congress occasion is flagging training, employment, poverty eradication, and healthcare as actual points, with a layering of identification politics.
- Yatras have propelled events to energy; they’ve been instrumental in consolidating Hindus in favour of a Ram Mandir and the BJP.
Yatras up to now
Yatras up to now have propelled events to energy. The BJP gained simply two Lok Sabha seats with 7.4 per cent votes in 1984 and 83 seats with 11.4 per cent votes in 1989. However its exponential development got here after L.Okay. Advani’s 1990 rath yatra looking for the development of a Ram temple at Ayodhya.
The yatra, which began from Somnath, led to Bihar (Samastipur) after his arrest by Lalu Prasad’s Janata Dal authorities. Although the yatra couldn’t attain Ayodhya as deliberate, it did obtain the target of consolidating Hindus in favour of a Ram Mandir in addition to the BJP. The BJP took ahead the Hindutva ideology and its marketing campaign accused the Congress of Muslim appeasement. The VHP ratcheted up the Ramjanmabhoomi situation, and the occasion has not seemed again since.
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The BJP went on to grow to be the pivot of Indian politics, forming 5 BJP-led governments since then—two short-lived and three full-term. The occasion marked a meteoric rise with 120 seats in 1991 and 161 seats in 1996.
Then, in 1991, got here the then BJP president Murli Manohar Joshi’s much-hyped Ekta Yatra from Kanyakumari to Kashmir, which ended with the hoisting of the tricolour in January 1992 amid tight safety at Lal Chowk in Srinagar, then a hotbed of terrorism. The yatra, geared toward sending a message to terror outfits and selling nationwide integration, helped the BJP spotlight its nationalism marketing campaign.
Twenty years later, the occasion organised a 14-day yatra from Kolkata to Lal Chowk to unfurl the nationwide flag within the Kashmir Valley in 2011. Data and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur, who was then heading the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, led the occasion attended by prime BJP leaders, together with Joshi and Advani.
Nonetheless, not each BJP yatra has been a hit. Essentially the most obvious failure was the Bharat Uday Yatra launched in 2004. The India Shining marketing campaign didn’t minimize ice with the voters and the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led BJP misplaced the 2004 Lok Sabha election.
At Kanyakumari, the place Janata Celebration chief Chandra Shekhar started his 4,260-km padayatra to Raj Ghat in Delhi from January 6, 1983.
| Photograph Credit score:
The Hindu Archives
Though socialist chief Chandra Shekhar’s Bharat Yatra in 1983 from Kanyakumari to Rajghat in New Delhi, which lined 4,260 km from January 6 to June 25, earned him the moniker of “Marathon Man”, it didn’t translate into votes. His yatra was held to criticise Indira Gandhi’s insurance policies, however her assassination in 1984 resulted in a sympathy wave, and the Congress decimated all the opposition. Chandra Shekhar’s Janata Celebration gained simply 10 seats, with he himself dropping his Ballia seat to a Congress candidate.
A 12 months after the huge victory, in 1985, the Congress took out a Sandesh Yatra, a choice taken by Rajiv Gandhi within the Mumbai plenary. The three-month whirlwind tour was the final main padayatra (march) for the Congress till the start of the Rahul period within the occasion throughout UPA-II. After the Congress debacle within the 1989 Lok Sabha election, Rajiv launched a Bharat Yatra in 1990, nevertheless it was largely by practice.
Yatras had been additionally a part of Gandhian socialist Jayaprakash Narayan’s Sampoorna Kranti marketing campaign in 1974, which modified the course of Indian politics and introduced the primary non-Congress authorities to energy in 1977.
In keeping with Ajay Gudavarthy, affiliate professor on the Centre for Political Research, Jawaharlal Nehru College, “yatra” is a collective on the transfer and symbolises a journey that connects the previous with the current. It connects a reminiscence to the current making of identities.
“The BJP, underneath L.Okay. Advani, gave it a non secular symbolism with the rath yatra and transformed it right into a retributive response to a perceived and constructed historic damage. It transformed the imagery of Ram from a maryada purush to a militant god. With the telecast of the serial Ramayan within the backdrop it managed to transform the collective consciousness into an emergent Hindu identification.”
The politics of yatras
On the impression of Rahul’s yatra politics, Gudavarthy mentioned the Bharat Jodo Yatra (BJY) was an try and offset retributive politics by that of compassion and mohabbat (love). “Within the mild of the truth that the opposition has no avenue to succeed in out to individuals, be it Parliament or media, the yatra grew to become an occasion to be amidst individuals.
“Ideally, the presence of public representatives amongst individuals must be a steady course of and never an occasion. The BJY mirrored the purpose that if events mobilise, individuals are prepared to answer different narratives. Nonetheless, BJY 1 and now BJY 2 haven’t succeeded in conveying any concrete message or programme. It’s precariously situated between the political/electoral and the social/collective. Its electoral impression remains to be unsure. It requires to grow to be programmatic and guarantee individuals of sure welfarism past what BJP has promised,” he mentioned.
Rahul isn’t any stranger to yatras; his Kisan Sandesh Padayatra from Bhatta Parsaul in 2011 in help of farmers protesting in opposition to land acquisition within the then Bahujan Samaj Celebration-ruled Uttar Pradesh hogged headlines. It culminated within the passing of The Proper to Truthful Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013.
Some of the profitable padayatras on the State stage was the one led by Congress chief Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy in Andhra Pradesh in 2003. It propelled the Congress to energy within the 2004 Meeting election, defeating N. Chandrababu Naidu of the Telugu Desam Celebration.
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After getting into his father’s sneakers, Jagan Mohan Reddy took out a 3,500-km Praja Sankalpa Yatra on foot and his YSR Congress Celebration gained the 2019 election with an enormous mandate.
In 2017, Madhya Pradesh Congress chief Digvijay Singh undertook the Narmada Parikrama Yatra, calling it a non-political train. Nonetheless, the mass join did contribute to the Congress’ victory within the 2018 Meeting election, ousting the 15-year-old BJP authorities led by Shivraj Singh Chouhan.
In 2017, BJP chief Amit Shah launched into a Janaraksha Yatra in Kerala’s Kannur in opposition to the alleged “jehadi-red terror”, a format replicated in Mangaluru in Karnataka in 2018. It introduced no main political features for the BJP in Kerala, though the occasion highlighted that RSS staff had been killed within the State because of deliberate political violence.
The 1,000-km Azadi Gaurav Yatra from the Gandhi Ashram in Gujarat to Raj Ghat in Delhi and the Gandhi Sandesh Yatra from Champaran in Bihar to Beliaghata in Kolkata in 2022 are two of the newer yatras organised by the Congress.
Within the run-up to the 2022 Meeting election in Uttar Pradesh, the Congress introduced a Pratigya Yatra, led by Priyanka, protecting 12,000 km throughout the State’s 403 constituencies. However the Congress’ “Ladki Hoon Lad Sakti Hoon” (“I’m a lady, and might struggle”) marketing campaign proved a humid squib, and the occasion suffered a crushing defeat in that election.
The continued Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra will cowl 6,200 km in 85 districts in 14 States: Manipur, Nagaland, Assam, Meghalaya, West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Maharashtra.
How a lot every further step will translate into votes will ultimately resolve whether or not the BJNY was a sensible political manoeuvre or simply one other try to save lots of a sinking ship.
