CONGRESS PRESIDENT Rahul Gandhi’s mention of the forthcoming electoral challenge in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh at the party’s rally in Ramlila ground on Sunday triggered interest and curiosity among party leaders. He said the Congress will win in all the three states. And then added that Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot (both from Rajasthan), Jyotiraditya Scindia and Kamal Nath (from Madhya Pradesh) and the leadership of Chhattisgarh was present at the rally. He did not mention C P Joshi, the stalwart from Rajasthan, and Digvijaya Singh, the former chief minister of Madhya Pradesh. The omission of both the AICC general secretaries left many party leaders curious as they speculated whether it was intentional. The winds of change brewing in the Congress were also visible at the rally as, unlike in the past, two young leaders — Nadeem Javed and Ragini Nayak — were given a chance to conduct the proceedings. Caste Equation PRIME MINISTER Narendra Modi has asked BJP MPs to spend two nights in Dalit-dominated villages as part of his Dalit outreach. But when Lok Sabha MP from Chandauli and Uttar Pradesh BJP president Mahendra Nath Pandey visited a village in Faizabad district and stayed the night to hold a chaupal last week, he gave a message of solidarity between Brahmins and Thakurs. Strains between the two upper caste communities in the BJP had deepened after the party picked Yogi Adityanath, a Thakur, as the chief minister last year. On the next day of the village chaupal, the BJP issued a press release on Pandey’s visit. It said the morning after the night chaupal, a “Thakur saahab” requested Pandey to visit his home. Pandey accepted the invitation and he took a bath, performed morning puja and ate breakfast at the residence of that person. The party also highlighted that when Pandey was about to leave, an old lady of the family asked him, “Aap Brahmin swaroop mere ghar me padhare hain, mujhe aur mere parivar ko ashirwad dein (You have come to my home as a Brahmin, give blessings to me and my family).” She also offered Rs 100 as “dakshina” and Pandey accepted it. The German Link WHEN GERMAN President Frank-Walter Steinmeier visited India in the last week of March, a lesser-known aspect of his stay was a trip his spouse made. Elke Büdenbender, who is a judge in Germany, spent nearly one and a half hours on March 24 with a delegation at India’s Law Commission at Lok Nayak Bhawan. She was interested to learn more about Indian law and customs, especially inter-caste and inter-religious marriages, in order to comprehend cases back home in connection with migrant Indians. Most interesting was the German judge’s curiosity about khap panchayats. Persons at the Law Commission, mandated to project a sunny-side-up view of India, then had to explain in detail what these panchayats were and the influence they exercised on people’s lives thousands of miles away.
