Rare Bareli

Sonia Gandhi may not own a car, but she now has a Katiyar in her tracks. To be fair to the former VHP president 8212; who can never be accused of being short on invective when it comes to the Congress president 8212; he was uncharacteristically lacklustre about his latest assignment. His party had to literally press-gang him into taking up the challenge.

Katiyar8217;s reluctance is entirely understandable, as is BJP8217;s eagerness to mobilise one of its most combative soldiers. This yudh, after all, is not just about Sonia Gandhi. Somewhere in the dusty plains of Rae Bareli there lurks an even more terrifying figure, a fiery sanyasin thirsting for revenge against a parent party. In fact, Sonia Gandhi may be quite incidental to the whole plot. Katiyar has always been an Uma Bharati groupie. He had even launched the Rashtriya Dhwaj Samman Yatra in solidarity with her Tiranga Yatra in August 2004, at a time when the sanyasin was beginning to discern the political ground shifting from beneath her feet. Now fate has meanly pitted him against Uma Bharati, who is fighting the Rae Bareli battle by proxy through the good offices of the Apna Dal8217;s Kurmi candidate, Prabha Singh Lodhi, with the single purpose of defeating not Sonia, but the BJP. So now there are three Kurmi candidates stirring things up, and Katiyar8217;s nightmare is that he will emerge considerably undermined as a credibile OBC leader.

The battle for Rae Bareli, which at one point had appeared dull and predictable, should make for some riveting theatrics, if not politics. Sonia Gandhi appears to bring out the best in the BJP. In 1999, the party produced Sushma Swaraj out of the blue for the Bellary battle. She wore flowers in her hair and disarmed Kannada-speaking crowds with her Nanige swalpa Kannada baruthe I speak a little Kannada dialogue. This time they have given us their best known Bajrang-dali 8212; although the man may feel more like a sacrificial goat, than a potential Hanuman.