Written by Manish Khanduri
When the chief priest of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya sent a letter underlining his appreciation of the Bharat Jodo Yatra a few days ago, it wasn’t difficult to imagine Congress leaders and cadre exchanging a few metaphorical high fives — or whatever would be the desi equivalent. Indeed, Congress MP Jairam Ramesh in his inimitable style rapidly tweeted that, coupled with BJP cadre shaking hands with Bharat Yatris in another incident, perhaps these were signs of a “jalvayu parivartan in (chief minister) Yogi’s Uttar Pradesh”. That was Ramesh poking a finger at the state’s ruling dispensation.
Acharya Satyendra Das is a well known name but that, in my opinion, isn’t really the point. Just like most stories deemed newsworthy, what’s away from the public eye is just as, if not more pertinent. A few days after the Acharya sent his missive, and nowhere as well known, Suniti Sanghavi, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab out of Los Angeles walked out of the blue and joined the Bharat Jodo Yatra. She knew no one in the yatra or the Congress party, came on her own accord, uninvited.
Walking alongside her is the Pandey couple from Madhya Pradesh — Rakesh (61) and Seema (54) — who aren’t party cadre either. There are thousands upon thousands of people like them, whose stories may never be told, who have participated in the yatra for ideological reasons, and who have done so with no intention of seeking publicity, some of them probably associate more with the principle of the yatra than the Congress Party itself.
And of course, if we want to mention public figures, let’s not forget the prominent social activist Yogendra Yadav, who had once famously declared that the “Congress must die”, and who two years later made the closing address at the launch of the Bharat Jodo Yatra on September 7 last year. Yadav’s contribution to the yatra as a leader, participant and proponent has been remarkable.
There were a few muttered expressions of outrage that Congress was appropriating a religious garb in this exchange with the Acharya. But one can dismiss that opinion out of hand. The Bharat Jodo Yatra is ideally about every single individual in society, regardless of whether you are a stone-cold atheist or someone who chants the Gayatri Mantra one hundred times a day. The ethos of the yatra is to give both their freedom to do either. What we strongly object to, and what is one of the core values powering this walk, is the weaponisation of religious belief. We object to the stripping down of individual freedoms, to the insidious ideology that dehumanises and disenfranchises a group of people based on religion, gender, caste, or any similar attribute.
That the Bharata Jodo Yatra is at its core political, I don’t doubt for a second. The Congress has made a significant investment of leadership time and resources in what I believe is a remarkable attempt to influence and ultimately change the national political narrative. At the time of writing this, we have walked 52 districts in 10 states of India. It has been a remarkable and intricate large-scale choreography of people and organisations, from within and without the Congress party.
One should also not forget that even the choice of the word “yatra” has, in my opinion, been deliberate to begin with. It invokes and identifies with the spirit and objectives of Shankaracharya, the Bhakti saints and many others who walked to transform India.
But it is also a deeply personal journey for us all. Rahul Gandhi has been quoted in the press as describing the yatra as his tapasya. What is tapasya but an invocation of some of the most fundamental tenets of Hinduism? We have walked almost 3,200 kilometres since Kanyakumari, and outside of politics, it has been a magnificent social, geographical, cultural, religious (and indeed culinary) journey of discovery. It cannot be stripped down to or described by any single event or individual. It incorporates diverse opinions, ideals and peoples.
And if a few are discombobulated that the Acharya of a famous temple that’s recurrently in the news has expressed his support to the Congress yatra and its goals, all the better. This is politics and we’re players too.
The writer is with the Congress party. Views are personal and do not reflect those of the Congress
