Opinion Sachin Rao writes | Bharat Jodo Yatra: Beyond the politics of the day, a mela that planted seeds of an Idea of India
With Rahul Gandhi's Yatra, people found a challenge: To rediscover our freedom, reclaim our agency, recollect our values and with the gentle urging of ‘Daro Mat', dare to speak them out loud
Perhaps, the best way to understand what transpired is as a mela, a jashn — a collective celebration of a shared belief. Like a mela, the Yatra was uninhibitedly public. (File Photo) 
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Legend has it that when Zhou Enlai, China’s late premier, was asked about the impact of the French Revolution, he replied that it was still too early to tell. It has been over a month since the Bharat Jodo Yatra has concluded and I am reminded of the wisdom of this tale every time someone asks me about the impact of the Yatra. Especially so, when Rahul Gandhi’s attempts to raise our political discourse and challenge us to look at our democracy anew are still greeted by infantile reactions and shrill lamentations. The Bharat Jodo Yatra was not the politics of every day. The compellingly distinct message and the vast amount of energy that congregated upon the Yatra produced ripples that penetrated the farthest corners of society. These ripples will continue to echo in our political landscape for a long time. The collective impact of these countless reverberations in unseen spacs and times to come are beyond our ability to assess. What can and deserves to be done is to reflect upon and record for posterity what the Yatra was.
There was one experience that occurred every day, multiple times a day, on our long walk from Kanyakumari to Srinagar. A band of yatris would come upon groups of people waiting along the route. The bystanders would light up as they saw us approach. They would bustle with excitement and their eyes would begin scanning our band to spot the one increasingly bearded face they have been waiting to see. Upon realising that he is not among us, their excitement would wane, just a little bit, but visibly so. They would give us a polite wave, offer words of encouragement and with a gesture of interrogation ask simply, “how far?”. Then, their gaze would turn back once more to scan the horizon behind us. Make no mistake, it was Rahul Gandhi they had come to see. And it was not simply the thrill of sighting a celebrity that had brought them out. The affection in their eyes, the solidarity in their patient vigil and their benevolent goodwill towards our enterprise all spoke of a desire to commune with someone with whom they shared something deep. A bond that has miraculously survived the long and vicious onslaught of poisonous slander that his persona has endured.
This vast store of affectionate attention came upon a man walking in the spirit of tapasya. The tapasvi recognises that identities do not constitute his existence but instead shrink him to the limited confines dictated by his ego, fear and desires. The tapasvi does not walk to embellish and project himself upon the world. He walks instead to confront and eventually dissolve the boundaries that separate him from the world outside. The tapasvi walks, as Rahul Gandhi mentioned many a time, to become shoonya. In walking to shed rather than celebrate his self, he chose a path that defies prevailing political superstition, one that harks back to a path trodden by a long list of seekers of yore — Nanak, the Sufis, the Bhakti saints and most recently Mahatma Gandhi. A Sabarmati Ashram prayer says: “Tu tabhi madad ke liye aata hai jab manushya shoonya ban kar teri sharan hota hai” (“You come in aid when a human being becomes shoonya and takes refuge in you”).
This sangam of mass participation and tapasya gave the Yatra a form and politics with no parallel in recent times. Those who came looking for Rahul Gandhi found instead, in the wake of his shoonyata, an invitation to look within. Rather than agendas and vitriol they found a gentle reminder of India’s soul and the undeniable imperative of our time, rendered with elegant simplicity in just two words — “Bharat Jodo”. Rather than a call to join a crusade upon an enemy outside, they found instead, a challenge. A challenge, to rediscover our freedom, reclaim our agency, recollect our values and with the gentle urging of “Daro Mat” (“Don’t be afraid”), dare to speak them out loud. The Yatra gave Indians a canvas and dared them to paint their dreams. And paint they did. They came out in vast numbers — workers, activists, politicians, thinkers and most of all, people, everyday extraordinary people — and splashed the Yatra with the myriad colours of their dreams.
Perhaps, the best way to understand what transpired is as a mela, a jashn — a collective celebration of a shared belief. Like a mela, the Yatra was uninhibitedly public. The only predetermined elements of the design were the walk, the route and the time. Everything else, including the people, the ideas, the expressions and the events that transpired, were created anew, every day by the lakhs who descended upon the yatra. The yatra possessed a shared logic that bound the vast variety of revellers who came. Like a mela, the shared logic that inspired the Yatra was not based upon intellectual rationalisations but instead upon a tug at a primordial, organic sensibility rooted deep within the consciousness of those who came. And even while the conviction that ignited the Yatra was shared, the celebrations themselves were fiercely personal. Millions of yatris celebrated this jashn on their own terms with deeply individual and unique expressions of their truth. Like a mela, the collective reverberations of these millions of celebrations far exceed the sum of its parts.
A mela deals in imaginations. A mela awakens, scatters and nourishes the seeds of an idea. Like a mela, our Yatra too dealt in seeds: The seeds of an Idea for India. We saw these seeds take root in the imaginations of the many children along the route who shouted “Nafrat Chodo, Bharat Jodo”. We saw these seeds reach the minds of the political workers who were challenged to reimagine their politics as tapasya. We saw these seeds find a home in the hearts of the countless people who experienced the power of taking a public stand about something they believe in.
Seeds are very diminutive. They do not announce themselves. Let alone dominate a forest, they are unlikely even to be visible to those who do not look for them. But seeds are also deeply subversive. When they take root, edifices crumble. A mela is not an end, it is merely a beginning. But a beginning is now at an end. Like all good beginnings ours has created possibilities. It is up to us what we make of them.
The writer is in charge of Training and Sandesh for the Congress party. He walked on large parts of the Bharat Jodo Yatra
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