Road to 2024 | Rahul Gandhi’s stopover at Vajpayee memorial: A new foot forward?

Rahul also paid homage at the memorials of Mahatma Gandhi and Babu Jagjivan Ram. But it will be the optics of visiting ‘Sadaiv Atal’ that will not just be the talking point in the days to come, but in many ways also provide clues to the Congress’s evolving political road map on the road to 2024.

“Every individual has contributed to the making of this country. We need to keep in mind that Rahul Gandhi visited the memorial of a person who gave lessons of raj dharma to the Gujarat chief minister of 2002 who is the country’s Prime Minister today. I feel seeing Rahulji at the memorial, the Prime Minister will certainly recall those lessons. Politics is done with a large heart, which is what Rahulji did today,” said Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate at a press conference on Monday.

“A democracy is made up of many ideological streams. We do not believe in a BJP-mukt Bharat. We believe every ideology has its space. But the poisonous form of any ideology, in the name of which a community of the marginalised is attacked, is not acceptable. I don’t think the Vajpayee government practised that form. He stood with the Constitution,” she added, responding to questions on the import of Rahul’s visit.

The Congress’s attempt, quite clearly, is to pit the legacy of the poet-prime minister against the incumbent, taking a leaf out of the BJP’s playbook, which has over the years been accused of “appropriating” freedom movement icons, with deep Congress roots, who were edged out of the grand old party’s pantheon over the decades.

The move is also seemingly tied with the Congress’s efforts to expand its support base, and regain votes lost due to allegations of corruption and economic hardship in the final years of UPA II, by playing up Vajpayee’s popular “moderate” face. There is also growing realisation within the party, which had a vote share of 19 per cent in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, that not everyone voting for the BJP is enamoured by Hindutva.

That the party is serious about such overtures was clear from its reaction to the tweet by Gaurav Pandhi, who is attached as an AICC coordinator with Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge’s office. Pandhi was forced to delete his tweet in which he said: “In 1942, like all other members of the RSS, Atal Bihari Vajpayee boycotted the Quit India Movement & worked as a British Informer reporting against those who participated in the andolan. Be it Nellie massacre or demolition of Babri, Vajpayee played an imp role in inciting mobs.”

The Congress also distanced itself from the tweet, saying the opinion of individual functionaries “do not matter”. “When the Congress officially does something or Rahul Gandhi does something, then that is the party’s stand and ideology,” Shrinate said.

For long-term observers of the Congress, the visit to the Vajpayee memorial should not come as a big surprise though. In 2014, addressing a poll rally in Uttar Pradesh. then Congress president Sonia Gandhi had attacked Modi, the BJP’s PM candidate at the time, saying, “The country has seen many PMs. They were dignified people. Even the BJP’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee had maintained the decorum of the PM’s post.”

She was responding to Modi’s barbs directed at Rajiv Gandhi. Vajpayee himself, in a television interview, had spoken glowingly of Rajiv’s role in helping him get treatment in the United States. “It was difficult for me to make the financial arrangements. Somehow Rajivji came to know about that. He called me, he decided to include me in the delegation to the United Nations. I became a full-fledged member, all medical expenses were paid by the government. I came back fully recovered,” Vajpayee, who died in 2018 after a prolonged illness, had said.

An attempt to soften the hard lines the Congress has lately been accused of taking, unlike its earlier middle-of-the-road approach, has also been on display during the Bharat Jodo Yatra.

In Delhi, as Rahul took the stage with Red Fort as the backdrop, his speech stuck to the familiar script for the most part. He took on the BJP for “falsely” playing the role of the custodian of Hindus, and stuck to the principal themes of the yatra, of fighting “hatred and fear”, price rise, unemployment, moribund state of the economy.

Even when he spoke about the BJP’s communal politics, Rahul suggested that the real motive behind the politics of polarisation was to “divert” the attention of the people away from issues that actually impact their lives. Visits to temples and other religious shrines have been an unapologetic part of the Rahul Yatra.

It was a clear departure from the winter of 2021, when the ambitious cross-country march ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ was yet to be conceived, and the Congress was trying to lubricate its rusty machinery by mobilising public opinion against price rise, in the wake of Covid-19. Rajasthan was picked for a mega rally on the issue, after the Centre-controlled law and order authorities in Delhi, the party’s first choice, denied permission to do so. However, addressing the rally, Rahul, at one point, opened a debate on the difference between “Hindu and Hindutvadis”.

In the end, the Congress’s ‘Mehngai Hatao Rally’ gave the BJP a handle to attack it for harbouring “pathological hate” against the Hindus.

With nine key states going to polls in 2023, including Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh held by the party, and Karnataka where it has bright prospects, will the Congress scion steer clear of similar minefields? As Rahul heads into the northern stretch of his 3,500-km-long cross-country march, which remains a fertile ground for the BJP’s brand of politics, the Congress will surely hope so.