Rahul Gandhi has learned to lose his naivete. This walk is more than jodo-ing India. He is uniting the Indian National Congress. Under him.
By C P Surendran
This note is written from Thrissur, Kerala. It is December here, just as in any other place on Earth except in China, where the month is what Xi Jinping marks on his private calendar. It has been a curious day, though. Sunday (the day before) was the hottest day in a long time, and it felt like you were back in the middle of summer’s cruel summer months.
Yet, on Monday morning, when you stepped out, the sky was gunmetal blue, and you could hear the wind rummaging through the leaves, though you failed, for the first few seconds, to feel its coolness on your skin. You had to turn around, hoping you would catch it in the face, and then suddenly, the breeze was on you, cool. The elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh seem a bit like that. There seems to be a wind of change blowing, but you could not feel it, yet.
In Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, urban voting numbers are down. The Election Commission on Saturday said the overall turnout was “diminished by urban apathy”. Much the same has happened during the last few weeks in HP. For instance, the urban assembly seat of Shimla in Himachal Pradesh recorded the lowest turnout in the state at 62.53%, 13% points less than the state average of 75.6%.
In either state, the BJP is in power. In either state, they are predicted to return to power. In either state, the Congress is likely to improve its position. Perhaps, it was in anticipation of this outcome—not quite triumphant, but still hopeful of its future— that last week, Rahul Gandhi and his friends, Ashok Gehlot, Sachin Pilot, and Kamal Nath, sank their differences, smiled painfully, and jived on a stage in Jhalawar in Rajasthan.
I am wary of predictions, especially the ones I make. But I was one of the first to have pointed out the need for Rahul Gandhi to break out of the Delhi cabal politics and to take the fight to rural India. This was three years ago. Now that Rahul Gandhi is doing it, the air does show some disturbance.
One of the reasons for Rahul Gandhi to go on his epic walk besides escaping the five-star urban politics of Delhi is that urbanites have reached a point of fatigue in their political fervour. For various reasons, including fear of reprisal. In any case, there is only so much you can talk about and agitate each other over tea and, in this fashion, celebrate what they take to be responsible citizens. But sooner or later, their need to protect what they have, a way of life, let’s say, and the law of diminishing returns must make them simmer down and subside. There is just too much at stake.
Not so rural India. There, the state of discomfort is so high from absences: of drinking water, schools, medical facilities, and jobs. They must aspire actively for change. Equally important, the constant white noise generated by social media is less at play, minimising the risk of replacement of the real with the virtual. The option of vicariousness, of venting and fame-seeking, as a substitute for the strife for deeper satisfactions or changes, is yet to permeate the reality of rural life with any measure of dominance.
This is possibly why we see a decline in numbers in urban voting compared to rural India—as was the case in the last three general elections. The BJP’s success in the 2014 and 2019 elections was largely due to their cadre work in the villages. It makes sense to believe that this coincided with the urbanisation of the Congress Party. Both rank and file of the party lost touch with ground realities. Smriti Irani winning the Amethi seat from Rahul Gandhi in 2019 is conclusive proof of the gap widening the maximum between that party’s leadership and the peanut-crunching crowd, as Sylvia Plath put it in another context. It is this gap Rahul Gandhi is addressing.
But with a certain curious if wilful oversight in strategy. In the last two months or so, Rahul Gandhi might have taken a break—he did it when Mallikarjun Kharge was elected AICC president; he attended a reception in Delhi for the new leader—to campaign for the Congress in Himachal Pradesh or Gujarat.
One could argue HP is far from the terrain his walk is covering. But that argument does not cut ice with Gujarat. He was already in Maharashtra or central India and not so far from Gujarat.
Indeed, as he covers Rajasthan (Jhalawar, Alwar, Kota, Dausa) this week, he has carefully avoided neighbouring Gujarat altogether. What can it mean but the fact that he does not want a confrontation with the BJP in one of its strongholds? Unless he is throwing the gauntlet to his party satraps: win this election and show me what you can do on your own. Is this a good idea? I believe so.
Rahul Gandhi has learned to lose his naivete. This walk is more than jodo-ing India. He is uniting the Indian National Congress. Under him.Both in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, the BJP will return to power. But the chances are that their representational strength will see a decline from their present numbers (110 out of 182 in Gujarat, and 45 out of 68 in HP), though Prime Minister Narendra Modi has repeatedly been saying that his party will return to power in these states in greater numbers. He would be wrong. Like this morning, there certainly seems to be a wind picking up, and the leaves are shaking. You may have to wait a while in it, though, to feel the breeze on your skin.
C P Surendran is a poet and screenplay writer. His latest novel is One Love and the Many Lives of Osip B
