The Semi-Reinvention Of Rahul Gandhi!
Can his emphasis on ideology and Congress's message of love stand up to the BJP's pursuit of power ? Only time will tell in the constantly changing political scene!
For the last eight years, there's been an on-off, now-you-see-him-now-you-don't quality to Rahul Gandhi's campaigns, and his rivals have dubbed him 'Pappu'. In 2011 he took up the cause of agitating farmers in Bhatta Parsaul but quickly abandoned it. In 2013 he projected himself as an anti-corruption crusader, even tearing up his government's ordinance, but the campaign didn't cut ice. In 2017 ahead of the Gujarat elections, he asserted his Hindu credentials, but that stance, too, seemed half-hearted.
This is precisely why the last 100 days of the Bharat Jodo Yatra are important. For the first time, perhaps Rahul is attempting to make an emotional connection with crowds and people are being given a chance to find out who the Nehru-Gandhi scion really is. The padayatra has always been a potent device in India: Gandhian, arduous and populist, it brings leaders down from billboards and sends them into the arms of a crowd.
The 1983 padayatra catapulted Chandra Shekhar from anonymity to revival, and the 2004 padayatra carried YS Rajasekhara Reddy to victory in Andhra Pradesh.
So, the Bharat Jodo Yatra has imparted new credibility to Rahul Gandhi - sporting an unkempt beard, waking every day at 4 am, starting his walk at 6 am and striding over 20 km a day. He's attracting decent crowds, and his 'Pappu' image seems buried in the big numbers that are turning out to see and interact with him.
An important change seems to have occurred. Rahul has finally stepped back from his party-chief-by-birth position. Instead, the Gandhi scion has reinvented himself as the party's ideological mascot. Detaching himself from the nitty-gritty of electioneering, he's made himself the party's chief ideologue and conscience keeper, the exponent and propagator of the Congress's ideology. The scion is now the ideologue.
Such a stance is not without value. When the rest of the opposition is outdoing itself in electoral instrumentalism, playing either the soft Hindu line or smart caste combinations or regional identity, Rahul is the one standing forth as the no-holds-barred ideological adversary to the Narendra Modi-led BJP. Thus, he is a rallying point for all those seeking an alternative worldview to the BJP!
He made a telling statement at a press conference in Jaipur:
There is a particular direction to this country that BJP and RSS propose; they believe in a particular path. They believe one state should dominate, one language should dominate, one religion should dominate, and one culture should dominate. But there's another view... another vision... BJP wins elections partly because they have complete clarity on who they are. The day Congress understands who it is and what it stands for, it will win every election.
For Rahul, it's Congress's 'love' versus BJP's 'hate'…!
But is Congress really a party of love? Has congress not been averse to flirting with communalism in the past? In its pursuit of power rather than ideology, Congress has never been a stronghold of ideology!
Congress is not a party of crusading campaigns but of power-seeking realists. Railing against big industry or the BJP regime's preference for "billionaires" enthuses the Left, but Congress has never been a party of activists. A party accustomed to being in office, for whom power is oxygen, might be a mismatch with a mascot focused on ideological purity.
Rahul's search for ideological coherence won't fix the party's real problems.
Equally importantly, is Rahul Gandhi a worthy enough mascot? He's not a towering moral force like Mahatma Gandhi or a battle-hardened colossus like Jawaharlal Nehru. Rahul has been an unremarkable parliamentarian, lost his family seat Amethi, and his privileged upbringing has hurt his grassroots credentials.
Yet Rahul Gandhi, in the Bharat Jodo Yatra, has correctly identified Congress's problems of ideological vacuum and disconnect with the people.
The challenge, therefore, is to distil ideology into specific programmes and policies that will attract voters. A reinvigorated party organisation and a new plan of action are urgently needed.
The Bharat Jodo Yatra has shown that Congress can mount highly effective and organised campaigns. Why does the party not fight elections with the same energy and efficiency?
RSS is an ideological outfit, but it puts in a great effort for a political party- first Jana Sangh, then BJP. In the same way, Congress needs to become a robustly functioning political party to translate Congress's ideology into political action.
If Congress is not re-energised after the Bharat Jodo Yatra, then Rahul Gandhi's new reinvention will remain incomplete.
The source and data points are taken from Sagarika Ghose’s article in “The Hindu” newspaper.
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