Valson Thampu

Two major enterprises are underway, to which we are passive spectators today. The first is Modi’s declared mission to eradicate the Congress from India; or, to create a Congress-mukt Bharat. The other is to revive and re-vitalise the ‘socialist, secular, democratic Republic’ that India is envisaged to be. Rahul Gandhi is the visible, proclaimed champion of the latter cause. The antagonism between Modi and Rahul –a script that began on a note of ridiculing and degrading the person of Rahul- is, at its bottom, the antagonism between these two projects of momentous importance to the destiny of India.
Rahul needs to understand clearly how it became possible for Modi to launch the aforesaid agenda, which runs against the grain of democracy itself. The goal of eradicating the opposition is tantamount to declaring war on democracy itself. Yet, the fanfare of this mission did not raise the hackles it should have. Rahul should have paid acute attention to why it did not.
At this point in time, the parallel between the impetus to eradicate the Congress party from the political landscape of India and the insidious attempts to undermine the stature of Mahatma Gandhi as the Father of the nation, is not hidden any more. Already confusion is creeping upon pockets of our population if Gandhi or Godse should be deemed the true patriot. To the extent that Godse killed Gandhi, both cannot be patriots. So, in order to blur the image of Gandhi and to weaken the roots of his veneration in the hearts of the people of India, it suffices to valorise and eulogise Godse. The question that Rahul needs to engage with in this regard is: What, if any, is the role that the Indian National Congress has played to bring about such a situation?
The law of life and nature prescribes that there is synergy between antagonists. One derives strength from the other and thrives on the grounds provided by the other, howsoever unwittingly. In biblical thought, the true Prophet and false prophets are in such a synergy. It is on the foundation laid by the true Prophet that false prophets build their business. As per this logic, it is because the Indian National Congress ceased to be a Gandhian, people-centric political movement –thereby disowning, in effect, the soul of Gandhi- that the project of valorising Godse –something unthinkable even a decade ago- gained legitimacy. As Edmund Burke said, ‘Evil triumphs only by default’. Truth to tell, the INC began to belittle Gandhi, albeit impliedly, before the camp followers of Godse gained the gumption to emerge from their woodworks.
Now consider Rahul’s goal, stated ever and anon, to counter, in his view, the divisive, anti-secular, contra-Constitutional ideology of the RSS. The question is, How is he to go about this daunting task? Berating Modi is, surely, not the way forward. It only reinforces and legitimises the spirit of, and taste for, hate from which the Parivar camp draws its sustenance. So, to pursue this path is to reinforce the antagonist. Instead, Rahul must reinstall the Mahatma in the shrine of the INC. As of now an orchestrated effort to morph Modi into a national cult –the High Priest of New India- is underway. Words, no matter how powerfully uttered, are inadequate to counter its appeal to, and hold on, popular imagination. The Mahatma is still relevant. Truth to tell, he is more relevant today than he was half a century ago. The well-spring of Rahul’s political élan must be the revival of the ‘character and soul-force’ of the Mahatma.
In this regard, he is, in one important respect, on the right track. To Gandhi, the people of India were his political and spiritual Ganga and Yamuna, the inexhaustible, ever-renewing source of vitality and motivation.
At this point I’d remind Rahul of a Greco-Roman myth: that of clearing the Augean stable. The stable of King Augeas became a mountain of filth because it was not cleaned for a long time. It seemed impossible that it could be cleaned up at all. Hercules took upon himself, in a particular context, to restore its hygiene. He diverted two rivers and caused them to run through the stable to a salutary effect.
Rahul needs to be the metaphoric Hercules in the political stable of India. Fortunately, he too has two rivers to bank on: the Ganga of Gandhian ideals and values and the Yamuna of the people of India. Indisputably, the Sangam between the two was what unleashed the mighty cleansing power that swept away the accumulated filth of colonial oppression. Gandhi, for all his spiritual power and political acumen, could not have achieved this by himself. He had to be, like in the myth cited –note its ironic nuances vis-à-vis the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan- immersed and submerged in the Yamuna: the people of India. The Mahatma was born when Gandhi was baptised in the life of the people, first in South Africa and then in India. As Nelson Mandela said, ‘India sent us a barrister. We returned a Mahatma’.
‘If there is the stirring of the Spirit anywhere,’ said the Mahatma, ‘the world around cannot be indifferent to it’. The people will respond. Surely, Rahul knows this well enough, especially since the Yatra. Ironically, the BJP knows this even better; hence the anxiety in this regard. The desperate bids to degrade Rahul –the latest being slapping labels of crime and disqualification on him- is also a nervous acknowledgement of the power and relevance of what he signifies. Rahul must detach himself from the various focal points of negativity and malignancy –that masquerades itself as national vitality- and engage directly with the people of India. If anyone has the heart and soul to do it sincerely, it is he. It is his native strength. And he must serve India on the basic of his strength, and not by reacting to the strength of a putative antagonist. The real antagonist, as Rahul recognizes, is not a person, but a Spirit, which has the potential, if not checked effectively, to overpower the soul of India to, as he apprehends, disastrous consequences.
Here, then, is the unsolicited advice. Hygiene, not less than charity, must begin at home. Count on the immense resources- the Ganga and the Yamuna of our national life- and direct them well, as Hercules did. The impossible will become possible. Rahul is not Modi. So, he can’t trumpet, ‘With Rahul nothing is impossible’. Never mind. There’s still something he can claim: with the Ganga of Gandhian politico-spiritual vision and the Yamuna of people power, nothing is impossible.