Valson Thampu

There is a place for symbolic gestures in politics. But politics is a domain not of art but of artfulness. So, effectiveness counts most of all. Rahul’s BaharatJodoYatra is the latest flapping of his luminous wings. But the party, as such, is losing confidence in its capacity to fly.

Admittedly, the yatra has touched a cord in the hearts of people in their tens and thousands. Indeed, people’s response to this Mahatma-like exercise has exceeded the rosiest expectations of its organisers; the reason why it is being favoured with a media blackout. But it is doubtful if this public responsiveness to Rahul will translate itself into votes for the party, given how effectively Modi has dispelled the Gandhi-Nehru halo of the Congress through a shrewd and strident anti-dynasty tirade. As if that is not bad enough, the party itself remains a contradiction of the message that Rahul’s yatra is meant to convey to the people. The BJP, on its part, with an unerring instinct to pick the chink in the adversary’s armour, highlights incongruence with searing sarcasm, and advises Congressmen to ‘do Congress-jodoyatra’ instead. This hits the party where it hurts most.

Congressmen have not let the BJP down, either. Rather than identifying themselves with the soul of the yatra, they do all they can to magnify the contradiction between the message and the messenger’s political turf. Consider, if an illustration is required, the moment that ShashiTharoor chose to set the proverbial cat among the pigeons in Kerala. Why did he unleash his brand of inner-party turbulence when he did? It has taken everyone by surprise. It is hard to read this merely as an expression of personal pique at being worsted in the race against Kharge. Shashi has every right to notify his party on the restlessness he feels at not being recognized to an extent that, in his view, matches his distinction as compared to the rest of the lacklustre pack. He is not unlettered in the political cliché, ‘time is of the essence of politics’. That he chose to strike as the yatra was on and gathering momentum, especially given that the Delhi police began to move to walk him back into the SunandaPushkar case, is significant. A dispassionate observer of the situation can only read this Shashi-induced state-level quake as a designed to dull the resonance of the yatra.

An event is only as significant as it is made out to be. Unity is an abstract noun. Barring philosophers, the rank and file are unlikely to get excited about abstractions. The abstract needs to be concretised; or, if a religious metaphor is availed, the word must become flesh. The need to invest one’s pittance into unity is acute today, given that the BJP has all but displaced unity with uniformity in public taste. It is palpable taste, not abstract thought, that wins the race in the public domain.

Ironically, the Congress is the worst victim of localised inner-party uniformity. Group-ism, rampant most in the Congress, is an ironic thing in this light. It denotes multiple nuclei of uniformity of vested interests that undermine the unity and cohesion of the party. A group functions on the uniformity of the interests that hold its members together. This de-stabilises the ‘unity’ of the party to which the group concerned relates, but does not ‘belong’ in the organic sense of the term. In extreme case members of one group would rather have the candidate of another party win than the member of another group within the Congress. It was, after all, Congressmen who defeated Manmohan Singh, when he contested in New Delhi, the only time he did. Rahul should, therefore, be wiser for the unsolicited advice the BJP offers in this regard. He must address the cancer within urgently, even if this calls for a few amputations, so to speak.

The people of India, unlike the party careerists, know what this group-ism portends. One look at the rout of the Congress in the recently concluded Gujarat assembly elections suffices to understand this aright. Voting for the Congress, as Prime Minister Modi told Gujarati voters, is tantamount to voting for the BJP; for Congressmen are readily purchasable in the flea-market of legislative horse-trading.

The point to note here is that Rahul’s endeavour to promote national unity is undercut by the proven ineffectiveness of his party in dealing with people-centric issues one after another. Whatever opportunities presented themselves in the past eight years to bridge the gulf between the plight of the people and the politics of the Congress party, went a-begging. Unity makes sense when it is hitched to the business and bosom of the people. Unity for what? Rahul’s sincerity in this regard is not in doubt; but that is hardly the issue here. The issue is that he is unable to save his party from itself.

I wish Rahul had heeded PrashantKishor’s advice to prioritise the rebuilding of the party for a decade. It wasn’t, because it is the long haul. It bespeaks immaturity to assume that the party will deliver ‘somehow’ in the short-term, without regaining the gynaecological patency to ovulate unity and birth a new hope for the people. Good intentions suffice in private conversations. In the public space, though, the proverbial decisiveness of ‘cutting the Gordian knot’ is the bottom line. Rahul is the John Keats of Indian politics; beating in the void his luminous wings in vain.