Dear Readers, Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra will conclude in a week in Srinagar. Apart from the political buzz and the many controversies the cross-country foot march has spawned over the last four-and-a-half months, what has not gone unnoticed is the Nehru-Gandhi family scion’s consistent engagement with Hindu religion. And not just temple visits. Ever since the Congress’s rout in the Lok Sabha Elections of 2014, the party has been racking its brain to find an antidote to the BJP’s Hindutva push and counter the perception that it is pro-Muslim, though it has been circumspect on its approach to engaging with Hinduism, regarding both how and how much. In 2018, Sonia Gandhi herself pointed out that the BJP had managed to convince people that the Congress was a “Muslim party”. For some years now, Rahul has been making much-publicised visits to temples, and has been talking in the abstract about Hinduism. For instance, in January 2017, he spoke about finding the Congress’s hand symbol in the images of Lord Shiva, Guru Nanak, Mahatma Buddha, Lord Mahavira and Hazrat Ali. The BJP promptly approached the Election Commission accusing Rahul of relating the party’s electoral symbol to gods and saints. Some months later, the Congress leader said he was studying the Upanishads and the Gita since he was fighting the RSS and BJP. In the run-up to the Gujarat Assembly elections later that year, Rahul described himself as a “Shiv bhakt”, in an obvious juxtaposition to the BJP's campaigns around Lord Ram. After a controversy erupted over Rahul's visit to the Somnath Temple in Gujarat during the campaign, where his name was allegedly listed as a non-Hindu in the visitors' book, the Congress countered by saying that the former party vice-president was “a janeyu-dhari (sacred thread-wearing) Hindu”. In 2018, he undertook the famed visit to Kailash Mansarovar. In November 2021, Rahul again sought to engage with the BJP over religion when he drew a distinction between “Hinduism” and “Hindutva”. He argued that Hinduism was not about “killing individuals”, “unlike Hindutva”. Addressing a rally in Jaipur in December that year, he took this further, saying he was “a Hindu” and “not a Hindutvawadi”, and that the two words were different, with “totally different” meanings. With the rally that was meant to be against price rise swept up by the Hindu vs Hindutva debate, in the wake of Rahul's remarks, many in the party reiterated their argument that the Congress should not fall into the trap of such issues and, instead, focus on how to strengthen its core ideology and values. However, since embarking on his Bharat Jodo in September last year, Rahul has consistently engaged with the religion question, though in a much nuanced manner. Sources said that while the messaging might be criticised as still incoherent, there is acknowledgment now of the fact that not all those who voted for the BJP were diehard Hindutvawadis, and this section could be wooed back. The attempt is to cast Rahul as a benevolent and virtuous Hindu in contrast to the belligerent Hindutvawadi BJP leadership; one who is well aware of what he is talking about, unlike what the BJP would want people to believe. In 2017, Rahul rather naively talked about Googling the Congress's hand symbol, and discovering one “ajeeb si baat (strange thing)... I hadn’t seen it before. The hand can be seen in every religion.” Nowadays, he quotes the Gita and the Upanishads and asks rhetorically why the BJP and RSS would rather chant Jai Shri Ram than Jai Siya Ram. His answer, that Siya or Sita or women, had no place in the RSS ideology. Recently, he said: “I have read the Gita and the Upanishads. I have never read that Hindus should be aggressive. Hinduism is all about understanding the self, about humility, about compassion... Even Lord Ram felt compassion for Ravan. When Ravan was dying, Lord Ram was gentle, loving and affectionate." This was soon after RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat justified the “new-found aggression among Hindus” in India and elsewhere, saying this was due to the fact that Hindu society has been “at war for over 1,000 years and has finally awakened”. Visits to religious shrines have been a regular on the Yatra, while the ascetic-like beard, the bare-boned dressing in just a T-shirt, the statement that “I have killed Rahul Gandhi”, and the constant iteration that the Yatra has no electoral considerations, all suggest renunciation. Party leaders have actually dubbed him a “tapasvi”, while Rahul has called the Congress a “sangathan (organisation) of tapasya”, unlike the BJP-RSS's “sangathan of puja (prayer). As he winds up his Yatra on January 30, the Congress doesn't tire of stressing that Rahul has left the “Pappu” image the BJP gave him far behind. What happens going forward though, as the 2024 Lok Sabha elections approach, is what will be closely watched. The BJP and RSS are set to highlight the opening of the Ram Temple at Ayodhya and Rahul will have to navigate this as well as the political mine field that the right-wing ecosystem will lay in the form of Kashi and Mathura, population control and uniform civil code.
Thank you,
Manoj C G - Manoj is Associate Editor, The Indian Express
If you received this newsletter as a forward, you can subscribe to it, here | 
