Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra quietly achieved something that the original didn’t

We don’t need a grand conspiracy theory to understand the lack of attention to BJY 2.0. But if you judge it by its impact on the Lok Sabha election, it could be called a success.

Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra has been criticised by political analysts for its timing, route, theme and more. | ANI

Did the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra quietly achieve something that the more famous and original Bharat Jodo Yatra did not? I asked myself this intriguing question as I made my way back from Mumbai, where the yatra concluded on 17 March. Dilip D’Souza’s engaging and reflective travelogue about the BJY, Road Walker: A Few Miles on the Bharat Jodo Yatra, accompanied me on this journey.

The question is counterintuitive. The second edition — the BJNY — has had a lukewarm reception, though it had many elements of what made the first yatra a great hit. Rahul Gandhi travelled the entire length of 6,700 km with Congress’ local, state, and national leadership in attendance. There were impressive rallies, culminating in the ‘Nyay Manzil’, the mega INDIA rally at the Shivaji Park.

There were exhilarating moments, just like in the first yatra. For me, the hope on the faces of Kuki women in Manipur stood out. As did Rahul Gandhi offering chappal to Dalit women from Bundelkhand in Madhya Pradesh who are still mandated to walk barefoot inside their village. There were spectacular public receptions and some deep interactions with local people, captured in some lovely videos. Yet, the yatra went more or less unnoticed by the mainstream media. Even the alternative media was not as excited as the last time.

We don’t need a grand conspiracy theory to understand this inattention. A re-enactment is never as exciting as the original. The success of BJY had set very high, near-impossible, expectations. Besides, a vehicle yatra can never be as eye-catching as a padayatra. The timing was too close to the Lok Sabha election, made worse by the unflattering electoral verdict in the assembly elections. And there were questions about the Congress organising a yatra on its own, while it was already a part of the INDIA coalition. Some of these apprehensions came true, especially in West Bengal. The yatra coincided — or was made to coincide, with many notable desertions from INDIA and Congress. All this does not make for good political advertisement.

Given all these challenges, the surprising thing is not that the yatra did not set Ganges on fire, but that it did manage to achieve something substantial.

What the older sibling achieved

Talking about the achievement of the original BJY, D’Souza sets up the following three measures: “First, stand up to those who would break this country. Second, listen, fully and sincerely to people, speak about their concerns: education, health, women’s issues, jobs, inflation, whatever. Third, lay out the Congress’s own plans to address such concerns. Its own vision for the country.” His verdict is that the Congress did pretty well on the first two objectives, while the third one needed more substance. To him, the BJY kindled hope by demonstrating a potential for struggle and signalling renewal for all those who want to save democracy in India.

I tracked that yatra in these columns and credited it with three achievements. For the country, it brought hope, a new language of love and the courage to name crony capitalists. For the Congress party, it brought work and reasons to work for its workers and confidence to its leaders. And for Rahul Gandhi, it transformed his image, from “Pappu” to a serious leader; with this yatra, he earned what he had inherited.

It would be tempting to measure this yatra on the same parameters as its older sibling. Or to judge it by its impact on the upcoming election. On that score, the bottom line is pretty simple: a yatra was, any day, better than doing meetings in Delhi. If you go by mobilisation, it was quite impressive more or less throughout, certainly much higher than Congress’ electoral strength in the recent past would warrant in most of these states. I would be wary, though, of drawing enthusiastic conclusions on that basis — crowd at a rally or a road show is no indicator of electoral performance.

Similarly, the yatra took Rahul Gandhi’s journey — his own version of Nehru’s Discovery of India — a step forward. His engagement with real-life everyday issues of the people got deeper. He has evolved his own grammar of public communication — interactive conversation with and among the people — that can disrupt the demagogic style of communication that Prime Minister Narendra Modi specialises in.

All this is of interest to political observers, but that’s not the real basis to assess this yatra. The temptation to measure this one on older parameters must be resisted.

The real success of BJY 2.0

When the BJNY began, I wrote in these columns that this yatra was about challenging the ideological hegemony of BJP-RSS: “The Opposition needs to win back the battle of ideas and re-enchant the constitutional ideals in a new language for the new generation. They need to reclaim the legacy of nationalism and prove that we are the true inheritors of the best in our civilisation’s heritage. Those who wish to reclaim our republic must redefine and recapture the ideological spectrum.” This cannot be done overnight, and we should not expect miracles. But someone has to begin this sooner than later. The real success of this yatra is in expanding the space for counter-hegemonic politics of ideas in more ways than one.

First, in a political climate where much of the opposition has been pushed into tailing the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) majoritarian line, the yatra stood firm with the constitutional ideal of “principled distance” from religion, especially in the midst of the orchestrated frenzy around the consecration of Ram Mandir in Ayodhya. Without being shrill, and without giving up on his religious convictions, Rahul Gandhi took an uncompromising secular position.

Second, it anchored the generic message of mohabbat into a specific commitment to justice. The message was clear: Politics of hatred is rooted in the reality of injustice. The path to harmonious co-living is to connect victims of injustice to set up dard ka rishta. This yatra spoke to and understood the pain of victims of state violence, caste injustice, gender oppression, regional neglect, economic inequality, and what have you. If the first yatra opened the way for public conversation about crony capitalism, this one was a full-blown assault — at times a tad too in-your-face — on the structure of social and economic inequalities.

Third, the yatra went beyond generalised rhetoric on justice. It translated the commitment to justice into a concrete political agenda with five dimensions that address five key social groups (youth, women, farmers, labourers, and marginal communities) that suffer injustice and five specific ‘guarantees’ on each of the dimensions. Some of these — for example, commitment to legal minimum support price (MSP), right to one year of paid apprenticeship, 50 per cent reservation for women in public jobs, caste census, and urban employment guarantee — are going to shape the national agenda for some time to come. It has already forced the BJP to take some of these demands on board. More is bound to follow, as it is not easy to brush aside this agenda.

Finally, this yatra has firmly oriented the country’s principal opposition party toward its own social base — the bottom of the socio-economic pyramid that is India. This is just the first step. Recovery of its social base is not going to be an easy task. It would involve restructuring the organisation and its leadership at all levels. This would also mean negotiating a risk: the privileged can retaliate sooner than the underprivileged can mobilise. Yet there is no other way of forging counter-hegemonic politics in the times we live in. The Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra has begun this journey.

Yogendra Yadav is National Convener of the Bharat Jodo Abhiyan. He tweets @_YogendraYadav. Views are personal.

(Edited by Humra Laeeq)