This weekend marked the end of the Rahul Gandhi-led Bharat Jodo Nyaya Yatra which started in Manipur in January this year. The concluding event was held at Shivaji Stadium in Mumbai amidst the leadership of the INDI alliance. The 63-day yatra was the second such outreach by the Congress, this time starting from the East to the West. However, unlike the first yatra which received attention from the media and political observers, the second yatra paled in comparison. Even though the yatra began from Thoubal in Manipur and hoped to take advantage of the recent ethnic clashes in the state, it had very little impact on the ground.
A state weary of the conflict that it had recently endured, seemed to be cautious against the politicisation of their internal matter. However, in light of the conflict, as Rahul had pitched himself as the unifier, it is noteworthy that the Meitei congressmen were asked to not attend the second half of the yatra that went through the Kuki-dominated areas. It has been reported that many Kuki organisations had made the request to drop Meitei leaders when the yatra entered Sekmai and some other reports have indicated that it was the Congress leadership itself that asked Meitei leaders not to accompany the yatra beyond the Meitei-dominated areas.
Either way, it was evident that Rahul Gandhi was incapable of bringing two warring communities together under the umbrella of the Indian National Congress (INC) and a yatra that was intended to unite Bharat.
The media coverage was limited and the yatra moved on to the rest of the Northeastern states where the reception to his road trip was, at the most, driven by curiosity rather than actual allegiance. In Mizoram, where he had visited prior to the Assembly elections held in Nov- Dec 2023, INC lost four seats and was left with only one. It must be remembered that Congress had ruled Mizoram for over 22 years since it received full statehood.
This downward spiral that the Rahul Gandhi-led INC has faced in the Northeastern states has been a free fall. There was a time when the Congress in the Northeast was in power or the principle opposition in most states of the region but today, the story is different. The INC lost Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh with a massive exodus of its MLAs and senior leaders like former Chief Minister Mukul Sangma to other parties, especially the BJP. In Nagaland, they barely have a foothold without a single MLA in the state assembly. Tripura is in the same position, where the INC is holding on to a mere 8.56 per cent of the vote share. But in Assam, where the Congress had nearly six decades to lord over its subjects, observers watched closely for some signs of life in the INC. And for a moment, there seemed to be some movement.
Videos were shared of large crowds in Dhubri, Assam. The optics seemed to be better than the sum total of the other Northeast states Gandhi had visited. But almost immediately news spread that the crowds were mobilised by Badruddin Ajmal, the sitting MP from Dhubri and President of the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF), which enjoys 16 seats in the state, all of which are Muslim dominated. It was, however, not the deflection of credit to Ajmal that pointed towards an utter failure of the yatra, but the fact that hordes of Congress workers left the party.
Assam Congress Working President Kamalakhya Dey Purkayastha resigned and extended support to the Chief Minister of Assam, Himanta Biswa Sarma, who is from the BJP. Mangaldoi MLA Congressman Basanta Das also extended his support to Sarma in addition to over 150 Congress workers who joined the BJP en-masse, including senior names such as Angkita Dutta, daughter of former Assam Congress Committee President and former minister Bismita Gogoi, who went on record to say that women were not safe in the Congress after she accused state Congress leaders of passing misogynistic remarks. Dutta too, had filed a case of harassment against India Youth Congress President, Srinivas BV. Unfortunately for Dutta, she was expelled.
The rest of the yatra too was not any better. While Rahul Gandhi was in Guwahati, Congress leader from Maharashtra, Milind Deora, quit the party. In West Bengal, he did not get any support from Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, his INDI alliance partner. Her reticence was a precursor to the decision to fight all the 42 Lok Sabha seats in the state by herself without sharing any with the Congress. As the yatra touched Bihar, the JDU, one of the major stakeholders in the INDI alliance withdrew. The chips continued to fall as the yatra forced itself to continue, somewhere in the middle of all of this mayhem, Rahul Gandhi in his distinctive style decided to do the disappearing act.
He left the yatra midway to go to the University of Cambridge for a series of lectures, only for it to be revealed that it was not an invitation from the prestigious university but a paid commercial event in a seminar hall. Taking into account that it was an external booking, it remains a mystery, like many aspects about Rahul Gandhi and his yatra, as to why the lectures could not have been timed after the conclusion of the yatra.
However, the yatra of errors had to live up to its function. The concluding ceremony in Mumbai at Shivaji Stadium last weekend saw Rahul Gandhi end his yatra with another unsurmountable error of judgement, by pitting himself against Shakti. “There is a word ‘Shakti’ in Hinduism,” he said. “We are fighting against a Shakti. The question is, what is that Shakti.” The whole country was left aghast at this hugely offensive and direct attack on the foundation of the fundamental cosmic energy in Hinduism. Shakti embodies the feminine and is the consort of Shiva. In the tradition of ‘Shaktism’, Shakti is the worship of the supreme brahmaan herself.
In one clean sweep, Rahul Gandhi set the stage and the characters for the upcoming elections, unfortunately appointing himself as the demon Mahishasura, who was defeated by the embodiment of Shakti – Goddess Durga. PM Modi immediately accepted the challenge to defeat those who oppose Shakti with Shakti, explaining that every woman in this country was an embodiment of Shakti. On the other hand, Rahul Gandhi had perhaps already forgotten the character of places and the people he had crossed in the Northeast. Many communities there are matriarchal and most women of the Northeast are known for their strength and independence. They don’t take insults kindly.
The Bharat Jodo Nyaya Yatra was at the most a road trip that garnered little if any tangible benefits for Rahul Gandhi’s role as a leader. It also failed to enthuse the voters who could have been potential supporters of the Congress and the INDI alliance. However, all is not lost, the yatra did achieve something even if it wasn’t for Gandhi. The yatra in 63 days reminded us that India deserves a better Opposition. This is not about comparing the optics and the mobilisation of the first yatra with the second, neither is it about Rahul Gandhi and his self-destructive nature. It is really about India deserving a better Opposition, which could compete with the ruling dispensation, and in the process strengthen democratic functioning.
But with Shakti on the firing line in the run-up to the 2024 elections, it is just as well that the Angkitas and Bismitas of Assam are not living through the 56 years of Congress rule in Assam. For them, and others like them, there is still hope.
Rami Niranjan Desai is an anthropologist and a scholar on the northeast region of India. She is a columnist and author and presently a Distinguished Fellow at India Foundation, New Delhi. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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