By Sushil Kutty

Has Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ achieved what it got down to? What was it that Rahul Gandhi needed to unify? His social gathering went to items right here, there and all over the place, wherever it had misplaced elections, and in states the place the Congress was robbed of its hard-fought victories by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s central investigative companies? Then, there have been particular person Congress leaders, like J&Ok heavyweight Ghulam Nabi Azad, who took off with a bunch of the like minded, which additionally left the grand outdated social gathering damaged if not decimated.

Now, as Bharat Jodo Yatra closes the hole with remaining vacation spot Lal-Chowk in Srinagar with each passing day on the street, among the Congress leaders who stalked out of the social gathering with Ghulam Nabi Azad have returned to the Congress fold, proving they’re confirmed turncoats. In reality, there was speak of Azad himself set to return.

That didn’t occur. Azad scotched the rumours. The actual breakthrough of BJY is that an increasing number of of the Congress rank and file are impressed by Rahul Gandhi’s BJY, and inclined to hitch him on the street to Congress revival. Tens and 1000’s of them are trailing the Bharat Jodo Yatra, Congress grassroots who’ve been galvanized by the new-look Rahul Gandhi together with his newfound assertiveness.

The most important BJY-effect is within the recent notion that Rahul Gandhi shouldn’t be the ‘Pappu’ he was made out to be. Right this moment, after greater than 3000 km on the transfer, the Gandhi scion is a ‘particular person of substance’, any individual who is aware of his thoughts, and who speaks his thoughts. The ‘Pappu picture’ on which the BJP had invested time, vitality and rupees on is gone with the BJY wind.

There are additionally the Congress leaders who really feel betrayed by the BJY. Ageing Congress ‘netas’ who feared their time was up. Leaders like Azad and Anand Sharma. Kapil Sibal and… Those that had been fairly used to Rahul’s ‘Pappu-image’, and had nurtured it in their very own small, little methods. If Azad and Sibal left the Congress, it was as a result of they noticed no future within the Congress, and for the Congress.

However, now after what we see of Bharat Jodo Yatra, there should have been “return” indicators. Nonetheless, these indicators haven’t been reciprocated. Quite the opposite, Congress leaders like Kamalnath have made it clear that those that betrayed the Congress and the Gandhi household haven’t any place within the Congress, even when they got here with folded palms.

Additionally, that insurgent cabal, the G23, has disappeared, remaining solely in title. No one talks of the G23 any longer. It’s as if the group was by no means there. In reality, many of the G23 have come out in reward of Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra. Some, like Shashi Tharoor, have truly walked alongside Rahul Gandhi. The very fact is, one or the opposite Nehru-Gandhi has all the time led the Congress with out situations connected. Right this moment, Rahul Gandhi is getting the identical acceptance.

The Bharat Jodo Yatra, doesn’t matter whose thought it was, has returned the Congress to the Gandhi household. This after a way of foreboding that the 137-year-old social gathering was slipping out of the Nehru-Gandhi household’s grip, particularly after the G23 wrote the obituary of the Gandhi household’s maintain over the Congress in a letter to Sonia Gandhi leaked to the Press.

Right this moment, the Bharat Jodo Yatra is making individuals and political events sit up and take discover. At residence and overseas. There are questions being requested. For instance, what if the Bharat Jodo Yatra had been ‘Kashmir to Kanyakumari’? What if, as a substitute of a straight-line path, it had taken a zigzag route masking extra states, and lasting an extended size of time?

And the way has the Bharat Jodo Yatra affected the Bharatiya Janata Celebration, and the Modi authorities? The Bharatiya Janata Celebration has repeatedly acted as if the BJY was of no account. However the method through which the Narendra Modi authorities has behaved provides clues that the BJY has disturbed the Bharatiya Janata Celebration.

With Rahul Gandhi on the street for over a 100-plus days, and the optics it has given to the nation at giant, the BJP is nervous, and confused. The nervousness is displaying within the BJP spokesperson-speak. They can’t get their minds off Bharat Jodo Yatra. And their tongues round the suitable phrases! The BJY is consuming them. To this point, the BJP has no concrete plan to halt the BJY’s progress. The Covid-19 excuse was stillborn. As of now, the Bharat Jodo Yatra is unstoppable.

If something, the Bharat Jodo Yatra seems to have induced fissures within the ‘Sangh Parivar. Instantly, RSS functionaries and Sanghi clergymen are popping out in help of BJY, and are praising the “younger man strolling for 3000 kilometre”. Hastily, the BJP is not sure of its dedicated Hindu base. Rahul ‘Tapasvi’ Gandhi’s ‘abhay mudra’ is giving the BJP sleepless nights. (IPA Service)

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