Rahul Gandhi’s yatra runs into rough weather in east India

While opposition to the yatra in BJP-ruled Assam was expected, the Congress would not have anticipated Mamata Banerjee’s decision to fight the polls alone in West Bengal.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s second yatra across India, the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, has hit rough weather in eastern India. Most significantly, before the journey entered West Bengal, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee announced that while she remains part of the Opposition alliance I.N.D.I.A., there would be no seat sharing with the Congress, and the Trinamool Congress (TMC) will contest each of the state’s 42 seats.

This is bad optics for the alliance, but much of the responsibility must lie with the Congress itself. The party refused to settle on the seat-sharing issue even as Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, the state unit chief and Congress leader in the Lok Sabha, kept up a constant sniping at Banerjee.

Indeed, in just the act of retaining Chowdhury in the top party position in West Bengal, the Congress never really acted in good faith with the TMC. In the early meetings of the I.N.D.I.A. bloc, it had been agreed that the dominant party in each state would have the final say in the alliance. The TMC offered the Congress two seats and Chowdhury was not having it, and kept up a barrage of colourful charges against Didi, as Banerjee is referred to by her followers.

Local bad blood, it seemed, could not be overcome in the national interest. The Congress simultaneously also kept delaying the ‘final’ conversation about seat sharing. Now it has come as a salvo from the Chief Minister — unless there is some last-minute damage control. Banerjee has also thrown water on visions of a joint I.N.D.I.A. campaign. She claimed that the Congress did not even do the courtesy of informing her about the West Bengal leg of Gandhi’s yatra. There was, therefore, no question of joint appearances.

At one level it’s a bit tragic that the idea of a coalition should take a big hit. There is perversely the argument that in a first-past-the-post system, the dominant party in the state would prefer the Opposition vote to be divided rather than going in one direction, which would be the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that is now the principal Opposition in West Bengal.

The national party had pulled off a surprise heist in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls by winning 18 seats, while the Congress won two and the TMC 22. In the 2021 assembly elections, of the 294 seats, the TMC won 215, the BJP 77, and Congress zilch.

In September, the TMC won an important byelection in the Dhupguri seat it had lost in 2021 to the BJP. The TMC got 46.28 per cent of the votes, the BJP 44.22, while the Left-Congress combine got 6.52 per cent. That’s the sort of arithmetic the BJP understands, and always invests in moves to keep the Opposition divided.

In West Bengal, there would be an anti-TMC vote that may not be pro-BJP, and perhaps that would go to the Congress, whose local leadership is more comfortable with the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

Meanwhile, it’s also worth noting that Chowdhury is at times referred to as the BJP mole in the Congress, even as a section of the Congress refers to all regional parties that fail to tie up with them as the BJP’s ‘B team’.

These developments could have been rather amusing if it were not so damaging to the Opposition. What is noteworthy is that many of the primary figures in contemporary Indian politics, Banerjee included, are products of the Congress, which was once the mothership of Indian politics.

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma is a former Congressman who seems to nurture a special hatred for Rahul Gandhi. In 2015, when he was leaving the party, Sarma told this author that he had been insulted by the dynast and waited days to meet him. With dramatic flourish, Sarma would say he was offered biscuits that Gandhi’s dog would eat even as he sat there.

There is, therefore, bad blood between Sarma, now 54, and 53-year-old Gandhi. The Assam Chief Minister had been the right hand of late Congress Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, with whom he would eventually fall out and claim the top job for himself. Congress’ national leadership would not really attempt to dissuade Sarma (Gandhi is famously believed to have said ‘Let Him Go’) as they had faith in the Gogoi family. Gaurav Gogoi, the deputy leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha, remains very close to Gandhi.

On January 22, on a day the national focus was on the unveiling of the idol at the Ram temple in Ayodhya, another temple in Assam denied Gandhi entry. The temple in Assam was willing to open its gates, but by that time the yatra would have passed. There is something disturbing about a house of god denying entry to anyone, but there was scant debate on this in media.

During the Assam leg of the yatra, there have been other ugly skirmishes. The bus carrying Gandhi was surrounded by slogan-shouting BJP workers and the Congress leader was compelled to step out into the hostile crowd. This too was a disturbing scene given the history of the Nehru-Gandhi family.

Things got uglier on January 23, with Congress workers clashing with the Assam Police while trying to take a certain route in Guwahati. Sarma announced that FIRs have been filed against the Congress leader and those accompanying him. He also referred to Gandhi as ‘Ravana’ in the age of Ram. Rahul Gandhi has kept up the rhetoric against Sarma, referring to him as India’s most corrupt Chief Minister.

The climate in which the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra is being undertaken is different from the atmospherics of the first journey in 2023. The Lok Sabha election dates could be announced next month, and stakeholders in each state are getting ready for pitched battles. The yatra as an exercise for renewal of the Congress is a step in the right direction. But even at this late stage the party must try to work with regional parties, even as a junior partner.

Rahul Gandhi has often spoken of the Prime Minister’s ego and the need to vanquish it. Unless his party gets over its own hurt ego, and accepts its position as junior partner, it will remain in a never-never land of self-improvement which will be nice — but it would away from the ground zero of Indian politics.

(Saba Naqvi is a journalist and author.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.