Inside Bharat Jodo Yatra

The sun is yet to rise. We drive in the cool breeze in Kanyakumari. The street lights are dim but we see the tricolour fluttering on lamp posts, next to cut-outs of Rahul Gandhi.

. Rahul is touching down to launch his once-in-a-lifetime padayatra — a 3,570 km walkathon to Kashmir spread over 150 days from September 7, 2022. A young woman official assigned to oversee the Bharat Jodo Yatra in Madhya Pradesh would tell me later in November, “This is an antidote to the 1990 Rath Yatra”.

. ‘Yatras’ are an inseparable part of Indian politics. Chandrasekhar embarked on an all-India walkathon in 1983. Nine years later, he became the prime minister for a brief period. In 1990, LK Advani rode a ‘rath’. He did not become prime minister but his party rose to power 24 years later.

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. Discovery of India

. Rahul’s grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru too criss-crossed the country. In his book Discovery of India , Nehru traces a similar ‘yatra’ in 1936-37 and describes it as a ‘hurricane’ tour. His yatra — not a walkathon — aimed to campaign for provincial elections and regain people’s confidence, which the Congress had lost. In Karnataka, he toured 20 hours in one day, addressing ‘monster’ and small meetings.

. Rahul — vilified for being a dynast and accused of being a non-serious part-time politician — has embarked on a yatra when his party is at its lowest ebb. In the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, the Congress has less than 100 seats. It has not won a single Assembly election since 2018-end.

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. From land’s end

. Journalists from all parts of the country have come to Kanyakumari to cover the launch of the yatra. Their interactions with party functionaries revolve around whether the yatra would change anything for the party. This conversation would continue throughout the yatra, across locations.

. People are out on the streets near Gandhi Mandapam, a memorial building that overlooks the Thiruvalluvar statue and Vivekananda Rock Memorial standing in the middle of the sea. Later, some of us friends steal some time from work to take a boat to Vivekananda Rock, and get a glimpse of the under-repair Thiruvalluvar statue. Over the next four months, I similarly catch popular sights in other states.

. I have slept for less than two hours. Who would want to miss a sunrise in Kanyakumari? It has special significance to me, a Malayali who has never been here. A journalist-friend from nearby Thiruvananthapuram warns me against the ‘overrated’ exercise of watching the sunrise. But he wants me to see something else through the window of the hotel room we are sharing. I see a vast expanse of water. “Can’t you see water in three colours? It’s the Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal,” he says, in exasperation.

. On September 7, the yatra begins formally with tens of thousands in attendance. The actual walking begins the next morning.

. Chola magnificence

. The first stop is the temple town of Suchindram. People line up on the streets to have a glimpse of a clean-shaven Rahul, who walks briskly, shakes hands and poses for photos.

. After covering 12-13 km, he is at the 101-year-old SMSM School, near the 9th century Sthanumalayan Temple built by the Cholas. The school has had visitors like Mahatma Gandhi and C Rajagopalachari in 1937. Rahul is shown what they wrote in the visitors’ diary. Outside the school gate, a large crowd has gathered to see Rahul.

. I meet Muniswami, a barefoot farmer, who is bewildered as reporters pester him to know why he has joined the yatra. Turns out, he wanted to “see Rajiv’s son”. I am now standing 300 metres from the famed temple. I move closer to the architectural marvel with a 134 foot entrance tower, and then head for a quick meal on a banana leaf.

. I join the yatra again — travelling on a minibus and later on foot — in Muttidichan Parai where a prominent Christian church is located. This is where the 18th century devout Christian Devasahayam Pillai was tortured to death. He was canonised by Pope Francis last May. Three days later, I fly back to Delhi, skipping the three week-leg of the yatra in Kerala, my home state. By then, Rahul’s pace of walking, his T-shirt and shoes have started gaining attention.

. In Vokkaliga belt

. I return to cover the yatra in Karnataka’s Mandya in October. Like in Kanyakumari, I walk into a hotel in Mandya, a Vokkaligga belt, in the wee hours of October 6. The main question is why the Congress got Sonia Gandhi to join the yatra in this belt. Is it a signal to the JD(S) whose patriarch HD Deve Gowda has a firm grip over the community? I speak to some leaders before I hit the yatra route in Bellale village in Pandavapura. When Sonia joins the yatra, we see a frenzy. Men and women, young and old, gather from 7 am to catch her first public appearance in a couple of years.

. Stampede fear

. By now, journalists and leaders know that walking with Rahul is not easy. You have to keep pace or you get trampled. Of course, we could retreat to the crowded media van. In Anche Chittanahalli, I meet young accountant Avinash who wants “to be part of a big movement”. He has heard about the anti-corruption movement in 2011 led by Anna Hazare but he was still in school then. “I hadn’t seen a big national leader in flesh and blood. But when Sonia and Rahul walked in, I was with them,” Avinash says. A detour takes me and my friends to Srirangapatna. I visit the spot where Tipu Sultan was killed, his masjid, and his ruined palace. I also see Col Bailey’s dungeon, and I am astonished by the architectural beauty of the Sriranganatha Swamy Temple.

. I am ready to head back to Delhi. But how can one leave Karnataka without having ‘ragi mudde’? In Tumakuru, I savour ‘ragi mudde’ after a press conference in which Rahul speaks about ‘brilliant’ leaders Siddaramaiah and D K Shivakumar. A day earlier, he launched an attack on Gautam Adani, who “rose like a rocket on the list of the richest”. People have started to find resonance when he speaks about price rise, unemployment, religious division and income gap. “Woh mudde pe baat kar raha hei. Pappu nahi hai woh (He is raising issues of importance. He is not stupid),” says Ram Kishan, a bystander, in Madhya Pradesh’s Khargone a month later.

. Sartorial talk

. By now, Rahul’s beard has grown! He has resisted attempts by leaders to put him in a politician’s uniform — kurta pyjama. And he is not wearing a sweater or jacket. He asks: “Why are you bothered about me, why don’t you ask the same question to a farmer?” Posters and cut-outs too change as the yatra progresses. Rahul has crossed 50 but his party and their poster designers appear to not accept that. Many posters in Kanyakumari project a bespectacled Rahul in his twenties!

. In Madhya Pradesh, in late November, a bearded Rahul visits the Omkareshwar temple, sporting a tilak on his forehead. In Punjab in January, he wears a turban, and his sardar avatar is on the posters soon.

. One thing you notice in Indore is its cleanliness. The city has been ranked first on the Swachh Bharat index for years. I see a team of women at midnight, clearing waste near the hotel where journalists are staying. Indore’s public walls are adorned with thematic art. Outside our hotel, there are cinema posters of Kishore Kumar, Raj Kumar, Shah Rukh Khan and Kamal Haasan. In another part of the city, I spot a painting based on the ‘Kama Sutra’ on the walls!

. How can one not go to the Sarafa market when in Indore? A jewellery market during the day, it turns into a street food heaven at night. From ice cream pan to garadu ki chaat, we taste new stuff. And we bump into some of the top coordinators of the yatra.

. Ambedkar memories

. As the yatra heads to Ujjain, two journalist-friends and I decide to travel in the opposite direction till Khandwa, some 150 km away from Indore, for a day. Our first stop is the birthplace of B R Ambedkar in Mhow. It has a well-kept memorial. We learn that Mhow is short for Military Headquarters of War, a cantonment area established in 1818. Rahul addresses a gathering at Mhow on November 26, the day the Constitution was adopted in 1949. A local leader has given out saris to about a thousand women and brought them to the venue.

. A Seva Dal functionary is lamenting that he has to repay a loan of Rs 20,000, borrowed to provide food for a crowd. Congress supporter Jitendra Tomar, who has organised the delivery of 500 litres of milk for yatris from his village in Khargone’s Baswa village, is disappointed that Rahul does not stop to have tea with them. For those from the south of Vindhyas, this leg of the yatra is an introduction to Tantia Mama, a tribal hero. An adivasi councillor in Khargone’s Sanawad, Anil Vare is upset that Rahul hasn’t met leaders from his community.

. ‘At the ashram’

. Rahul is in Haryana and Delhi just before Christmas. The Delhi leg of the yatra reveals why a locality is called Ashram. When Rahul steps into Jairam Ashram, we come to know why the locality got its name. Some journalists tease Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh — ‘We didn’t know you had an ‘ashram’ in Delhi!’

. If that was trivia, the yatra is a “celebration of unity in diversity” for a young nurse couple, who work in a hospital in Haryana’s Faridabad. They follow the yatra for a distance on their motorcycle in Delhi, flaunting a flag and a poster. “We don’t want our names to be printed as we are scared that there will be repercussions but that doesn’t mean we will not fight,” says the man.

. Scribe’s story

. On January 8, in Kurukshetra, I bump into Raza Ansari, who has walked 3,500 km from Kanyakumari, and documented the Bharat Jodo Yatra on his YouTube channel. I ask him why he is doing this. Describing himself as a journalist who quit ‘toxic mainstream media’ to do ‘something meaningful’, Ansari says his ancestors sadly played no part in the freedom struggle. “They had an opportunity. They were not part of the Dandi March or the Champaran struggle. They were oblivious to all what was happening then. I can’t be like them now,” he says.

. T-shirt discussion

. As the yatra heads to a public meeting in Indora in Himachal Pradesh, Suraj Mathe is trailing it in a tractor. He has driven all the way from Kota in Rajasthan. The route hasn’t touched Jhansi, his hometown in Uttar Pradesh. An active Congress worker till 2009, he quit politics to concentrate on agriculture. When the yatra was announced, he couldn’t resist its lure.

. At a rally venue, Balwinder Singh, who is wearing three layers of woollens, wonders how Rahul manages with just a T-shirt. On the other hand, Vipin Hamrol, a businessman from Delhi, walks bare-chest in Punjab’s Hoshiarpur in solidarity with Rahul.

. Arun S Son, a young doctor from Kerala’s Thiruvananthapuram, joined the yatra in Kanyakumari and is set to complete it in Srinagar on January 30. He has taken leave from his temporary job at a government hospital. He has discovered the diversity of the country and also learnt a bit about his profession. “There are differences in the practice of medicine in the south and north — from how doctors dissuade patients from taking unnecessary tablets to how they pursue them to follow a particular diet,” he says as he follows the yatra in Jammu’s Kathua.

. For every individual, the yatra is different. Some are in it for the experience, others are onlookers and just want a glimpse of Rahul. Bharat Jodo Yatra is many personal yatras rolled into one.

Inside Bharat Jodo Yatra

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