The Hare And The Tortoise

Two different narratives. Two major Indian national parties. One playing it in the heart of the country, the other on what is even today looked upon as the periphery.

One surrounded by a publicity glitz, the other blacked out by the big money controlled media. One feeding the elixir of religion to the masses, the other attempting to cut into it with the narrative of justice and rights and employment. Both heading towards the 2024 elections.

Who will be ahead in the race? Right now there is no doubt that the hare will succeed as it is rushing ahead in leaps and bounds. The tortoise is walking along, steadfast and determined, but then this is not a fable and reality is very different and not very kind to the underdog.

The hare, for those who might not have guessed it, is the Bharatiya Janata Party and Prime Minister Narendra Modi who pulled out all the plugs for the inauguration of the Ram temple at Ayodhya. It was a spectacle not just in what was once a sleepy village, but seemed to have electrified the country – at least the north– with people flocking to local mandirs, dressing up the streets and homes, and bursting crackers as the day drew to a close.

Prime Minister Modi was in command, the Shankarcharyas upset with the ceremony withdrew into the shadows, and some of Bollywood. and most of the top rich men gathered at Ayodhya for the inauguration, the resurgence, the establishment of a new order as many hailed it to be. And as it indeed is.

The inauguration effectively buried the Babri Masjid and the politics over its demolition. It buried the old India wedded to rights and values and passed on the baton to the new, where secularism has little place and where majoritarianism is established as the way forward.

Good or bad is now only for academic debate as the transition takes place rapidly amidst some voices of dissent, largely from the South. But the goal now is the North, and here the new order holds sway, expanding at breathtaking speed.

The din almost drowned down the tortoise, the Congress party led by Rahul Gandhi winding its way across the states of the Northeast. The media black out ensured that the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra remained confined to the far east of the country, with the significant political journey lost insofar as the lay Indian is concerned.

Rahul Gandhi started the yatra from Manipur, the state with ongoing conflict that has stretched on for months bringing life as the Manipuri knew it to a standstill. In the process he focused on the absence of justice and political will to stop the conflict that is dividing the state, but the words did not get out to the masses across India as it were.

The Indian National Congress covered the meetings in depth, but then the north east is so far from the Hindi heartland that the average Indian here keeps forgetting its existence. The publicity machinery has to be very sound and wide reaching for it to break the sound barriers, and the Congress certainly does not have that kind of access.

On January 22 the yatra was in Assam, actually for about five days it battled an aggressive Chief Minister, blocades, attacks with Rahul Gandhi relentlessly moving on. On the day the Prime Minister was inaugurating the Ayodhya temple, Rahul Gandhi was blocked from giving darshan at a local temple in Nagaon.

He sat on dharna as his party leaders fought the administration, but there was no give. The yatra had to move on and is currently in Meghalaya to a warm welcome.

The focus of this yatra is on justice and rights but also on economic issues such as unemployment in particular. Will this cut into the appeal of religiosity? One doubts it given the current euphoria arising from and spreading out of Ayodhya.

India, in the initial years after Independence, had managed to keep religion out of politics but then given the potent appeal of the former ruling parties from the 1980’s onwards started playing with both, thereby blurring the barriers that had been deliberately constructed by the founding fathers.

Clerics were brought into the political landscape, with mullahs being used to appeal to the minorities, and temple bells being rung for the majority votes. Non-governance encouraged the politicians to use religion to seduce the voters, as they had no answers for rising prices, joblessness, and the complete absence of development in the social sectors particularly.

As the life of the masses worsened, or at best did not improve, questions were raised. Anger made itself felt as the Indian voter, always seen as mature and wise, exercised the ballot to change governments.

The ‘other’ was created and pushed into the Indian psyche, and the worst kind of communal and caste conflict tore apart the fabric of amity and harmony. Today political parties are reticent to reverse the curve and hence the narrative being expounded by Rahul Gandhi is significant in the present scenario.

But will it get him the votes? Impossible to say. After the last yatra the Congress did win the elections in Himachal Pradesh and more importantly Karnataka. But then it lost the next crucial round of state polls. The vote percentages did prove that he has an audience, that some of what he is saying is making sense, but today this narrative is up against the powerful personality of Narendra Modi in the general elections.

The Prime Minister carries extraordinary charisma and appeal and with the support of a driven media, and a solid propaganda machinery he is a highly formidable presence. Which is why, despite rumours from so called ‘informed sources’ that all of the RSS is not for him, he remains over and above all deriders and criticism.

So the race is on. And even though the ‘Hare and the Tortoise’ is a fable for children, real life has a strange way of internalising and imbibing good stories. Except in this reality story the Hare is not going to stop for a complacent nap.