by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group
It is certainly not the way that an eminent party, having gone to seed lately, should give itself a makeover. Last week, when Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi gave kick start to his four-week-long, 2,500-kilometre flamboyant travel in Uttar Pradesh, a clever strategy went for a toss in the most unexpected manner. It was the idea of strategic planner Prashant Kishore, engaged by the Congress, to focus the campaign on farmers" distress, particularly their rising indebtedness, and get Rahul to hold close meetings with villagers seated on "charpai", or wooden cots, instead of addressing the usual rallies. That was supposed to make the Gandhi scion re-emphasise his earlier charge that Prime Minster Narendra Modi"s administration is "suit boot ki sarkar". Charpais, it was thought, would set the intimate tone for Rahul"s "kisan yatra" covering 223 assembly segment across the state"s 39 districts.
But little did Rahul Gandhi, or his strategist Kishore, know of the deadly North Indian habit of guests to appropriate the seating facilities extended to them. As student of history I remember what was testified by Moroccan traveller Ibn Batuta as far back as 1350. He had said every traveller should have his own bed (cot) in India. A more recent testimony came on the International Yoga Day, in the presence of Prime Minisrer Narendra Modi, when most of the yoga mats provided by the organisers disappeared under the arms of the enthusiastic participants. So the vanishing Charpais for Rahul"s rally at Rudrapur in Deoria was no exception.
But that itself is not a pointer to Rahul Gandhi"s below-average popularity nor should it be construed as the farmers" contempt for the Congress. The party is connecting with the state"s farmers on the promise that, if elected to power, it would try and their agricultural loans from banks waived. It is undoubtedly bad economics which politicians of all hues had done it beginning with Devi Lal to V P Singh to successive Congress governments at the Centre. But the political reality of the drought and flood ravaged state is somewhat different. With an average loan per farmer in the state of Rs 27,500, the party is promising a debt write off of about Rs 50,000 crore. It is also pledged to an unknown amount on power bills amnesty. In a state of low educational attainments, such as Uttar Pradesh, promise has more pull than capacity. So Kishore"s gambit may work, who knows?
But the implicit strategy of the Congress is different. It wants to appeal to the psyche of stratified castes that got disfigured beyond recognition after the Mandal-Mandir tsunami of the Nineties. Uttar Pradesh is the traditional bastion of India"s hierarchical caste system, with Brahmins invariably at the top. The state has over 11 per cent Brahmins despite the loss of Uttarakhand with its exceptionally high Brahmin concentration. The Congress governed the state predominantly with Brahmin leaders from Govind Ballav Pant to Kamalapati Tiwari and N D Tiwari. At a later stage, the party fielded Rajputs like V P Singh and Veer Bahadur Singh, but its influence had waned by then. The Congress, with respect of the highest castes that it always commanded, suddenly became irrelevant with two new developments--the advent of Dalit and mandal politicians like Mayawati and Mulayam Singh Yadav, and the Hindu-Muslim polarisation that began with destruction of the Babri shrine in 1992. The political unrest that prevailed in the state since then has by now crossed the citizens" tolerance limit.
Despite the anarchy unleashed by divisive politics, Indian leaders have always understood the commanding position enjoyed by Brahmins in India"s caste pyramid. P V Narasimha Rao may have been the last Congress Prime Minister belonging to the Brahmin community. But its domination in the party continues. The fact that Rahul Gandhi brought 78 year-old Shiela Dixit to lead the Congress in UP shows the importance of being Brahmins. The BJP says it does not believe in the Hindu caste system, but it is only for public consumption. Its ideological master RSS has always been led by an elevated sub-sect of Brahmins, except once, for Rajendra Singh in the eighties. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the first BJP prime minister, is every inch a high-ranking "Kanyakubja" Brahmin and no wonder he depended most for governance on his hand-picked principal secretary Brajesh Mishra, yet another Brahmin. Narendra Modi, on his part, may be an OBC but, being trained in the RSS, he has a shrewd awareness of the way caste identities push and pull in India. Arun Jaitley, finance minister and the man on whom Modi leans most on tricky issues, is a Saraswat Brahmin. Modi's PMO is dominated by Brahmins and he listens and follows whatever advice is given to him by the RSS. The list of his top Cabinet ministers are from this community and include Finance minister Arun Jaitley, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, Road Transport & Shipping Minister Nitin Gadkari, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar, Health minister J P Nadda.
The Congress under Rahul is harking back to Brahmins of the Gangetic plains in a way nobody from his family did, after Indira, his grandma. On the contrary, his father Rajiv Gandhi chopped off candidates belonging to the community in a big way during 1991 Lok Sabha polls. But Rahul Gandhi is working to a plan. He went to Ayodhya and visited the Hanumangadi temple where he was blessed by the old mahant. In a settled Indian society, the priestly class and their progeny are not respected only for their knowledge capital. They also have the last word on what's right and which is not, much like the umpire in a cricket field. If Rahul is seriously blessed by the twice-born community of Uttar Pradesh, others will fall in line.
