Opinion: Mahatma's Champaran To Rahul Gandhi's Champaran Mutton

As world leaders start congregating in New Delhi for the G20 summit, Rahul Gandhi has chosen to be in Europe. His plan for projecting an 'alternate vision of India' supersedes his party's organisational agenda. The Congress has planned a grand show on September 7 to celebrate the first anniversary of Rahul Gandhi's 3,500 km impressive Bharat Jodo Yatra from Kanyakumari to Kashmir. Party workers in 722 of the country's 766 districts will take out processions on Thursday. Their icon will not be with them on this momentous occasion. He prefers to be in Brussels, Paris and Oslo and The Hague while Narendra Modi presides over G20. He will return a day after the dignitaries depart.

It is not clear if Rahul Gandhi wishes to be a "G20 spoiler". His absence on September 7 may not seem unusual to Congress workers. After all, year after year, they have observed Rahul's birthday, June 19, by greeting their leader in absentia. Congress workers gather outside the Sonia Gandhi residence in Delhi with flowers and cakes. As Rahul prefers to be abroad on his birthday, the cakes are cut in front of his photograph. The surreals celebrations are not new to his followers.

On September 3 Rahul uploaded on YouTube a video of cooking lessons given to him by "lokpriya neta Laluji". The uploaded cooking-meeting where Lalu Yadav and his daughter Misa Bharti (Rajya Sabha MP) are seen teaching Rahul how to cook a Bihar delicacy, 'Champaran mutton' took place on August 4, soon after the Supreme Court granted relief to Rahul, resulting in the restoration of his Lok Sabha membership. (Champaran mutton is cooked in an earthen pot. Rahul used a metal utensil, attracting negative comment from viewers in Bihar.)

Rahul has been uploading on social media his interactions with people; the Lalu parivar video is the latest in that series. Professional videographers are part of his entourage. They capture on camera his outings -- the interaction with chocolate factory workers in Ooty; the visit to Delhi's Azadpur sabzi mandi in the early hours; sowing crop with a group of women in Sonepat; a ride with truck drivers between Ambala and the outskirts of Chandigarh to understand their life, etcetera. He was videographed in Ladakh riding a motorcycle while Congress-ruled Himachal Pradesh was reeling under the impact of devastation caused by rain and landslides.BJP president JP Nadda and Minister Anurag Thakur rushed to Shimla to meet Chief Minister Sukhvinder Sukhu. They also went to villages to assess the damage. Neither Rahul Gandhi nor any other senior Congress leader visited Himachal. Apparently a clip of the devastation in the Congress-ruled hill state was not worthy of uploading on social media.

The name Champaran is hallowed in the annals of the Indian National Congress. After his return from South Africa in 1915, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi's first Satyagraha in India was at Champaran in 1917. He led a farmers' uprising, altering the direction of the freedom struggle and changing the paradigm of Congress politics. The Mahatma's close lieutenant at Champaran, Rajendra Prasad, was to preside over the Constituent Assembly and be India's first President.

With Rahul Gandhi preferring to be in Europe on the day his party members are observing the first anniversary of his Bharat Jodo Yatra, a new paradigm in Congress, distant from that when the Mahatma led the party's struggle, has clearly emerged. The Congress in Opposition in the Sonia Gandhi-Rahul Gandhi leadership is far removed even from the struggling Congress of 1977-80, when Indira Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi used mass support to return to power. The party's trouble today is that its prime leader perhaps finds friendly audiences abroad more attractive for running his 'save India' campaign.

The video uploaded on September 3 portrays the cooking-meeting held at Misa Bharati's farmhouse at Ghitorni, in the western periphery of Delhi bordering Gurugram. The Congress's organisation secretary KC Venugopal had accompanied his leader. The Congress party's "X"(Twitter) handle @INCIndia posted photographs of the event late night on August 4. Venugpal too posted the meeting on social media, as did Rahul Gandhi. Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejaswi Yadav is seen in the YouTube video.

(Misa Bharti, the eldest of Lalu Yadav's children, was born on 22 May 1976, during the Emergency, while her father was detained under MISA-the Maintenance of Internal Security Act. From jail, Lalu Yadav named his first child Misa. MISA was a controversial law enacted in 1971 and it was extensively used to detain political workers during the Emergency. It was repealed soon after Janata Party came to power in 1977, defeating Indira Gandhi.)

There is speculation on the timing of the release of the "Champaran mutton" video on YouTube almost a month after the event. Critics say that perhaps as August 4 fell in the month of Sawan, when many Hindus abstain from non-vegetarian food, the video was withheld. Sawan ended on August 31. The video was circulated thereafter.

On the day Rahul Gandhi was uploading his video, captioned, "Lalu ji ki secret recipe aur rajnaitik masala", the national media was agog with reports on a statement by Tamil Nadu's Sports Minister and DMK youth leader Udayanidhi Stalin, in which he berated "sanatana dharm" and said it ought to be stamped out like "mosquitoes, dengue, malaria and corona". This statement by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin's son, who is being groomed as his heir apparent, set the political spectrum on fire. Rahul Gandhi chose to look the other way. Unlike the reports emanating from the London media, on which he held a press meet during the 28-party I.N.D.I.A conclave in Mumbai, this development in the national media did not merit Rahul's comment.

His party took over a day to give a guarded reaction. KC Venugopal was ambiguous, citing the oft-repeated "sarv dharm sambhaav". Madhya Pradesh party chief Kamal Nath categorically rejected Udayanidhi's stance. While Congress's reigning yuvraj Rahul was silent, the emerging yuvraj, Karnataka Minister Priyank Kharge, son of Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge, initially applauded Udayanidhi and later retracted to neutrality. Karti Chidambaram seemed to endorse his Tamil compatriot.

The ambiguity of the Congress on this issue, on which ruling BJP went hammer and tongs, was pathetic. Most I.N.D.I.A partners preferred to share Congress's ambiguity. Udayanidhi's statement has given NDA a handle, which it is using to its advantage.

(Shubhabrata Bhattacharya is a retired Editor and a public affairs commentator)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author.