Congress leader Rahul Gandhi set off on Sunday from conflict-ridden Manipur on his Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, a two-month, East-to-West political journey that will end in Mumbai. Unlike the first phase where Gandhi walked from Kanyakumari in the South to Srinagar in the North to feel the grassroots, this one will largely be on wheels. He will demand social, economic and political justice for people and also reveal his own plan to deliver it, the party says.
While the roadshow comes ahead of the upcoming general elections, the party says it is political but not an "electoral rally". That is as true as the timing of the consecration of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya on January 22 not being a political event with an eye on elections. In fact, the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust's invitation to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, and leaders Sonia Gandhi and Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, to attend the ceremony that will be presided over by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was nothing short of an election-eve trap.
They rejected the invitation saying it was a political project of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The BJP lost no time in painting the rejection of the invite as an affront to Hindus, the majority community in India. The Congress statement said that Lord Ram is worshipped by millions of people in the country and religion is a personal matter.
Its ally, Samajwadi Party's leader Akhilesh Yadav, made the same point with elan. Yadav declined the invitation to attend the consecration ceremony but said he and his family would visit the temple later as devotees, ensuring the spotlight would unwaveringly stay on him.
During Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi's reign, the Congress ran with the hare and hunted with the hounds on the mosque-temple issue, but the Sangh Parivar was miles ahead in setting the emotion-tugging, Hindu nationalist narrative. Ultimately the Babri mosque was demolished under the Congress' watch in 1992. The previous year, the party had presided over another demolition where the Narasimha Rao government smashed India's socialist mould of economic organisation and governance to pursue a free markets-driven national life.
The two back-to-back events created the opportunity for two compelling and competing political narratives: one of economic development and another of religious nationalism.
The Parivar did not have a ready response to economic liberalisation. Within months of Manmohan Singh throwing open the Indian economy to wider private and foreign participation, the Swadeshi Jagran Manch was formed. It was the first Parivar organisation to focus on broad national economic policy. Former Sarsanghachalak of the RSS, Madhukar Dattatraya (Balasaheb) Deoras, who was the principal architect of the Ram Temple movement, had once told journalists that the Sangh never really gave serious thought to economic issues. Its labour and farmer organisations were narrow-focussed. Bereft of viable original ideas, it joined the left parties to oppose foreign investments, multinational corporations and computerisation.
The Congress had a firm grip on the reins of the economic development narrative. The country's elite jumped on to the bandwagon too as levies fell and doing business became easier. The National Democratic Front government led by BJP stalwart Atal Behari Vajpayee briefly managed to seize it from the Congress with its highway building and business-friendly policies luring away industrialists and big capital, local and foreign. Vajpayee, however, completely misread the widening social fissures and economic inequality in the country. The BJP's "India Shining" campaign seemed like a slap on the face of the millions struggling for livelihoods. Although the Congress wrested back power and the original architect of liberalisation Manmohan Singh was heading the government, it swung the other way, alienating businesses and the rising middle class of the country for its welfarist bent. The Parivar still did not have a viable answer.
That is, until Narendra Modi, then Gujarat's helmsman and a favourite of industrialists, demonstrated how to seamlessly combine ideology with big business.
The consecration of the Ram Temple is the crowning glory of the strategy of merging unabashed Hindutva with business success. According to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, over 100 chartered planes are expected to land on January 22. The city's spanking new international airport will not have space to accommodate the private planes of the business leaders and movie stars arriving at the invitation of the temple trust. It would almost be remiss if the Sensex and Nifty do not set a new record that day.
For the moment, the Parivar has control over the narratives of India's economic growth and establishment of a muscular Hindu nation. The gathering at Ayodhya will be testimony of the Indian elite's buy-in into the Parivar's cause. But just like the construction of the temple is yet to be completed, widespread economic growth is also a work in progress.
In a recent research report titled'The Rise of Affluent India', Wall Street bank Goldman Sachs said only about 4% of working age Indians had an annual income of $10,000 (Rs 8.3 lakh) or more. It converts to about 60 million consumers. The bank estimated this number to rise to 100 million by 2027, the same year when India is also expected to become the world's third largest economy with a GDP of $5 trillion.
The remaining 1.3 billion have a long wait to glimpse affluence, which Goldman measures by the ability to buy premium brands, eat out often, and spare time for leisure. The temple may be a spiritual balm for a large section of the majority community, but it certainly does not help put bread on the table for the majority of Indians. That is why the government has promised free food for five years to 813 million people.
Rahul Gandhi is pitching himself and the Congress Party as the champion of this majority with his yatra. Other than handing out largesse in states that it rules, so far the Congress has not revealed any viable ideas to wrest the narrative of economic development from the BJP.
(The writer is editor of The Signal and author of The RSS And The Making Of The Deep Nation.)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author.