Congress talks the walk

Bharat Jodo Yatra: Reclaiming India’s Soul

Editors: Pushparaj Deshpande and Ruchira Chaturvedi

Publisher: HarperCollins India

Pages: 348

Price:  Rs 499

The Indian National Congress is still reeling from the shock of having its bank accounts brought under the Income Tax Department’s scrutiny just before the Lok Sabha elections of 2024 but it is clear that the party will have to think creatively and quickly to seize and own the narrative.
 

Bharat Jodo Yatra: Reclaiming India’s Soul, a comprehensive volume of essays edited by Pushparaj Deshpande and Ruchira Chaturvedi, might be a useful weapon to deploy, especially to woo urban voters who have the disposable income to buy and read non-fiction in English.
 

This book offers a glowing account of the Bharat Jodo Yatra, an epic march across India from Kanyakumari in the south to Kashmir in the north, which was led by Congress scion and Member of Parliament Rahul Gandhi between September 2023 and January 2024. It seeks to convince readers that the yatra was not simply a rebranding exercise for the party but a passionate attempt to safeguard the democratic ethos and secular fabric of our country.
 

Both the editors walked with Mr Gandhi in the Bharat Jodo Yatra. Mr Deshpande is the director of the Samruddha Bharat Foundation; he helped with the civil society outreach and interactions in a few states. Ms Chaturvedi, who works as the national convenor of social media and digital communications for the Congress, coordinated the yatra’s social media activities.
 

With this background, it is not surprising that their book is largely self-congratulatory unlike journalist Dilip D’Souza’s recent book Roadwalker: A Few Miles on the Bharat Jodo Yatra, published by Penguin Random House, on the same subject. While this compilation is not structured as a manifesto, it does a fairly good job of emphasising the values and principles for which the party stands, and who its allies are.
 

In addition to essays by Congress insiders such as Mallikarjun Kharge, Salman Khurshid, Supriya Shrinate, Chandy Oommen, Kanhaiya Kumar, Utkarsha Rupwate, Mahima Singh, Hrishikesh Singh, Sasikanth Senthil, Meenakshi Natarajan, R Sudha, Lhingkim Haokip Shingnaisui, Jothimani Sennimalai, and of course Rahul Gandhi, the volume also features essays from others who are sympathetic to its politics—Mehbooba Mufti of the People’s Democratic Party, Supriya Sule of the Nationalist Congress Party, Sanjay Raut of the Shiv Sena, and Doraisamy Raja of the Communist Party of India.
 

Will the Congress-led Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) be able to defeat the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)? This remains to be seen at the polls but it is worth noting that the allies of the Congress seem to have found substantial common ground despite the differences that they have had in the past, and might still have behind the scenes. Read this book to find out how Mr Gandhi managed to earn respect and trust despite the BJP’s incessant efforts to characterise him as “Pappu” — a good-for-nothing dynast who is out of touch with the pulse of the people of India.
 

Given his experience as a journalist, Mr D’Souza is able to temper his generous appreciation with incisive critique but this book provides a far more vivid picture of the yatra because it stitches together multiple voices. It includes, for instance, a moving essay titled “Walking with Rahul Gandhi: Bridging Hearts and the Nation” written by Bhanwar Meghwanshi, who joined the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) as a teenager and left it five years later in order to become an activist and journalist chronicling the Dalit movement.
 

He was pleased to see Mr Gandhi making time to interact with farmers, labourers, poets, media persons, environmental activists, human rights defenders as well as women and youth representatives from Dalit, tribal and other minority communities. Mr Meghwanshi writes, “Rahul Gandhi also asked me about my views on the caste census and said that he did not understand why Dalit tribals joined the RSS.” He came away from the Yatra thinking of Mr Gandhi as “a nice, sensitive man, who listened to everyone but also spoke his mind”.
 

Though this anthology keeps reinforcing an inclusive image of Mr Gandhi, it also makes room to point out some significant absences. In the essay “Will Yatras Be Charting a New Path? Why Not?” Medha Patkar and Guddi S L from the National Alliance for People’s Movements write, “We were hopeful that a galaxy of Muslim and Christian communities would swell the ranks of the Yatra. 
 

After all, given what they were facing, they needed and wanted to join. 
 

But this was not to be.” They think that Mr Gandhi “has done enough to expose the RSS-BJP” and must now “redress the mistakes made by privatization, liberalization and trickle-down politics.” While this aspiration sounds desirable on 

paper, the harsh reality is that the Congress is now seeking citizen donations for its election campaign in Madhya Pradesh. 

The reviewer is an independent journalist and educator based in Mumbai. He is @chintanwriting on Instagram and X