How Rahul Gandhi Upheld Indian Constitutionalism in the US

Rejecting the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-Bharatiya Janata Party’s idea of uniformity, the Congress leader unambiguously said that India was a union of cultures and under no circumstances could hate and anger be accepted as values.

Rahul Gandhi has very subtly drawn global attention to the nature of the crisis in India by insisting that his success lies in injecting “love, respect and humility” into contemporary Indian politics. This, he said, was an important task for him, apart from discharging the systemic responsibilities that the post of Leader of Opposition entails.

In his interactions in the United States, the Congress leader also explained the meaning and purpose of democracy and why the opposition parties dwelt on the threats to the constitution of India. The reasons he gave for undertaking the Bharat Jodo Yatra – which he has talked about on several occasions in the past – also exposed the hollowness of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s grandiloquence about India being the ‘Mother of Democracy’. He indicated that Modi, instead of addressing critical concerns about democracy, was trying to treat the rot with rhetoric.

Rejecting the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-Bharatiya Janata Party idea of uniformity, the Congress leader unambiguously said that India was a union of cultures and under no circumstances could hate and anger be accepted as values. He insisted that the ideological and philosophical battle was not new and the RSS-BJP vision for society and the nation-state was antithetical to the very essence of democracy.

The allegation that he spoke against India on foreign soil is preposterous as this critique of Sangh Parivar’s ideological positions is the pet theme of oppositional politics.

He was, in fact, subdued and offered indirect criticism of Narendra Modi’s politics even as the Prime Minister had run a vicious communal campaign in the last election, bluntly targeting Muslims to polarise the contest. Rahul instead chose to convey the message through softer metaphors, arguing that India’s polity yearned for a healing touch, and the opposition parties succeeded in bringing humility, respect and love on the table.

Rahul reiterated that all avenues of communication were shut for the opposition parties and even democratic institutions, including the judiciary, were not functioning independently enough to ensure a normal political contest. Under these circumstances, he invented a new role for himself which went beyond the confines of normal political action. That is from where the idea of Bharat Jodo Yatra germinated. He argued that walking 4000 km, a difficult challenge, became easy because of the organic connect with the people. He also seemed to be suggesting that pretension of omniscience is a bogus exercise for a leader who merely acts as a transmission belt of the dominant national sentiment.

Also read: The Radical Rahul Gandhi Nobody Expected

He said the yatra spoke through him, reminding the nation how opinions are shaped in a real democracy. He repeated his claim of destruction of the individual that he was – he had famously said during the yatra that the Rahul Gandhi you knew is dead and gone, clarifying the philosophical sense of annihilation of the self.

But a politician in today’s world, analysing his success in terms of sensitising the society and polity, not in terms of victory and defeat, also points to the depth of the national crisis. What he subtly told the world is that India first needed to pull itself back from the brink.

He referred to the fact that fear was vanishing from the public sphere – fear of the Prime Minister – apart from the diminishing strength and swagger of his government that recklessly trampled constitutional principles of equality, justice and accountability.

His emphasis on respect emanated from the constitutional principle of equality, he referred to humility to highlight the hubris of power and elaborated on love to expose the project of hate. He said the virtues ingrained in the constitution ensure a just and secular society, provide protection for pluralism and justice to every citizen, and that’s why people understood what the opposition meant when they referred to the threats to the constitution.

Diversity, secularism and ‘love’

The RSS-BJP worldview has little space for diversity and pluralism. Their concept of cultural essentialism is based on a pernicious agenda against the minorities, particularly the Muslims. It is not merely cultural and religious. It is political and doesn’t spare even liberal Hindus. The BJP, as fascists in other countries have done, presented its majoritarian political project in the garb of nationalism. They wanted not only cultural uniformity but suspension of all forms of political struggle by questioning the patriotism of critics. They dreamt of a politics that celebrates its dominance and thrives in subjugation, not resistance.  The Bharat Jodo Yatra reignited democratic spirit of Indians, creating a faint hope about the possibility of resistance.

Rahul understood secularism was not really crying for rhetoric; it needed physical manifestation of interfaith understanding and tolerance.

Lakhs of people walking shoulder-to-shoulder from Kanyakumari to Kashmir provided that physical manifestation. This was a forceful rebuttal of the Prime Minister’s contemptuous rejection of secularism. Rahul wove that rebuttal through human agency, not through mere words, which the media could have ignored or mutilated. Rahul knew that people’s participation in the unifying project was impossible without a moral force – force that Mahatma Gandhi epitomised, making the freedom struggle a mass movement – and hence the emphasis on love. The narrative of love got currency in politics only because of the prevailing atmosphere of hate and fear. Nations dealing with normal politics won’t understand the bruised soul of India yearned for love.

People who make fun of Rahul for overemphasising love do not understand the significance of his arguments in this abnormal political ambiance. Love should not be mistaken here as personal infatuation. Love in politics is a virtue rooted in tolerance, forgiveness and justice. Its fruits are societal harmony, peaceful coexistence. Gandhi gave the same message in different metaphors. It’s a positioning against political evil; against the divisive and discriminatory agenda. Love should be viewed in the context of constitutional morality, not personal desire. In his conversations in the United States, Rahul explained love in the context of Gandhi, Buddha, Ram and Shiva. Indian conscience has an inherent capacity to understand what he is saying. Those who thrive in hate also understand that this is the same politics that Gandhi deployed against them decades ago. A Nathuram Godse is an ineffective antidote against this politics of love.

An ineffective counter

How Modi planned to counter this movement has not been clearly explained by the media or the political scientists.

He too tried to create a collective national sentiment by raising a mass hysteria around Ram temple. He invented an occasion of “pran pratishtha” or consecration of an incomplete temple, keeping himself at the centre of the religious rituals and isolating the political opponents by branding them as anti-Hindu. That he could not reach the target of “400 paar (beyond 400)” and lost even Ayodhya demonstrated that the people saw greater merit in Rahul’s constructive activities than Modi’s diversionary ploys. That Modi visualised a divisive project to counter Rahul’s attempt to secularise society was seen by all.

Modi had declared after his 2019 victory that secularism had become irrelevant in Indian politics. Addressing the post-victory public meeting at the BJP headquarters in Delhi in May 2019, Modi said:

“Brothers and sisters, you would have seen that for 30 continuous years in the country especially, although the drama has been going on for years, it had become a fashion to do anything and wear a tag, which had become equal to taking a holy dip in the (river) Ganges. The name of that fake tag was ‘secularism’ and there used to be chants, ‘Seculars come together’. You would have seen that from 2014-19, that entire section has stopped talking. In this election, not even one political party had the guts to wear the mask of secularism to fool the country. They have been unmasked.”

Rahul took the discourse on a higher plane by harping on love and constitutionalism. The entire opposition swiftly moved from the secular-communal vortex even as the purpose of their politics remained the same. When Rahul hugs everyone who comes his way – rich, poor, man, woman, Dalit, Muslim, Hindu, actor, activist, worker, sportsperson – he is making a political statement of equality. His behaviour is a physical illustration of constitutionalism. And the constitution is nothing but a political manifestation of love and justice.

Sanjay K. Jha is a veteran journalist and political commentator.