Why There's More to the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra Than Winning Elections

Two images from earlier this week aptly paint a telling picture of the present state of affairs in India.

One of them is the sight of Prime Minister Narendra Modi basking in the grandeur of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya and proclaiming in his speech that Ram is the faith, foundation, thought and law of India.

While the prime minister’s words leave little scope for imagination about how his thoughts are in complete sync with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s idea of a Hindu rashtra, it may just be worth mentioning as a footnote that the significance of his speech fully sinks in when we remember that at least on paper (and the constitution envisioned by B.R. Ambedkar), India is (albeit still) a secular country.

While all pretence of the state not having an official religion was being shredded to pieces in Ayodhya, more than 1,000 kilometres away, there was another invocation of Ram, this time Mahatma Gandhi’s Ram, in Assam, where Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and participants of the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra were stopped from entering the Batadrava Than pilgrimage site by the BJP government in the state.

The sight of Gandhi sitting on the road, with participants chanting ‘Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram’ – the bhajan popularised by Mahatma Gandhi – was a stark reminder of what lies beyond the glitter in Ayodhya, where Bollywood movie stars and industrialists swarmed in custom-made traditional attire to attend the consecration ceremony of the temple built on the side where three decades ago a mosque was razed by Hindutva foot soldiers.

After being denied entry into the pilgrimage site, Gandhi wryly told reporters, “Only one person is allowed to enter the temple today,” taking a potshot at the prime minister, whose presence at the pran pratishtha ritual was telecast by all media channels of the country.

The two visuals, one from Ayodhya and the other from Assam, underline the crossroads where our country stands, months before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

The BJP’s appropriation of the Ram Temple leaves no doubt about the saffron party’s election pitch for the Lok Sabha polls.

While elections have somewhat rightly become the benchmark for assessing the influence of political parties and ideology, the ongoing second phase of the Bharat Jodo Yatra proves that it would not be fair to gauge its success only in terms of election results.

Critics of the Bharat Jodo Yatra argue that despite the Yatra passing through states such as Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, the Congress had lost the states to the BJP.

But here’s a counter argument. A look at the states through which the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra is passing through reveals that there’s much more to the initiative than just winning elections.

Take the case of Manipur, from where the second phase of the Yatra was launched. For the past eight months, ethnic violence has ravaged Manipur, resulting in more than 200 deaths. While Prime Minister Narendra Modi has refrained from visiting Manipur despite appeals by many opposition leaders, as part of the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, Rahul Gandhi spoke in favour of a collective fight to restore peace in Manipur.

The argument that the Bharat Jodo Yatra is aimed at getting electoral mileage for the Congress doesn’t stand here as the assembly elections in Manipur were held in 2022, with the Congress suffering its worst defeat in the state.

With elections in Manipur a good three years away, the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra instead chose to acknowledge the losses that the public of the state has suffered in the past year, a gesture that does amount to applying balm on scars that are not healing any time soon.

Lest we forget, Mahatma Gandhi gave us the talisman that whenever we are in doubt, we need to ask whether the step we take will lead to swaraj for the hungry and spiritually starving millions. The Bharat Jodo Yatra aims to build the Bharat of Mahatma Gandhi’s dreams.

Akhil Chaudhary is a human rights lawyer based in Rajasthan. He posts on X @akhilchaudhary.