Shruti Kapila on Rahul's masterstroke

 The always ludicrous Shruti Kapila writes in Print.in

 It took Savarkar for India’s media to finally take note of the Bharat Jodo Yatra.

No. Rahul's attack on Savarkar was only newsworthy so long as doubt remained as to Uddav Thackeray's reaction. Would he break with the MVA coalition? The answer was no. Pappu was just being Pappu is all. Move along folks. Nothing to see here. 

Arguably, this is apt. It has been over two months since Rahul Gandhi has been walking long, hard and fast. The aim of the yatra is political salvation.

Congress is investing in Rahul rather than spending its money on the elections. The game plan is clear. Promote Rahul as Modi's only rival while Kharge shoulders the blame for the party being wiped out at the polls.  

With its simple message of religious harmony, and prosperity for all, the epic walk has been focussed on ordinary human connection and interaction.

It has focused on a 52 year old man-child who is growing out his beard because....well, Modi grew out his beard during COVID so, obviously, Rahul needs to show that he too can do abundant facial hair. But Modi became CM of Gujarat at 51 without ever having held any public office before. Indeed, he's never stood for election. Yet he became its longest serving Chief Minister. The question is whether he will be a three term PM. If Rahul is his only rival, the answer is- yes, obviously.  

Accompanied by a clamour for hugs and selfies by ardent supporters, the yatra appears nothing less than a public therapy for a stressed nation.

No. It is an ego-massage for a man-child.  

Rahul Gandhi’s walk is but a deliberate emulation of MK Gandhi, who made walking the arch act of political protest.

But the Mahatma was venerated- and not only in India. Pappu hasn't even managed to get married and father a child let alone hold any high public office. 

The Indian media has taken little note of it. Until now.

Not now. Uddhav can't quit the MVA. He has nowhere to go.  

On entering Maharashtra, Rahul Gandhi reminded the press about VD Savarkar’s mercy petition to the British empire. Savarkar had indeed sought his release from the dreaded Andaman Island prison, and his petition was written in the most abject terms of political servitude.

It was written in the same manner all such petitions were written. Savarkar had studied law. Revolutionaries try to get out of jail by any and all means possible. Courting arrest was a Gandhian tactic which did help win votes but which was otherwise ineffective.  

This was enough to ignite the media.

It gave Kiren Rijiju a chance to shine and rise in the eyes of the Sangh Parivar.  

Modi has declared that the yatra had now gone ‘political.’

Rahul had maligned a freedom fighter. He had reminded everyone that his grandmother had jailed and tortured people like Chief Minister Stalin. His own claim to have been fighting 'hatred' fell flat because his frequent absences from Parliament were not the result of stints in jail. They were caused by foreign holidays.  

Commentators too have piped in to point out that in doing so, Rahul Gandhi has in fact been politically inexpedient as this reminder from the history archives risks ire from the Congress party’s ally, the Thackrey faction of the Shiv Sena that draws inspiration from Savarkar.

Rahul showed that Uddhav had become irrelevant. The Dynasty will tolerate no other dynasties.  

The polarity is triggering as it is both apt and alive. It signals the fundamental political and psychic division at the heart of independent India’s identity, that of MK Gandhi and VD Savarkar, the founder of Hindutva.

Independent India's identity is univocal. The British tried to hand power to a united country. The 1946 election, in which Muslims voted overwhelmingly for the Muslim League, which was committed to the creation of Pakistan, while Hindus voted overwhelmingly for Congress. The Mahatma may have wanted the Brits to stay on or the for the county to remain united. But it was Savarkar who was the better prophet.

The fundamental division in Congress- which pre-existed Gandhi or Savarkar- was between the 'Naram Dal'- the moderates- and the 'Garam Dal' of Bal, Pal and Lal. After the Great War, it was obvious that the real issue was not whether the Brits would leave but whether delaying independence would cause Hindus and Muslims to come together. The answer was no. Muslim majority areas would ethnically cleanse non-Muslims once they Brits left and it was safe to do so.  

In our times of an ascendant Hindutva, Savarkar is everywhere. From airport bookstores to political commentators

isn't very far. But most Indians have never been to an airport nor do they listen to 'political commentators'.  

once a shadow character from Indian annals, is now openly redrawing political lines and emotional allegiances, which had until recently been hidden in plain sight.

So, not hidden at all.  

A protégé of Lokmanya Tilak, the Maratha firebrand

he organized a mass burning of foreign cloth in 1905 in the presence of Tilak. The Mahatma didn't invent that type of stupidity.  

and India’s first mass nationalist leader, Savarkar spent his early youth in secret revolutionary societies. Savarkar also learnt to make bombs, shoot with guns and trained young men in similar activities both in India and London where he had decamped to. Savarkar spent considerable time in the archives and took to writing history. He wrote a radical account of the Indian Mutiny of 1857 in 1908 that he iconically dubbed as the ‘first war of Independence’.

Hindus and Muslims were constantly kissing and cuddling till British Nanny made them stop. Boo! 

Deadly activities, secret associations and incendiary prose led to his arrest and extradition to the Andamans.

The fact that Savarkar had been arrested in England and that he had briefly escaped custody and claimed asylum in France was a factor in keeping him from the hangman's noose.  

While Savarkar was in prison, MK Gandhi returned to India from South Africa and consequentially changed the political vocabulary of India and anti-imperialism.

No. After Gokhale's death, Tilak gained prominence. But it was Annie Beasant who led the Home Rule league. The collapse of Tzarist rule in Russia and the entry of America into the War changed Whitehall's political vocabulary. It was accepted that the Raj would have to transition to responsible government which was representative in character, at least in directly ruled territories. The question was whether the Muslims and the Princes would make common cause with Congress. For a brief while, Muslims and Hindus did come together on the basis of Gandhi & Co pretending Hindu were in favor of Khilafat and Muslims pretending Khilafat didn't mean what it did to the Moplahs.  

This was not a mere stroke of luck. Gandhi and Savarkar had already had an unsuccessful encounter that revealed their differences in London and it is widely speculated that Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj (1909) was directed at Savarkar and his politics.

No. Hind Swaraj was the result of the Mahacrackpot reading a stupid article by Chesterton. Gandhi, as an Empire loyalist- like 'Bow & Agree' Bhownagree- initially attacked Savarkar but, later, said- 'The evil in its hideous form, of the present system of Government, he saw much earlier than I did, He is in the Andamans for his having loved India too well. Under a just Government he would be occupying a high position.'

To be sure, from their earliest failed encounter in 1908 in London to Gandhi’s assassination in 1948 by an acolyte of Savarkar in Delhi, the two men created two oppositional views and methods of political visions and ends.

Gandhi was a loyalist who tried to recruit soldiers for the Brits during the Great War. Savarkar and Jugantar and the Ghaddarites wanted an alliance with Germany to throw out the Brits. They were anti-Imperialists who believed 'assassination tempers autocracy'. But, after 1917, Imperialism was on the wane. First the Tzar, then the Hapsburbs, then the Kaiser, then the Caliph, all lost their Crowns. Multi-ethnic Empires were doomed. Wilsonian Nationalism would prevail.  But, the Treaty of Lausanne, not to mention the partition of Ireland, showed that Religion would trump ethnicity unless the successor state was as ruthless as its Imperial predecessor and killed or incarcerated those who might indulge in ethnic cleansing.

Gandhi’s politics was visible, anti-secrecy and chose dying over killing.

No Gandhian died. Sulking in jail from time to time while the Brits imposed their own solution was all that Congress was capable of.  

Above all, Gandhi as an ardent believer of God and Hinduism in particular, embraced religion to animate a new brotherhood of equals.

Nonsense! He was top dog by reason of being a Mahatma.  

Truth alone could counter violence;

Which is why telling the guy who is stabbing you that he is a murderous bastard will definitely cause him to stop.  

hence his innovative word satyagraha was both a political idea and powerful practice.

It was useless. Gandhi had to call off the Non Cooperation Movement because Congress members in Chauri Chaura ran amok killing policemen.  

For Gandhi, any competition over religion only betrayed the believer’s weakness

whereas forming an orderly queue to get hit on the head and to go meekly to jail meant you were actually Superman. You were just pretending to be a puny weakling.  

and he was assiduously opposed to both conversion and indeed reconversion (or shudhhi).

But he got his son shuddified by the Arya Samaj after that drunkard converted to Islam.  

It was by far the most effective anti-colonial politics in world history.

It failed completely. Ireland, Egypt and Afghanistan got independence in 1922. India got nothing even though Labor took office in 1924. Gandhi's tactic was to demand the moon and then settle for less than was originally offered.  

Savarkar’s steadfast interest remained in violence and war as a source of dynamism in history.

No. He tried to turn the Mahasabha into a rival to Congress but failed miserably. He just wasn't very good at politics. 

A known atheist,

nobody knew or cared about his theological beliefs. The question was whether the Muslims would forego the chance to do ethnic cleansing where they were in the majority. In this matter, Savarkar was right. Gandhi & Co. were wrong. I suppose Savarkar's reputation revived as Islamic terrorism gained salience and Muslim appeasement was seen as having failed miserably.  

he coined the term and creed of Hindutva.

No. That was Chandranath Basu.  

Hindutva was explained as a theory of violence.

No. It was explained as ecumenical Hinduism concerned with uniting Hindus of all sects and castes.  

Denoting political Hindu-ness, Savarkar was clear that as a religion, Hinduism posed a significant obstacle to creating Hindutva itself.

No. He thought the caste system was the obstacle. He was right.  

Fixated on the idea of enmity and its conquest by violence, Savarkar chose both Buddhism and Islam’s Indian journeys as principal political opponents.

No. He was only concerned with Islamic and European imperialism. Buddhism was fine because Buddhists only paid lip service to Ahimsa. The problem was that India was vulnerable to Japanese aggression while the Buddhist Burmese wanted the Indians to fuck off.  

Secrecy as revolutionary creed was embedded in his writings. Two years after the publication of his manifesto Hindutva and in 1925, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh was established to realise its ideals.

No. The RSS was set up by Dr. Hegdewar on the pattern of the Congress Seva Dal set up by his pal Dr. Hardikar. The idea was that if Congress had to go underground, the RSS would remain over-ground. But the RSS took on a life of its own and increasingly diverged from the path of the Mahasabha. This meant that when Syama Prasad Mukherjee exited the Mahasabha to found the Jan Sangh, the RSS found a political vehicle of its own. Still, few would have predicted that Vajpayee- a founding member- would end up as Prime Minister. The future seemed to lie with the Socialists.  

The rest, as they say, is history.

Which Shruti is wholly ignorant of.  

Indian political storylines have returned to the past with a vengeance.

No. Ten years ago there was no AAP party. Nobody had heard of Prashant Kishor. The Left still had a presence in West Bengal. Rahul wasn't laughed at when he spoke of reviving Congress's fortunes in Uttar Pradesh. Indeed, most assumed he would become Prime Minister before fighting the 2014 elections which many thought he'd win. It wasn't till December 2012 that Modi revealed his ambition to be the BJP candidate in 2014. 

In part, this is to create a new political language fit for our times.

No. Today's political language has to do with 'deliverables' and issues like returning to the old pension system. Only Rahul talks about 'vichardhara'- ideology. Vijayan in Kerala says he want to be the Deng Xiaoping of India.  

India’s history wars in earnest began

thirty years ago in the context of Ayodhya. The Left lost. It turned out they were shit at history.  

a decade or more ago when the political language of the UPA-era and its liberal welfarism came undone, thanks to

corruption and his own party cutting off Manmohan at the legs. This would have been fine if Rahul had rudely pushed him aside and taken over as PM. But Rahul didn't want to get assassinated like his Daddy and Granny. So Congress had no PM candidate. It still doesn't because Rahul is unelectable. He will lose his seat in Kerala in 2024.  

raging populism and a rebranded Hindutva under Narendra Modi.

This is foolish. Modi's strength is governance. Populism triumphed with 'garibi hatao' more than five decades ago. 

More significantly, a new cultural warfare too started that insisted that there was more than ‘one idea of India.’

Rahul's uselessness has led to everybody shitting on Nehru.  

In approaching and summoning political victory, Modi

as Vajpayee had done at the end of the Nineties 

and the new cultural warriors aggressively reminded us that ideas and histories that were once consigned to either obscurity or wilfully neglected were now in power.

It was the Bench which decided that the Left was telling lies which had no basis in the historical record.

In short, the last decade has installed Savarkar and Hindutva as the dominant and visible creed for the first time in India’s history.

Not really. Savarkar, poor fellow, was a deeply silly man exiled from the political center of gravity. He was only 27 when he was sent off to do hard labor in the Andamans. It was the utter collapse of the Left- save in Kerala, where it is pragmatic, not ideological- which has created a vacuum which, global Islamic militancy has permitted Hindutva to fill.  

In invoking Savarkar, Rahul Gandhi is only identifying with MK Gandhi.

No. Rahul doesn't want to get shot the way the Mahatma got shot. His strategy is to make his Party unelectable. Recall, Rajiv was only killed because he said he might send the army back into Sri Lanka and there was a strong possibility that he'd be elected because VP Singh had shat the bead.  

To be sure, history wars are not about the past. They have everything to do with the identity of India today and its future tomorrow.

India is ruled by Modi. He appears likely to get a third term. The big question is whether AAP can replace Congress in the North and whether Congress satraps will continue to ditch the Party so as to create their own dynastic, caste based, parties.  

In invoking Savarkar and going against analysts, Rahul Gandhi has shown political pragmatism

He has done Savarkar a favor. Kids will be googling the guy and discovering that the Revolutionaries suffered greatly in the prisons of the Raj. Gandhians had it easy in prison. Still, as Nehru said, once the Brits threatened to confiscate property, Congress became meek and obedient.  

and taken the lead in drawing lines as India gears up for a long season of its most consequential general election.

This will be the least consequential general election if, as most predict, Modi gets a third term. In 2019, Congress had a chance but Rahul screwed up. This time round, he won't even be in the running. He has alienated the Communists in Kerala who will pull out all the stops to ensure his defeat in Wayanad. So far the Muslim League has refused to join the Left Front but the fact remains that Congress is losing the Nair vote to the BJP. If Tharoor defects, Congress won't be able to get any Hindu elected from Kerala. The League, however, fears that the Left is cannibalizing its vote and thus remains loyal to Rahul. Thus, to get Rahul out, Vijayan will have to try to split Muslim vote (they are the majority in Wayanad).

Rahul is wise to attack Svarkar and the RSS- which, ludicrously, he claims helped the Brits to suppress nineteenth century tribal rebellions!- because his political survival depends on Muslim votes. But nothing can alter the fact that the Muslim League has been declining. Its leader has just passed away and his younger brother may not have the same prestige. Moreover, women in the organization feel sidelined. The ban on the Popular Front is another factor. Some of the youth of Kerala were asking Owaisi to take a hand in the game. But Owaisi appeared to support Rahul, though he noted that this cut down the number of Muslims in Parliament since Rahul had been accommodated with one of the League's three safe seats.  In 2019, Rahul appeared to have a chance of becoming PM. After all, Vajpayee's government had only got one term and the economy wasn't exactly booming. But Rahul showed genius in snatching utter defeat from the jaws of victory. Kharge is currently touting Rahul as the only possible Opposition candidate in 2024. However, over the course of 2023, other parties may concentrate on cannibalizing the Congress vote- which is still significant in many states- rather than going after the big dog. In this context, the calculations of Dalits and Muslims will be crucial. Do they ally with an an OBC dynast? Might they get a better deal by backing one of their own charismatic youngsters whom the BJP is bound to try to poach and will then promote? Meanwhile, the BJP might begin to lose its core support base. Forward castes- especially the youth- are sick and tired of reservations. The EWA quota compounds the underlying problem. The AAP approach- viz. buy votes with 'freebies'- might be the first step to getting rid of reservations. In any case, everyone knows a fiscal crunch is coming. If votes have to be bought with cash not promises, then reservations are in danger. Why should a community be satisfied if some small percentage of their youth get government jobs? After all, a time will come when State government salaries won't be paid and entitlements will collapse.  India will have to tolerate a productive middle class- with higher education focusing on inculcating useful skills rather than serving as a waiting room for those with UPSC aspirations- in the same way that the population has come to tolerate, indeed root for, Ambanis and Adanis. 

At one time, the Shrutis of JNU could cash in on their cretinous mis-education. That time is over. The History wars ended when Wikipedia proved to be more informative than any History Professor.