My Second Day at the Bharat Jodo Yatra

There was a damp breeze under an overcast sky when our march began from outside Ballari at 6:30. Our destination was the village of Moka, near the Karnataka-Andhra Pradesh border. The distance between Ballari and Moka is 19 kilometres. From Santiniketan, where I did college, the district town Suri is 19 kilometres away. I never dreamed of walking the distance. What was unthinkable at the age of 17 is doable at 71. That is the magic of social uprisings. 

As I walked, I heard Hindi, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, Punjabi, Haryanvi, and an Indian language I could not identify. Among the diverse men and women were qualified professionals, working people, peasants, teachers, and students. That is, people from both urban and rural India, and of all ages. There were lots of young men. In our group of Swaraj India volunteers, two men in their twenties, Suheil and Arunoday were the principal coordinators. 

This picture shows Vinayak Rao Patil and Ganesh. Eighty-one-year-old Vinayak Rao from Maharashtra (Latur) would be one of the oldest civil society activists still walking the path of inqilab in India. He was with the Congress, and later, with Anna Hazare movement, and AAP in its initial phase. Many a time his dreams have been shattered, but he keeps on, undaunted. Ganesh, 21, is a student from Mangalore who supports Congress. He has taken a train to join the yatra at his own initiative. The yatra has brought together Vinayak and Ganesh.

Virendra Bagodia is a political worker who was jailed multiple times for his firebrand activism. He is a landless peasant from Haryana whose son is an engineer, and daughter, and MA. Bagodia ji carries the tallest national flag in the yatra, a flag post is so tall that he has to be careful not to touch an overhead electric wire. Mahendra Yadav, who is with me on a selfie, is from Gazipur, UP. Mahendra ji has literally “do bigha jamin”. Both Bagodia and Mahendra, who are in their sixties, are walking 3,500 kilometres from Kanyakumari to Kashmir. They have been with Swaraj India, the political party led by Yogendra Yadav for many years. Neither has much formal education, but when we talked politics, I was amazed to see how well-informed they are and the clarity of their views. 

Virendra from Haryana, Naushin from Kolkata, and Mahendra from Gazipur U.P.

Mahendra Yadav and me

The 118 “National Yatris” are walking from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. Besides, there are state yatris, and others like me. People in the yatra stay together in a community living area, share rudimentary amenities without complaint. Treat strangers as friends. At our camp in Moka this afternoon, I sat between Mahendra Yadav and a handsome young man. When I asked the young man what he did, he simply said, ‘I’m a Congress worker.’ An erudite man, he was a pleasant conversationalist. After the meal, Mahendra ji told me he is the son of a former chief minister. If Congress returned to power in his state, my companion at the lunch table would be a candidate to become the chief minister. 

On both days, I saw local people coming out of their homes to greet the yatris. Waiting for hours to meet Rahul Gandhi. Their goodwill for the yatra and its leader was palpable. They waved at us, smiled at us. It was a new experience to observe such goodwill from people I had never met, nor I ever will. 

Waiting to see Rahul Gandhi

I have written that the distance between Ballari and Moka is 19 kilometres. However, we began outside the town, and we would have walked only about 14 kilometres this morning. The yatra is not a well-knit procession. As people walk at different varying speeds, they get split into small groups. At the head of the yatra is the leader, that is Rahul Gandhi, who walks admirably fast, and the people who can keep up with him, plus the police cordon around them. Behind them are scatterings of yatris for two to three kilometres.  Another procession of high-end SUVs was a pain in the wrong place for the staggered walkers. They belonged to the out-of-shape Congressmen who could hardly walk, but were obliged to show their face to Mr Rahul Gandhi.

As I gradually fell behind, a local person stopped his motor bike and offer me lift. We didn’t have the bond of a common language, but the bond of Indianness was enough. I didn’t have the heart to say No to him, but I didn’t wish to cheat either. So, I got off after about 500 metres. 

On the way, I came across a temporary shed from where villagers were distributing apples, water bottles, tender coconuts etc. to the yatris. I stopped and checked with two men in the kiosk separately. Who organized all this? Congress? The answer was an emphatic “No!” from both. They said villagers had joined together to give some relief to the yatris. When I pointed out at the Congress banner behind, one of them said it was a gift from the local Congress unit. I am inclined to believe them because if a Congress leader had organised it, there would have been large flex banners with the man's portrait announcing his generosity.  

Does the spontaneous expression of love say something? 

Why Bharat Jodo?

Why did I, a person with no political affiliation except for a strong desire to reclaim a liberal democracy join the yatra? In the following lines, I will try to answer myself

Over the last eight years, a poison has taken hold of a lot of Indian Hindus. They believe that Muslims, who are 14% of the population, will somehow destroy the Hindus who are 80%. This is their core belief: Hindu khatre mein hai. Therefore, for their safety, they must pin down the Muslims now. This silly fiction—which has no evidentiary support—has divided India down the middle. It has also divided families and friends.

On one side of the divide are the people who believe they are in danger (the 37.36% of the electorate who voted for BJP in 2019, they are often upper caste Hindus). The group has been created and led by an efficient RSS-BJP machinery. 

On the other side of the line are Hindus who do not buy the “Hindus-are-in-danger” rubbish, along with Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Parsis, plus everyone else. The latter have no formal organization / leadership. After every government misadventure like demonetization, or CAA-NRC, or the Farm Bills, the second group protests. They also hope that as their agitations gain momentum, the opposition parties, who have not seriously challenged BJP-RSS, will defeat BJP through the ballot box. 

It will not happen.

Because of the poison I mentioned. The people who support the present regime see the economy tanking, they have seen dead bodies floating in the Ganga during the COVID pandemic, their nephew or niece may be unemployed for years, yet their faith in BJP is unflinching because they think only that party can “save” them from Muslims. Psychologists like Daniel Goleman say when your mind is in the grip of hatred and anger against someone, you cannot think straight. Your baser caveman instincts take hold of you. This, roughly, is the state of mind of the people who abuse Muslims day in and day out. In that state of mind, it is possible for women to garland a gang of criminals who serially raped a pregnant woman, smashed the body of her three-year-old daughter, and murdered her 14 family members for no reason other than hatred against Muslims. 

If we wish to regain our secular India, we must detoxify those people. But we can achieve little by arguing with them. What we need today is affirmative action to bring people together, to spread love.

Democracy is not self-executing. We must make it work, particularly at a time when the forces of hatred, divisiveness, and violence have taken root in our country. Bharat Jodo Yatra is an attempt to precisely do that. <>

16 October 2022