Rahul Gandhi brings common man to political centrestage

It is the right time to put together a collage of Rahul Gandhi’s politics. The victory of the Congress in the three Hindi heartland states of Madhya Pradesh (MP), Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan provides us the opportune moment.

When someone enters the Indian political system, that person’s politics morphs into the politics of his image. His ‘real self’ gets eroded in the public sphere. The things he says or does are often a performance, an appearance. If we were to describe politics in terms of Vedantic symbolism, we might say that the politician is empowered to prove the ‘rope as a snake’ and the ‘snake as a rope’. His speech, laughter, cry, emoting and dressing up, coalesce into a performance. We start searching for ‘performance’ in our politicians.

Judging from how he has gone thus far, Rahul Gandhi is seen as establishing his image as that of a politician who is practising the ‘politics of the real’ instead of the ‘politics of performance’.

From his body language and natural vibes, during his discourses, public rallies and village visits, it seems Rahul Gandhi is not into so-called conventional politics. He connects with the real.

Moving away from the conventional structure of politics, using images and words, he proposes these ‘real’ as ‘political’. Very different from the reactions of the urban middle class and the elites and contrary to the response of a section of the media, is that of a poor Muslim woman, of Mirzapur village in Uttar Pradesh. Her brother had drowned to death in the Ganga. Rahul Gandhi had visited her home to express his condolences. She told me, “He did not appear as a leader. He came and sat on the cot. And Rahul was talking to us as if he is one of us – our brother.” He mixed seamlessly with a lower middle class person. In the recently held five state elections, he wore a turamura kurta which helps the common people to relate to him as one of them.

Rahul is trying his best to become the image of the ‘common man’ in his everyday life. The image that haunts him is his association with the ‘Nehru-Gandhi’ clan. I feel that he is demolishing this loaded image wherein he is the symbol of the family that he belongs to. By breaking it, he wants to flow with the current of the huge Indian populace, as a face in the crowd, as a common man.

In 2011, Rahul Gandhi was once meeting the popular Dalit intellectuals in Uttar Pradesh. After his address, someone said, “…you are our future Prime Minister (PM)”. The scion of the Gandhi family posed a counter question, “Why do you want to see me as a future PM? Is it because I am Indira Gandhi’s grandson and Rajiv Gandhi’s son and was associated with satta (governance and power)? I want to be one amongst you, work with you, lending you my voice, giving you strength.”

When he was elected as Congress vice-president, Rahul Gandhi made an attempt to free his own self from the symbol of power. He said that power is poison. He added that even if the UPA were to regain power, he would like to use it to empower the common man.

In his recent campaigns, especially in the three Hindi heartland states, Rahul Gandhi repeatedly raised the issues of peasants, Dalits, the poor and the subaltern. His emphasis on farm loan waivers and the issue of minimum support prices (MSPs) of crops struck a chord with peasants, farmers and the rural poor. That ensured the victory of the Congress in these states.

Rahul Gandhi wants to replace the concept of ‘superman’ by that of a ‘common man’. That’s why, during his CII lecture, he said that “If you think a superhero, riding a horse, would liberate us, you are wrong. The country is like a beehive where everyone is equal. We all work very hard and together we make it a nation.” Examine it closely. He is demolishing the very perception of an Indian leader who is seated on his high horse.

He started taking people’s inputs while preparing election manifestos. He contacted various sections of the poor and the marginalised while setting the agenda of the polls. It is a new culture which he has started in the Congress. It stems from his politics.

Rahul Gandhi’s interaction with the poor, most marginalised and Aati-Dalit (invisible Dalits), him visiting their homes, sitting on their cots, eating with them, is not taken kindly by a section of the elite. It upsets them. The elite youth, educated in English medium schools and working with multinationals (MNCs), too feel uncomfortable with these.

Some of my politically aware friends from JNU asked me, “Why does Rahul talk to village pradhans, time and again? Pradhan is a small unit of the democratic structure. Why does such a powerful man talk to these people?” Rahul talks to those at the grassroots as he wants to subvert the MLA-MP-centred political system and strengthen democracy.

Rahul Gandhi gives importance to the marginalised, the subalterns and Dalits in his politics. He tries to diagnose problems of our political system in the context of marginalised people of our society. He said in one of his meetings with Aati-Dalit communities in Uttar Pradesh, “I understand the internal weaknesses of our prevalent system. I will try my level best to help the people, but unless and until the voices of the marginalised come out from within, nothing can be done. People and the system will always discourage you that you cannot stand on your own feet and this, in my opinion, is the biggest lie.”

Rahul Gandhi further added, “We have to chalk out a strategy together as I do not want to develop a one-day relationship with the grassroot people. I want to develop a long-term relationship that is deep from within, which provides space to people to share their good and bad points. In India, the voice of the poor people is heard less and my one and only political aim is to tune my ears to the voice of the poor and the marginalised.”

(The writer is Professor at Govind Ballabh Pant Social Science Institute, Allahabad)

This article first appeared in the National Herald on Sunday