The Bharat Jodo Yatra initiated by Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the Congress, orchestrates a movement which can be seen mobilising the party cadre and the general public into walking by foot from Kanyakumari, the southern tip of the peninsula, to the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir, which began on September 7, 2022 spanning 3,570 kilometres spread over 150 days.
While the Yatra is reminiscent of the historic movement taken by notable Indian leaders of the past, the present endeavour by Rahul Gandhi closely resembles the campaign trail comprehensively described in the Presidential Autobiography contained in 2020 book released by the former President of the United States of America: Barack Obama.
Some of the excerpts from Obama’s Book titled: “A Promised Land” strike a glaring similarity to the idealism described in the objectives of the Bharat Jodo Yatra. In perspective, the main objective of the Yatra has been to fight against the politics of “fear, bigotry and prejudice” and the economics of livelihood destruction, increasing unemployment and growing inequalities.
Relatedly, in culmination of Obama’s presidential campaign, the glaring question which he poses at the beginning of his Autobiography is this: “At the heart of this long-running battle is a simple question: Do we care to match the reality of America to its ideals? If so, do we really believe that our notions of self-government and individual freedom, equality of opportunity and equality before the law, apply to everybody? Or are we instead committed, in practice if not in statute, to reserving those things for a privileged few?”
Consequently, Obama goes on to remark: “I recognize that there are those who believe that it’s time to discard the myth”that an examination of America’s past and an even cursory glance at today’s headlines show that this nation’s ideals have always been secondary to conquest and subjugation, a racial caste system and rapacious capitalism, and that to pretend otherwise is to be complicit in a game that was rigged from the start.”
Perhaps the most emotionally inundating similarity between the two campaigns could be palpated from the resounding truth in Obama’s word at page 125 of his Book: “I was running against the implacable weight of the past; the inertia, fatalism, and fear it produced.”
Moreover, the reality of circumstances observed in the Yatra meant that campaigning on a more retail, human scale supposedly offered the opportunity for honest encounters which would make the campaign come alive.
In fact, at Page 49 of Obama’s Book, a similar chord of humanity can be read: “And I’d (Obama) drive on to the next town knowing that the story I was telling was true; convinced that this campaign was no longer about me and that I had become a mere conduit through which people might recognize the value of their own stories, their own worth, and share them with one another.”
And these maybe, reflect the virtues which would be instilled within a leader such as Rahul Gandhi upon undertaking a campaign of national magnitude, a connection that Obama sincerely describes as: “There’s a physical feeling, a current of emotion that passes back and forth between you and the crowd, as if your lives and theirs are suddenly spliced together, like a movie reel, projecting back-ward and forward in time, and your voice creeps right up to the edge of cracking, because for an instant, you feel them deeply; you can see them whole.”
And of course, the perks of interacting with people at the grass root level are immeasurable in shaping the future course of events that pertain to a political campaign. But most notable of all would be bright the words used by Obama to describe the emboldening which Rahul would be going through:
“As a candidate, I was having fun. In Chicago, I spent Saturdays plunging into ethnic neighborhoods”Mexican, Italian, Indian, Polish, Greek”eating and dancing, marching in parades, kissing babies and hugging grandmas. Sundays would find me in Black churches, some of them modest storefronts wedged between nail salons and fast-food joints, others expansive mega churches with parking lots the size of football fields.”
Prudent advice could also be delivered from Obama’s Book in empowering the Yatra’s protagonist with the rare art of active listening. “Over time, though, I focused more on listening. And the more I listened, the more people opened up. They’d tell me about how it felt to be laid off after a lifetime of work, or what it was like to have your home foreclosed upon or to have to sell the family farm. They’d tell me about not being able to afford health insurance, and how sometimes they broke the pills their doctors pre-scribed in half, hoping to make their medicine last longer.”
By means of anthropological estimation, it could be safely assumed that the human expectations whether they be in Indore or in Illinois would be similar.
In the words of Barack Obama, the message resounds: “Most people, wherever they’re from, whatever they look like, are looking for the same thing. They’re not trying to get filthy rich. They don’t expect someone else to do what they can do for themselves. But they do expect that if they’re willing to work, they should be able to find a job that supports a family. They expect that they shouldn’t go bankrupt just because they get sick...And they figure that after a lifetime of work, they should be able to retire with dignity and respect.”
Expectedly, the Yatra may surmise the same degree of expectations from livelihoods being administered under the polity of democratic governance.
