Token Pilgrim

India’s self-styled knight of democracy has mounted yet another spectacle. Rahul Gandhi, heir to the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty and reluctant standard-bearer of the Congress party, has begun a 16-day, 1,300-kilometre trek through Bihar. Grandly titled the ‘Voter Adhikar Yatra,’ the exercise purports to defend electoral sanctity against the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter lists. Gandhi insists the revision is an elaborate ruse to disenfranchise the poor. The truth is that it is an administrative exercise designed to weed out duplication and fraud.

But scrutiny of the yatra’s route tells a different story. Far from a democratic pilgrimage, the march is a carefully charted tour through Bihar’s Muslim-dominated districts. Kishanganj, Katihar, Araria and Purnia all figure prominently. The pattern is hardly accidental. It reflects a timeworn Congress strategy of appealing to sectarian loyalties under the guise of secularism.

Once India’s natural party of governance, the Congress now resembles a heritage brand stripped of credibility. Under Gandhi’s stewardship, it has bled cadres, lost states and become little more than a passenger in alliances led by stronger regional forces. In Bihar, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) remains the senior partner while Gandhi essentially is a mascot.

Gandhi’s hypocrisy is also worth noting. In Congress-ruled states, his party has been quick to raise alarms about fraudulent entries in electoral rolls. Yet in poll-bound Bihar he rails against precisely the mechanism meant to fix such irregularities. He condemns the SIR as ‘vote theft’ while elsewhere decrying the lack of checks against bogus voters. It is a duplicitous line that collapses under the weight of its own contradictions.

There is also something unsettling about the cartography of this yatra. Its route skirts large swathes of west Bihar, concentrating on districts where communal fault-lines are most sensitive. To claim to be protecting democracy while simultaneously stoking sectarian anxieties is the height of cynicism. Should unrest flare, the geography of the march ensures Hindus are hemmed in on three sides, with only the western flank as an escape. Such reckless politicking invites instability in a state where social tensions already simmer. The Congress party has long practised the politics of appeasement. What makes this iteration more galling is that it comes dressed in the language of rights and reform. Gandhi would have the public believe that he is championing ‘voter adhikar’ (voter rights). In reality, he is pandering to an audience carefully chosen by religious demography, not democratic principle.

India deserves an opposition worthy of the name. A party that could offer policy alternatives, hold the government accountable and expand the democratic conversation. What it gets instead is Rahul Gandhi, a man more animated by the theatre of grievance than the grind of governance. Rahul’s march through Bihar reveals more about his cynicism than his convictions. Electoral politics rewards conviction and clarity, not tokenism and theatrics. Until Gandhi recognises this, his marches will remain empty processions conducted by a hollow prince through a landscape he neither understands nor respects.