Varanasi/New Delhi, Mar 21: The oldest party of India is worried these days. Not only because of erosion in its traditional Muslim vote bank but because of the serious erosion of Hindu votes it suffered on account of its pro-Muslim image in the public domain. Numerous attempts were made by the party leaders to correct that anti-Hindu image in the recent past.
Rahul, the President of the Congress Party, even donned a ‘janeu’ (the sacred thread) and went visiting temples in Gujarat branding him as a ‘janeudhari Hindu’. The party even did not hesitate to project itself as a political party professing what it called a ‘soft Hindutva’ to attract the estranged Hindu voter.
Look at Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath. He is setting up Gaushalas, increasing the salary of the temple priests and projecting his image as a pro-Hindu leader. Rahul, embarked upon Kailash Mansarovar yatra, but that also failed to yield the expected results.
Therefore, now this Ganga Yatra of Rahul’s sister Priyanka Vadra. Both of them tried to their best to encash the ‘Gandhi’ epithet for their political benefit, have been trying to regain the confidence of their Hindu voters in so many ways. But with no expected results coming, they seem to have embarked on this political ‘tamasha’ called ‘Ganga Yatra’.
Uttar Pradesh has been the traditional stronghold of the Congress party since pre-Independence days. It has given a number of prime ministers to the country right from Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, - all of them from the same dynasty. But in the recent past, the Congress had been losing its political influence on the electorate of this largest state of the Indian Union owing to a number of factors detailed discussion on them is not the subject matter of this article just now. The main focus is of the ‘Ganga Yatra’ of Congress General Secretary Priyanka Vadra who is entrusted the responsibility is on winning back the Hindu vote bank of the party at least in Eastern UP which was considered as a Congress bastion once.
As expected she started her sojourn from Prayagraj and reached Varanasi, the constituency of incumbent Prime Minister and her main adversary Narendra Modi. She performed the puja of River Ganga and offered prayers at the Kashi Vishwanath Temple at Vranasi. On the way she is visiting the villages situated along the bank of the Ganga River and offered her ‘Darshan’ to the waiting crowd.
The fact of the matter is Congress today finds itself totally isolated in the state it ruled once with grace and brute majority. The constituents of the ‘Mahagathbandhan’ or to use PM Modi’s words the ‘Mahamilawat’ – the BSP and SP have deliberately kept Congress party out of the alliance and with a very ‘large heart’ offered them two seats – Raebareli and Amethi! Yet the Congress on its own had projected itself as major party of the alliance the claim Mayawati had straightaway rejected. She had warned the Congress leadership not to spread confusion among the voters by such false rumors.
The Samajwadi Party leader and former Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav also warned the Congress rejecting its claim to be partner of the ‘mahagathbandhan’. This is really a pathetic situation for the Congress party.
In its good old days of glory and pomp, women, Brahmins, Muslims and Dalits were the solid vote banks of the Congress party. Leaders like Kamalapati Tripathi, Narayandatta Tiwari, Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna, were leading the party in UP then. Those were really golden era of the Congress party. People used to say during the regime of Jawaharlal Nehru or Indira Gandhi that anyone even a political novice could win the elections if nominated by the Congress party! That was the grace and influence the party had wielded over the public psyche.
Now, the Muslims and Dalits have deserted the Congress and Hindus have distanced them from the party due to its anti-Hindu image. Thus, forcing the Congress party to rethink and redraft its strategy to win back its vote banks.
This ‘Ganga Yatra’ is seriously undertaken by the Congress under this well thought out strategy. And who could be more glamorous, enchanting and attractive face than Priyanka Vadra, whose looks only resemble her grandmother the late Indira Gandhi to take up this challenging task. SO she is chosen for this challenge.
Narendra Modi, when decided to contest from Varanasi in 2014 he said in his first visit “Main yahan aya nahi haun, Maa Ganga ne Mujhe yahan Bulaya hain”. Now Priyanka Vadra is also speaking in the same language. Her strategists believe that her Ganga sojourn would prove miraculously beneficial for the Congress party but they ignore the ground reality that Modi had a powerful and strong institution to support him which Priyanka does not.
Digvijay Singh did this experiment in Madhya Pradesh by undertaking Narmada Yatra. He tried to revive party’s base in the society and also to rejuvenate the party cadre. This strategy seems to have paid dividends to the Congress in MP in wiping out its ‘Anti-Hindu’ image to a certain extent. But this will repeat in UP is hard to say at this moment.
Observers feel that Congress party is not looking at immediate gains in 2019 elections. It is eyeing the 2022 UP Assembly elections and 2014 Lok Sabha polls. But the million dollar question is whether the Congress will live up to that point of time?