Justice Markandey Katju-
Justice Markandey Katju is a former Judge, Supreme Court of India, and former Chairman, Press Council of India. The views expressed are his own.
Rahul Gandhi has been talking a lot these days of uniting India and is doing a Bharat Jodo Yatra for this purpose.
But here is the harsh reality.
Jayakalyani is a young woman in Tamilnadu, who is a Naidu by caste and is the daughter of Tamilnadu Minister, Sekhar Babu. She fell in love and married a young man of the Vanniar caste. And now both of them are receiving death threats.
So if even Naidus and Vanniars ( both Hindu non-Dalit castes ) cannot be united, how can the whole country be united?
In western UP, for a Dalit or Muslim boy to fall in love with a non-Dalit Hindu girl is inviting a death sentence, and the same is the position in Tamilnadu, Rajasthan, and other places.
Casteism and communalism, which are rampant in India, are feudal forces holding up the nation’s progress and must be destroyed. But they cannot be destroyed by a yatra. They can only be destroyed by a mighty, historical, protracted, people’s struggle, led by modern-minded patriotic leaders determined to rapidly industrialize and modernize India.
It is wrong to think that Indian society was polarised only after the BJP came to power in 2014 ( though communalism has certainly increased after that ). The truth is that even before 2014 casteism and communalism were rampant in India, and Indian politics was, and still is, run largely on the basis of caste and religious vote banks.
It must be understood that secularism is a feature of industrial society ( as exist in Western nations ), and it is not a feature of feudal society. India is still semi-feudal. Though the Indian Constitution says that India is a secular country, the ground reality is very different. After all, the Constitution is only a piece of paper. The truth is that in India most Hindus are communal, and so are most Muslims, and this was so even before 2014.
No doubt large crowds can be seen in the Bharat Jodo Yatra or during Rahul Gandhi’s speech at Red Fort, Delhi. But will this translate into votes in the 2024 Parliamentary elections? I doubt it. Casteism and communalism will not disappear because of a yatra, and when most people vote, they only see caste and religion ( of the candidate or the party).
The fact is that Indians have for long been chasing a mirage, like children following a Pied Piper of Hamelin, e.g. when Indira Gandhi gave the slogan ‘Gharibi hatao’ or when Anna Hazare started his anti-corruption movement in Delhi. Rahul Gandhi, who has no clue as to how to solve India’s mammoth problems of poverty, unemployment, price rise, etc, is now talking of spreading love and opposing fear, and in his speech at the Red Fort, Delhi, has narrated the plight of unemployed youth, and the small and middle businessmen. He is trying to project himself as another Pied Piper whom the gullible Indian people must follow if they wish to solve their problems, though his real aim is to restore the Congress Party ( which of course is the Gandhi family’s fiefdom ) to power, since, like a fish out of water, it is unaccustomed to be out of power and without the loaves of office.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv6MEGAtzPM
