Pride In Prattle

A blunder or a cynical attempt to recast Rahul Gandhi as a Brahmin, it has only revealed the Congress’s casteist underbelly

- Bhavna Vij-Aurora and Pragya Singh

“JANEU -dhaari Hindu.” Words that hiss with an anachro­nistic charge when spoken as an assertion, like some mons­ter of the deep suddenly looming into view, and more star­kly ironic when uttered by a spokesman of the Congress, which swears by secular progressive politics, unlike the Sangh parivar. Some would say it was true to form as all so-called secular parties are embedded in the old caste matrix one way or the other. And the Congress was ref­lecting its own inner biases, which all allegedly savarna-inflected parties pretend don’t exist.

In the process, a few curious things happened. A question of religion had unwittingly been deflected into one of caste—both factors brought into play, helped along by a few remarks about Aurangzeb, around the time Rahul Gandhi was about to take over as Congress chief. And against the backdrop of the Gujarat polls, where both caste and religion are fraught with meaning and consequences.

But why would MLA Randeep Surjewala, a former Haryana minister’s son, who usually chooses his words carefully like the lawyer he is by training—and yes, a Jat, who should have no great reason to espouse Brahminical anxieties—evoke the spectre of a thread-wearing Hindu? Why would he help the very symbol of caste oppression flowing from Manuvaadi attitudes hug the spotlight as a factor in India’s democracy, which has, ironica­lly, been pitched—going by the letter and spirit of the Constitution—as a countervailing force to those attitudes?

One part of the answer: it was a Freudian slip, made in the heat of chasing political expediency. (Recall, in the same Guj­arat campaign, the Congress is keeping a safe distance from anything overtly Muslim.) The other part trails off beyond the live political field of the day to a dynamic social history of over a century, where the janeu acquires some variable meaning across the landscape.