Ganga kinare

As a venerable site of an ancient civilisation, Varanasi makes an arresting backdrop to any political project. Just as the city’s old and congested lanes provided Narendra Modi the propaganda breakthrough in 2014 in his prime ministerial journey, a fragile and unwell Sonia Gandhi returned to those very streets to kickstart the Congress journey of revival. In its ‘road show’ in Varanasi on Tuesday the Congress managed to produce crowds and television footage, as also a promise of a stab at an alternative discourse on politics and governance in Uttar Pradesh. The last time the Congress ruled in Lucknow was in 1989; since then the state has dramatically changed, with the hill districts lopped off into a new state of Uttarakhand. More than the geographical incisions, the state has experienced massive and comprehensive sociological convulsions. The idiom of casteism (represented by the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party) has contested and confronted the grammar of communalism, aggressively promoted and practised by the Bharatiya Janata Party. “Development” has not been the dominant theme song of any political party. 

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The Congress seeks to challenge this caste-religion based mobilisation in the largest state in the country. Uttar Pradesh once provided the party not only its most vigorous support base, but also contributed substantially to its national leadership. The Congress projects Mrs Sheila Dikshit as its chief ministerial face in the hope that her 15 years long innings in Delhi would carry some conviction with the voters. 

More than enhancing its electoral prospects in Uttar Pradesh, the Varanasi show has helped manufacture an important perception: the grand old party is not prepared to throw in the towel, that it has come out of its post-2014 mood of despair, and that it is not averse to taking the battle to the enemy camp. The massive crowds that appeared to have come out to greet Sonia Gandhi should suggest that the Modi Project is beginning to look frayed. Modi’s much-promised project — Clean Ganga — remains an election-time jumla; nor has this cradle of Ganga-Jamuna civilisation benefited much on account of having Modi as its local member of Parliament. Once again, it would appear, UP is up for grabs.