Dear Express Reader The Bharat Jodo Yatra, which started from Kanyakumari on September 7, ends in Srinagar on January 30, and there is no denying that it has led to a powerful reframing of the visual imagery. Rahul Gandhi, the austere and bearded Yatri in a bare white T-shirt, looks very different from the Entitled Dilettante, taking off for holidays abroad in between presiding, officially and unofficially, over a party in unchecked decline. The Yatra comes to its conclusion at the end of an uncomfortable week for Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The BBC documentary on his record during Gujarat 2002 and after revealed nothing that wasn't already in the public domain. The revival of memories of 2002, which never really went away, not least because of the BJP's own stoking of the scars to its advantage, may also not harm him politically. But the Modi government's heavy-handed response - from the electricity cut in JNU to bringing out the riot police at Jamia and suspension of 10 students in Central University of Rajasthan in Ajmer - have ranged the mighty Indian government against a campus film-screening. Not at all a flattering image for a government talking up its global leadership in the year of India's G-20 presidency, and especially self-defeating for it in times when it is not so easy to block and ban things away. So, at first look, it would seem that the recasting of Rahul, his wresting greater control over his own lines to inject in them a much-needed humility, comes at a time when Modi looks more of an authoritarian figure, bellowing "off with its head" only for that command to be flouted visibly. And yet, this may not be the whole story. There is a back story to the Bharat Jodo Yatra. In my own travels to small towns and villages in the Hindi heartland, where it has been most glaring that the crowds at Rahul's rallies were no longer translating into votes for Congress, it has seemed obvious that at least two things stand in the way. The Congress is seen to have lost its will-to-win in the face of a purposeful and aggressive BJP. And the Congress also carries the burden of its past record, unaddressed and unresolved, around its neck. If the Congress has a past to live down, Rahul's problem is that he does not have enough of a CV. It is not just that Rahul was absent from mobilisations in the street, but also that he has not taken up a responsibility and delivered in the past. Then, this Congress with-a-past, this Rahul without-a-CV are neither rallying their own faithful nor reaching out to voters across the divide. They are seen to be ducking or tiptoeing around conversations initiated by the BJP, be it on nationalism, or about the majority and minority. The Modi-BJP, on the other hand, is seen to be changing the subject and setting the agenda, while its opponent is missing in action or tongue-tied. So what has changed in this situation, what might change in it for the Congress, after the Bharat Jodo Yatra - beyond the immediate visual imagery of Rahul the Yatri successfully arriving at journey's end, just as Modi the Powerful nervously takes aim at a mere documentary? In the Bharat Jodo Yatra, Rahul kept most of what he said abstract and non-specific - he spoke of love versus hate. Yes, he spoke on Savarkar, and against the RSS, but for the most part, he avoided specific issues and events and the Gujarat election on the way. Congress supporters have portrayed the Yatra as non-political and above electoral considerations. But while that arguably gave Rahul more room for his message, it also makes him more vulnerable to the charge of still not stepping up fully to the challenge of re-orienting the Congress and taking on the BJP. The end of the Yatra should be the beginning of the Congress looking back and looking ahead in more specific ways. Else it is in danger of being rendered irrelevant to political ground zero or reduced to a leader's vanity project. Another big absence during the Yatra was Congress's outreach to voters of the BJP. Except for two moments - one, when during a break in the Yatra, Rahul visited Atal Bihari Vajpayee's samadhi to pay respects in Delhi, and then when the resumed Yatra invited the sants of Ayodhya to participate - the Yatra steadfastly kept to its side of the political fence. It's a question the Yatris will have to confront in coming days: Did they only rouse their own faithful? On the other side, the challenge for the Yatra also is that Modi is moving too. Any attempt to fix and frame the anti-Modi message runs the risk of being thwarted by an agile Modi moving out of firing range. The controversy over the BBC's documentary is as much a reminder of where Modi started from, and memories of carnage that still fester in his political arsenal, as much as it is a pointer to how he has rebuilt and renewed his persona constantly, from that moment in Gujarat. As the Bharat Jodo Yatra ends, then, in this year ahead of the big battle of 2024, it seems that Rahul Gandhi is just beginning to twist and tweak his own script against an opponent who has done that expertly since 2002. Till next week, Vandita | 
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