In Mathura, it’s 'Pandit Rahul Gandhi' as Cong adopts soft Hindutva

AGRA: Pursuing the party’s recently adopted soft Hindutva line to woo its lost Brahmin vote in UP, Congress workers in the temple town of Mathura are all set to flaunt Rahul Gandhi’s Brahmin identity by prefixing ‘pandit’ to his name.
Posters welcoming ‘Pt’ Rahul Gandhi have come up at several places in Mathura for his scheduled visit to the town on October 5. Incidentally, these posters have come up just days after Rahul was dubbed as “Arjun avtar” in a publicity campaign during his ongoing Kisan Yatra in Allahabad, and his much-hyped visit to the Ram temple in Ayodhya, the first from a member of the Gandhi family since the demolition of Babri Masjid.
The posters are a brainchild of UP Congress general secretary Umesh Pundit, and his name appears on them too. Pundit told TOI, “Two years ago Rahulji had himself stated that he is a Brahmin and after all he is the great-grandson of Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru, so prefixing ‘Pt’ to his name is only natural.”
However, political observers said that this is a huge departure from the Congress’ earlier slogan of ‘Na jat par na pat par, batan dabao hath par’ (vote for Congress, not for caste) and a clear assertion of its carefully crafted Brahmin-centric campaign for UP, the brainchild of the party’s poll strategist Prashant Kishor. It’s now well-known that Kishor has convinced the Gandhi scion that in order to resurrect the Congress in UP, the party must woo back its original constituencies of Muslims and Brahmins, besides a section of the non-Dalit OBCs.
Even naming Shiela Dikshit, a Brahmin, as Congress’s CM candidate in UP was part of this strategy and it seems that party workers are going all out to flaunt Rahul’s Brahmin credentials. During his ongoing Kisan Yatra, Rahul has visited four Hindu temples and his photographs with sandal paste and vermillion smeared on his forehead have been flashed in the media.
His visit to Hanuman Garhi temple on September 9 was also part of this well-crafted strategy, since his father, Rajiv Gandhi, couldn’t reach there during his ‘Sadbhavna Yatra’ in 1990.
However, the BJP claimed to be unfazed with Congress’s soft Hindutva approach and party’s state president, Keshav Prasad Maurya, felt that nothing could revive the party’s fortunes in UP. “Whether he puts up a ‘Pt’ or a ‘Maulana’ in front of his name, it will make no difference,” he said, adding that Congress’s Brahmin or Hindutva card would not work in UP.