Digvijaya Singh's Narmada Parikrama a bid to shed his anti-Hindu image?

No one really knows what Digvijaya Singh is up to. Accompanied by wife Amrita and some 90 others, the AICC general secretary on September 30 set out on a Narmada Parikrama - a 3,300 km, six-month trek along the course of the river in Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. But is it the "spiritual quest" he claims it is? Or a political stratagem to reinvent himself and the Congress in his home state?

Whatever the case, Raja (as Singh is commonly known in MP) has everybody, rivals in both the BJP and Congress, scratching their heads. "This is a purely spiritual quest and not political at all. I am always overestimated as a politician and underestimated as a person," Singh said with disarming modesty while he was in Maaragaon, in Hoshangabad district, on October 10. Joined along the route by supporters and party workers, Singh chided them for raising slogans for him and the Congress. He also refrained from making political comments.

Singh's 'quest' is steeped in Hindu religious symbolism amid a succession of aartis, a surfeit of saffron, even a mobile temple with continuous prayers. The parikrama moves from village to village greeting residents with "Narmade Har!" Analysts say, at the very least, the pilgrimage could help Singh shed the 'anti- Hindu' tag he has acquired over the years. "I am a deeply religious person, but my religion tells me to respect all other religions," he says.

But despite his repeatedly telling them, Congress leaders queuing up to be seen at Singh's parikrama are seeing things differently. "I'm here to show solidarity with Digvijaya Singhji," said Brajendra Singh Rathore, a Congress strongman from Bundelkhand. Though he declines to make any political comment, he is diligently documenting all that he sees in the villages, such as the change in cropping patterns, pollution in the Narmada, the reduced water level in the river, how fishing is organised for the traditional fishing community, doing away with fishing cooperatives. "I cannot close my eyes and ears," he says.

Notably, some months ago, chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan's Namami Devi Narmade Yatra traced the same route. Slogans from that yatra painted on village walls have still not faded. "People are drawing a contrast between the helicopter-borne government yatra and the sight of a raja walking like a commoner," says Rajesh Patel, a Congress worker in Kondarwara, a village along the route. On the afternoon of October 11, Singh made a brief halt at Nasirabad, across the Narmada from Jait, CM Chouhan's ancestral village. He is clearly contemplative. After all, it is Chouhan who surpassed Singh's record as MP's longest serving chief minister. Interestingly, residents of Jait say they will welcome Singh when his parikrama reaches the village on his way back in February next year. "Like we welcome everyone who does the parikrama," explains one resident, Dharmendra Chouhan. Ask the man if he sees Singh and Chouhan's yatras as political? He smirks, "Digvijaya's 'is 100 per cent political and Shivraj Chouhan's yatra was 120 per cent political."