Temple and temporal: Rahul Gandhi's journeys

New Delhi, Sept. 8: The political ambition and the economic ideology of Rahul Gandhi have always been subjects of conjecture and examples of the ironies that mark public life in India. A bigger irony has been the remarkable transparency with which the Congress leader has been approaching an essentially personal affair: religion. Rahul has rarely shied away from visiting places of worship and speaking about it. He was among the first politicians to offer prayers at Kedarnath temple after it was restored following the devastating floods of 2013. Coming out of the temple on April 24, 2015, Rahul has said: " Aamtaur par mandir mein jata hun to kuchh mangta nahin hun. Main andar gaya, aag jaisi shakti mili (Usually, I don't ask for anything whenever I visit temples. I went in and felt fire-like energy)." Against this backdrop, Congress leaders were aghast when suggestions have been made that Rahul is toeing a "soft Hindutva line" by lining up a visit to Hanuman Garhi in Ayodhya tomorrow morning. Hanuman Garhi is the most popular temple of Lord Hanuman in Ayodhya and is not part of the disputed site. Rahul will be in Faizabad tomorrow, beginning the fourth day of his kisan yatra by offering prayers at the temple. He will visit the Kichauch Sharif dargah in Ambedkar Nagar in the evening before wrapping up the day's schedule. Congress leaders expressed dismay at interpretations - mostly by some television channels - that the proposed visit is Rahul's answer to the majoritarian politics associated with the BJP. The Congress leaders added that personal faith should not be confused with political agenda, engaging in a rare debate on a subject that is usually not discussed threadbare. With uncommon candour, some aides of Rahul said he was a "very spiritual person". They pointed out that while Rahul's latest tour started with a puja at the Dugdheshwar Mandir in Rudrapur, a similar ritual had preceded his filing of nomination papers for the first time for contesting from Amethi in 2004. Rahul had been to the Tirupati temple in April 2009, Kamakhya temple in Guwahati in February 2014 and Kashi Vishwanath Temple in Varanasi in March 2014. When he went to Chhattisgarh in March 2016, he worshipped at the Guru Gaddi temple in Girodhpuri. In Kashmir, he offered prayers at Kheer Bhawani temple. In 2009, when he went to Ajmer to campaign for Sachin Pilot, Rahul chose to visit the dargah of Sufi saint Khwaja Moiuddin Chisti and dropped in at Shirdi Sai Baba mandir during his Maharashtra tour. It is obvious Rahul is a deeply religious person unlike his great grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru and linking the visit to Hanuman Garhi temple in Ayodhya to Hindutva politics would be unfair, the Congress leaders said. Nehru, who often viewed religiosity in terms of self-delusion and mysticism, had written in his autobiography: "What the mysterious is I do not know. I do not call it God because God has come to mean much that I do not believe in. I find myself incapable of thinking of a deity or of any unknown supreme power in anthropomorphic terms, and the fact that many people think so is continually a source of surprise to me. Any idea of a personal God seems very odd to me." Nehru, who could freely demonstrate his atheism probably because of his towering personality, also wrote: "The spectacle of what is called religion, or at any rate organised religion, in India and elsewhere, has filled me with horror, and I have frequently condemned it and wished to make a clean sweep of it. Almost always it seems to stand for blind belief and reaction, dogma and bigotry, superstition and exploitation, and the preservation of vested interests." But Nehru could not inculcate his values in his daughter and political heir Indira Gandhi who visited temples, relied on spiritual gurus and nursed an entirely different perspective. She wrote: "Religion is something very basic and it is timeless. In this country, it is a great experience to go to some of the temples and see the people who come to worship there. It is their faith that creates a special atmosphere. It is not only faith of these people but of all others who have been coming here for thousands of years." Indira's son and Rahul's father Rajiv Gandhi, too, was religious and often visited temples to worship. Sonia Gandhi has been going to places of worship and she chose to take the holy dip in Allahabad during the 2001 Kumbh. Recently, when she took ill during her Varanasi rally, she issued a statement taking a vow to return to worship at the Kashi Vishwanath temple. She is often seen wearing the sacred red thread in her hand. Most Congress stalwarts have been religious and believed that personal faith should not interfere with their secular politics. While former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao prayed daily, President Pranab Mukherjee is deeply religious and follows Hindu rituals. But Mukherjee's secular credentials are impeccable and he often articulates his concerns about mixing politics with religion. Even V.D. Savarkar, who is supposed to have introduced the concept of political Hindutva, had written that it is fundamentally different from Hinduism. Sociologist Ashis Nandy went to the extent of saying: "The Hindutva ideology is an attack on Hinduism." The Congress leaders feel that such a distinction is being ignored by critics when they comment on Rahul's visits to places of worship. -The Telegraph Calcutta