On a piercingly chilly Punjab morning, as a bitter frost crusted the bottom, they gathered. Some have been bundled up in blankets, others clutched feeble cups of chai for heat. But not Rahul Gandhi. Wearing solely a white T-shirt and cargo trousers, Gandhi started to tempo ahead at velocity, leaving fellow marchers in his wake. “I’ve heard he doesn’t feel the cold,” stated Raju, an admiring native onlooker, as he sprinted off to take a photograph.

This was the 123rd day that Gandhi, the previous chief of India’s as soon as formidable Congress get together, had been strolling throughout India, starting at its southernmost tip of Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu and travelling 2,200 miles (3,500km) as much as the Himalayas. On Monday, he’ll end in Srinagar, within the embattled state of Kashmir, after 150 days of strolling.

Among these accompanying Gandhi was Karuna Prasad Mishra, a 91-year-old farmer who had as soon as marched with India’s most well-known freedom fighter Mahatma Gandhi. With a strolling stick in his gnarled hand, Mishra proudly boasted of the seven-mile-per-hour velocity that he had maintained for over 4 months of strolling 15 miles a day.

“I have witnessed my country go though many periods, but nothing like this,” stated Mishra, who insisted his toes had not ached as soon as. “Prime Minister Modi is nothing but a heartless butcher. I am walking with Rahul Gandhi to reinforce the spirit of brotherhood, harmony and secularism in India.”

When Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo [Unite India] yatra – a deeply evocative Sanskrit phrase that means pilgrimage – started in September, it was largely greeted with each scepticism and disinterest, deemed by many as the ultimate determined gasp of a celebration in its dying throes.

Congress was the get together that helped carry India to independence and had dominated the political panorama since 1947. But since 2014, Gandhi, son of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and the grandson of former prime minister Indira Gandhi, had led the Congress to 2 crushing electoral defeats that noticed it shunned into irrelevance by the hovering recognition of Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata get together’s (BJP) Hindu nationalist politics.

Gandhi was broadly mocked by the BJP and the media as pappu (a small boy) and Rahul Baba, that means higher class. He’s been lampooned for being elitist, inexperienced and out of contact with abnormal Indians. He resigned because the president of Congress in 2019, however remained the face and the de facto chief of the get together. The mounting electoral losses, entrenched disorganisation and disillusionment throughout the get together ranks have been laid at his toes.

But as he started strolling, first into Kerala after which Karnataka, masking about 15 miles a day, one thing, noticeably, started to shift. Gandhi’s messages of the yatra – that he was marching for social concord, Hindu-Muslim unity and condemning the rise of divisive and majoritarian politics below Modi – started to attract in big crowds.

In Punjab, the place Congress suffered a humiliating defeat within the state elections 10 months in the past, individuals arrived of their droves because the yatra marched via the villages and handed by rolling fields of wheat, mustard and sugarcane. Baldev Singh Balli, 68, an English professor from Hoshiarpur was amongst those that walked alongside Gandhi.

“We talked and he sought my views,” he stated. “We discussed how India can be liberated from this hate politics and the need for economic liberation of the people. Rahul Gandhi is on a great journey to restore integrity to society.”

The additional Gandhi walked, the extra he started to be portrayed as a mature, credible statesman – gaining an nearly reverential guru standing to some. His message of affection and solidarity, at a time when the rise of non secular nationalist politics has created ruptures throughout the nation, struck a chord, significantly on social media. Meanwhile Gandhi’s beard, rising greater, bushier and extra like that of a sadhu or holy man as the times went on, grew to become a nationwide speaking level, as did the short-sleeved white T-shirt he selected to put on, even because the winter chill set in.

Gandhi himself acknowledged his political metamorphosis. “Rahul Gandhi is in your mind. I have killed him. He is not there,” he just lately informed reporters.

Within Congress, the yatra not solely revitalised the management, however your entire rank-and-file of the get together. “Frankly, there was a serious crisis within the organisation,” stated Jairam Ramesh, the overall secretary of Congress who at 67 has been marching daily.

“There was disenchantment, there was disillusionment, there was depression. Over the last 30 to 40 years, we have ceded the battlefield of ideas and ideologies to the BJP and vanished from the political discourse. People no longer knew what Congress is about: is it only there for power?

“Now, within the party, people have a huge sense of collective purpose,” he added. “And for the first time in 10 years, Congress is setting the narrative in India.”

The yatra has a deep historic significance in India in a non secular and political context, symbolising endurance and sacrifice. Most well-known was Mahatma Gandhi’s yatra in 1930, often called the salt march, when he walked greater than 200 miles in protest at legal guidelines imposed by the British.

Following the traditions of the previous, these marching within the Bharat Jodo yatra subscribe to a easy life. All the core members, Gandhi included, sleep in transport containers that comply with the march on vehicles. Those below 40 sleep 12 to a container and senior residents, eight. After the day’s strolling they’re often asleep by 9pm and rise once more at 4am.

Yet for all of the optimism amongst Congress staff that the yatra will rework their fortunes – significantly forward of the essential 2024 normal election – others outdoors the get together are extra sceptical.

Political analyst Sudha Pai stated whereas the yatra was the primary time that Congress had confronted the Hindu nationalist politics of the BJP head on, it will be onerous to halt the decline of the get together that started within the Nineteen Eighties.

Despite Gandhi’s newfound recognition, it is going to seemingly not be him dealing with Modi within the 2024 elections as he’s now not the get together head. However, the Gandhi dynasty continues to be seen to regulate the get together, with the newly elected Congress president, Mapanna Mallikarjun Kharge, perceived by many as a stooge of the household.

“There is no clarity as to who is actually the leader,” stated Pai. “In key states, the party’s organisation is still in shambles and there’s still no unity. They all speak out without even consulting each other or having any common way of dealing with things.”

In order to current a formidable opposition to the BJP, which is a well-liked, highly effective and extremely disciplined machine, Congress wanted to work tougher to type coalitions with different opposition events which might be regionally robust, Pai stated.

“Unless they come to some sort of an arrangement with the other opposition parties, they will not be able to defeat the BJP,” she stated. “And if they don’t defeat the BJP, the purpose of the yatra cannot be fulfilled.”

As the march paused for an unlimited buffet lunch in Punjab, Gandhi held a press convention for the native media, answering questions on what he would do as soon as they accomplished their 2,200-mile journey.

“Walking across this country has been an extremely humbling experience,” he stated. “For me, the yatra is a way of thinking, a way of acting. So personally, for me, it will continue.”