It is a Christian belief that God expelled Adam and Eve from “innocence” and “immortality” in Paradise so that through an “experience” of sin, suffering, and death upon the earth they would come to recognise the true value of what they had lost through their transgression of God’s word.It is of course not the case that prior to the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah and Adani-Ambani era there was no sin, suffering, and death (price rise, joblessness, social antagonisms) in the republic of India.What there was, however, barring episodes of transgression of the constitution (god), was a steady commitment to its foremost injunctions, such as democracy in letter and spirit, non-sectarian equality in the way state agencies treated citizens, freedom of expression, and respect for views inimical to the rulers of the day.Let it be said that the Bharat Jodo Yatra seeks to bring home to us the loss we are experiencing, and recalls us to a moral and systemic commitment that the freedom fighters and our leaderships prior to the era in hand had forged and nursed, striving to stay inside ungodly red lines.And, most of all, to a rediscovery of the beauties of plurality which has through thousands of years of composite history made of this land an unparalleled exemplar.There may be no more instructive way to contextualise the ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ than to refer back to its antinomy, the L.K. Advani-led Ram Rath Yatra of 1990.Where that rolled thunder on a conquering chariot, with bow and arrow drawn, belligerent, vengeful, divisive, the Bharat Jodo Yatra is more akin to a carnival of pedestrian oneness. Where that spewed toxin, this one seems like the first breeze of anew spring, de-toxifying poisons that vitiate the vataavaran (environment).Inebriated by camaraderie that “others” no one, Rahul Gandhi’s persona might well be that of a reborn Adam, inspirited by a new knowledge of the meaning of love.In his sentient innocence, the darts of venomous experience pass him by, much as the evil of the world falls flat before a “naked, new-born babe” (Macbeth).Of his bare T-shirt, he is crookedly asked the question that King George once asked of Mahatma Gandhi at the time of the Round Table Conference; come properly dressed if you wish to meet me, the King admonished.We know how Gandhi responded to that mannerless barb; indeed, when the media asked Gandhi what the King wore, he, the wittiest of men, said, “He wore enough for the both of us.”Rahul’s retort (‘go see what the poor wear’), once again, inevitably recalls to my mind those self-critical syllables of realisation that the once King, Lear, utters while abandoned and desolate in a storm upon an unprotected heath:Poor, naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are,That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,How shall your houseless heads, your undefended sides,Your looped and windowed raggedness,Be protected from seasons such as these.O, I have taken too little care of this.Take physic, Pomp, expose thyself to feelWhat wretches feel,That thou mayest shake the superflux to them,And prove the heavens more just.Do Modi/Shah, Adani/Ambani (“Pomp”) know what the poor wear, given that much of the time they (the poor) are sought to be removed from the prosperous eye anytime an important visitor is in tinsel town?It is also calumniated that Rahul Gandhi’s beard is Saddam Hussain-like, while honourable Modi’s suggests Tagore; it may be asked here whose thoughts are like whom.Will or will not the yatra garner votes for the oldest party, the worldly ones ask.Also read: Politics in 2022: An Insipid Yet Dominant BJP and a Split Opposition in a Divided NationTruth to tell, important as that is, the query shows merely a mercenary indifference to the spiritual purpose of the yatra: it is to retrieve the realm from the power-brokers and merchants of profit and hate for the needs and the humanity of the common Indian who wishes to live in good neighbourliness and unabrasive acceptance of those who do not eat, or dress, or pray like them.When Gandhi paid obeisance at the Samadhi of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, he was testifying precisely to that vision of accommodation and honouring those qualities in the late prime minister whose icon was Jawaharlal Nehru, who had a rich appreciation for the contributions made to the Indian life and culture by Muslim Indians, who could rise to praise an adversary like Indira Gandhi, and, conversely, admonish his own to follow “raj dharma”, and who observed principled allegiance to the sanctities of constitutional democracy, losing his government even if by one vote rather than engage in mercenary and other forms of skullduggery to retain power.The ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ is first an Indian version of the old American Woodstock that sought to rescue a murderous imperialist nation for the kinship of all women and men, regardless of race, religion, creed, colour of skin, language, or class.Rahul Gandhi and his compatriot’s unprecedented walkathon from the oceans in the south to the Himalayas in the north is an odyssey the like of which the modern world may never have seen.Visibly, this Herculean undertaking has infused the Congress worker with a tizzy of self-belief and determination to stand for the vision the grand old party had given to the new nation after defeating the coloniser.In crass terms, come assembly elections in Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, things may no longer be as placid as the right-wing has been used to assuming.The yatra has equally enthused a wide spectrum of young Indians with a spontaneity of commitment to lost ideals and to the example set by the yatris.The historic Bharat Jodo Yatra could well be the harbinger of a resurrection.And it were best for ambitious satraps in various states of India to recognise how the yatra may have altered political estimations they have been used to making.Badri Raina taught at Delhi University.