All this goes on amidst a small sea of red Lohia caps. So here is my proposition. If the president of the BJP extols the virtues of a Muslim martyr, attacks the UPA on housing loan interest rates rise and if Lohiaites are talking FDI and fiscal discipline and Mulayam feels the need to underline Muslims are not opposed to singing Vande Mataram, but just irritated by the BJP’s insistence that they do so to prove their patriotism, where is the state’s politics moving? To the Left, Right, or the centre? Good argument, you might say, but add, even if you are my friend and take me seriously, that it is still a bit thin. Not quite Q.E.D. Not quite yet.

YOU do not look at Rahul Gandhi for any more evidence of that, because the Congress in any case has no option but to stay in the very middle of this political landscape, howsoever marginal its clout and prospects. We catch up with him in the Muslim heart of Muradabad where, until not so long ago, you found more BSF troops per capita than in Srinagar. The crowds, certainly bigger than any we have seen so far, wait for him, even break for the afternoon namaz as he is delayed, and come right back, a gentle flood of white caps as soon as the prayer is over. He talks of development, law and order, how the state has been left behind, how the rest of the country is moving on, how he intends to be here, work in Uttar Pradesh. He is not building on the theme of Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi. His audience is almost a hundred per cent Muslim, but his message has almost nothing that is minority-centric though, to be fair, Salman Khurshid who speaks before him, does bring in the promise of reservations for OBCs among Muslims, marring what is otherwise a wonderfully worded secular, nationalistic speech, peppered with references for the heartland’s syncretic “Ganga-Jamni” tradition. Rahul’s challenge is formidable: re-building a party where nothing of its past has survived — ideas, machinery, leaders, nothing. But he has realised too that the message that can now work is a promise for the future rather than a lament for the past.

... contd.