Thousands of kilometres away from Telangana, where the Bharat Jodo Yatra is underway at the moment, a group of people walked in the heart of Kolkata on Sunday afternoon with the same purpose.
They walked to stand up against the atmosphere of hate and polarisation that they said was tearing India apart.
They walked because they believed in the idea of a united India.
Many of the participants said they were not Congress supporters but expressed solidarity with the Bharat Jodo campaign led by Rahul Gandhi, which has completed two months and covered four states. On Monday, the Yatra is slated to enter Maharashtra.
In Kolkata, the marchers assembled in front of Lady Brabourne College in Park Circus and walked till the Gandhi statue on Mayo Road.
A former professor of Physics at IIT Delhi and an ardent Gandhian, Vipin Kumar Tripathi, was one of the participants. Tripathi, 74, has been campaigning across the country for three decades with a single-point agenda — to develop grassroots resistance against communalisation.
The aggressive Hindutva politics that culminated in the demolition of Babri Masjid had spurred Tripathi into action. He started in Delhi in 1989 and has since travelled across several states, distributing pamphlets and delivering lectures at educational institutions.
“The politics of polarisation was very much there in the 1990s. But back then, the institutions had not crumbled. Some of the institutions might have had people who believed in the Hindutva cause but there were many liberal minds as well. Now, almost every institution is being helmed by BJP-RSS stooges,” said Tripathi, who retired from IIT Delhi in 2013 but continued teaching there as an honorary professor till 2018.
Tripathi’s latest visit to West Bengal took him to Malda and Murshidabad before hitting Kolkata.
Asked about the Bharat Jodo Yatra, he said it was a “timely initiative”.
“Most political parties shy away from actively countering the polarisation because they fear a slide in vote share. But it is imperative to fight polarisation,” he said.
Former IIT Delhi professor Vipin Kumar Tripathi takes part in the march on Sunday.
Lumaah Yasin, a Kidderpore resident, came to the march because she wanted to raise her voice against the bid to use religion to divide people.
“We don’t need a political banner to stand up against hate. It is the duty of each and every one of us to stand up against hate,” said Yasin, who works for a US-based real estate company.
Saturday’s march was organised by Swaraj India and the civil society.
Nousheen Baba Khan, who teaches political science at a college in central Calcutta, was one of the organisers. Last month, she had travelled to Karnataka to take part in the Bharat Jodo Yatra.
“The BJP and RSS and their sympathisers question the need to unify India. They ask when was the country broken. I want to tell them, the country was broken when the Shaheen Bag protesters were labelled Pakistanis. The country was broken when the farmers protesting at the gates of the capital were called Khalistanis,” said Khan.
Chhotan Das, a rights activist, said: “Hitting the streets is the only option when every independent institution is being captured by the Sangh Parivar.”