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Are Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi Veering to the Centre?

With Rahul’s Kedarnath trip and PM Modi’s gift to Ajmer, is the middle path the position to take in Indian politics? 

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Politics
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On Friday morning Rahul Gandhi will offer prayers at Kedarnath, in effect flagging off the Yatra season which will see millions of devout Hindus trudging up rocky Uttarakhand roads to prostrate themselves before the holiest of the ‘char-dhams’.

Much is being made about how the Congress vice president has decided to brave the 18-km trek from Gauri Kund to Kedarnath, instead of the ubiquitous chopper ride. Of how it parallels Indira Gandhi’s 1979 trip to Badrinath. Of how his visit to the shrine marks the birth of an energetic and reinvented Rahul Gandhi, coming closely as it does behind his Vipassana sojourn.

Congress spin doctors are hard at work to ensure that this messaging is not lost on the country’s dominant community.  The party which has consciously projected its ‘secular’ image (which many interpret as conscious appeasement of minorities) has clearly course-corrected and now wants to tow a line closer to the centre, the mainstream.

The pulls and pressures of an Indian democracy seem to require that most national politicians eschew fringe elements, extreme ideologies, and instead adopt a balanced and politically-pragmatic posture; what political scientists dub ‘centrism.’

PM Modi too seems to be gradually nudged by the mood of the people to the middle path. Three recent incidents – pulling up incendiary Minister Giriraj Singh, assuaging the Christian clergy and gifting a shawl to the famous Ajmer Sharif dargah – all point towards a smoothening of ideological rough edges.

With Rahul’s Kedarnath trip and PM Modi’s gift to Ajmer, is the middle path the position to take in Indian politics? 
Prime Minister Narendra Modi handing over a ‘Chadar’ to be offered at the shrine of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti. (Photo: PTI) 

Why else would Rahul Gandhi suddenly take up the cause of two constituencies traditionally ignored by the Congress – youth and urban India – with his spirited defence of Net Neutrality?

Centrism, according to Wikipedia is about maintaining a balance while “opposing political changes which would result in a significant shift of society either strongly to the left or the right.”

The Third Way (centrism by another name) became popular after British PM Tony Blair and US President Bill Clinton became its champions. Inspired by social democratic and liberal traditions, it advocates a system of political governance that tempers economic and free market policies of the right with the socialist protectionism of the left.

Though off late he is veering towards the centre-left, US President Barack Obama towed the centrist line for much of his first term when he said that he believed in ‘what worked’ rather than any specific ideology.

As The New Yorker wrote in a piece published in January 2013: “Obama’s message was clear. If Washington, or Madison, or even Jefferson were alive today, they would be modernizing technocrats, just like him, rather than anti-government Tea Party supporters. It was a variant of an argument the President has made many times before, and to great effect, because it has the merit of being largely true. He is the reasonable one. It is the Republicans who are the extremists. Still, there was a definite change in tone. During most of his first term, Obama went to great lengths to portray himself as a non-ideological centrist, rather than a liberal.”

After all whether in India or internationally, what is a politician if not a synonym for pragmatism?

(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)

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