The discovery and public revelation of Rahul Gandhi’s elevated gotra in the midst of an election campaign may well be another inconsequential piece of trivia that excites few and amuses many. The remoulding of the customary practice of gotra inheritance is noteworthy but it is a personal matter and, frankly, not a subject of public discourse.

What does have larger importance is that the construction of the Congress president’s profile has involved the systematic projection of his credentials as a devout Hindu. With Congress publicists proclaiming him a thread-wearing Brahmin and a Shiv bhakt, Rahul’s image as a deracinated cosmopolitan with no attachments to India’s sacred traditions is being carefully demolished.

The image makeover seems a calculated political project which tells us as much of today’s India as it does about the Congress and its leader. That it is tinged with dollops of cynicism is beside the point – a great deal of political symbolism is blessed with expediency. Those in public life, especially electoral politics, are expected to kiss babies, pose for selfies, wear turbans and genuflect before deities. Politicians have an embarrassing number of red and yellow threads on their wrists. These prove nothing but, like the poppy worn by British politicians around Remembrance Day, flaunting them is obligatory. It is their absence that attracts attention.

This is particularly true for the Congress. Ever since the Ayodhya movement redefined politics in middle India, the party has confronted a Hindu problem. Jawaharlal Nehru could get away with his ostentatious rationalism and agnostic irreverence because he could bank on historical memory. Contrary to airbrushed versions of history, during the national movement the Congress was perceived at the grassroots level as an authentic Hindu organisation. In the public imagination – and except to a fringe – Mahatma Gandhi’s political credentials were always blended with his Hindu saintliness. That is why he was not merely followed, but venerated.

That the post-1947 Congress also became the first choice of Muslims and other minorities didn’t detract from its impeccable Hindu credentials. It is often forgotten that anti-cow slaughter and anti-conversion legislations after 1947 were enacted by Congress state governments. Top-heavy Nehruvian secularism coexisted with a base riddled with what the great man sneeringly called an “RSS mentality.”

The 1991 general election – the Ram election – was perhaps the first occasion that the erosion of the Congress’s Hindu sheen became visible. But this was not a sudden development triggered by the twin consequences of the Shah Bano U-turn and the confusion over the Ayodhya dispute. The process of distancing the party from its Hindu ethos accelerated after the 1969 split when the ‘progressives’ assumed control and edged out conservatives from positions of influence. Indira Gandhi attempted to restore some balance after her return to power in 1980 but Rajiv Gandhi’s babalog rule reopened the cracks. If Narasimha Rao had possessed political authority, he may have reverted Congress to its original moorings. He couldn’t, however, negotiate the dynastic challenge and, post 1996, his legacy was junked.

With Sonia Gandhi, the Congress attempted to model itself along the lines of European social democrats. Propelled by the need to forge alliances with the Left, its ecosystem came to be disproportionately influenced by NGO-oriented activists, post-modernists and cosmopolitans who saw religion and modernity to be incompatible. Sitaram Yechury has more influence in the Congress than he has within his own party.

It is as yet too early to ascertain if Rahul has moved the party to a different plane. As of now he is guided by expediency. The Congress tries to be Hindu in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan and pro-Muslim in Telangana.

From Nehru to Sonia Gandhi, the Congress secularists proceeded on two assumptions. First, that modernity would diminish the public role of the majority faiths and, second, that being Hindu was ultimately akin to having a private faith, confined to the family’s puja room. Both assumptions have proved to be erroneous. Apart from more robust public religiosity, the rise in prosperity and enhanced national self-esteem has led to a profound assertion of Hindu collective rights. Ayodhya and Sabarimala are their manifestations and so is the reality of a Hindu vote bank.

The BJP’s spectacular rise in recent times has institutionalised the public role of Hindu faiths. The new normal assumes that there are distinct Hindu interests that need to be respected, engaged with and addressed. The Congress has belatedly acknowledged the shift but without empathy. Rahul’s temple visits are akin to a visiting dignitary placing a wreath at Rajghat. The awkwardness and detachment are too apparent.