Rahul Gandhi's khaat politics has a family history

So as if Koffee with Karan, Chai Pe Charcha with Narendra Modi, Coffee with Captain (Amarinder Singh) were not enough, now we have Khaat Sabhas with Rahul Gandhi. It's tempting to think that Prashant Kishor has thought of this as the most likely way to keep the Congress vice-president engaged in elections in Uttar Pradesh, given his propensity to take a nap, but surely there must be a better reason. 

We understand that this is the best riposte to the suit-boot sarkar in Delhi. What better than to mingle with the masses? Rahul Gandhi already has experience of dining with Dalits. A khaat panchayat is the next obvious extension. And as he crisscrosses his way from Deoria to Delhi, for 25 days non-stop, what better way than to rest on khaats?

In fact, his family's connection with bedroom furniture and furnishings is an old one. No, no, not in the way the Sangh Parivar would like us to believe, with Jawaharlal Nehru being portrayed as a man besotted by Edwina Mountbatten, but in India's first prime minister's penchant for flinging things at people when angry. There's a wonderful description of him flinging a bolster at an adversary in Tamil writer Kalki Krishnamurthy's columns.

His daughter Indira Gandhi was not averse to changing the bedcover on her diwan in times of stress - a biography, The Unseen Indira Gandhi, by longtime personal physician Dr KP Mathur quotes her doing so a day after the 1971 War. 

The joke about Rajiv Gandhi of course was that he would listen to the advice of the last person he met before his head hit his pillow for the night. Pranab Mukherjee puts it more philosophically in the second volume of his memoir The Turbulent Years: 1980-96: "He let others influence him and listened to their calumnies against me.''

As for his brother Sanjay Gandhi, his pictures were prominent in the luggage from his bedroom unceremoniously on the Prime Minister's 1, Safdarjung Road, home when Maneka Gandhi departed from her mother-in-law's home. 

So Rahul's khaat has a long heritage. It has enough of a desi touch - the khaat was Devi Lal's office, much as the rattan chair is Lalu Yadav's. It is a made-in-India object, using materials produced in India, and more than that, along with the kurta pyjama, it is the antithesis of the globetrotting, smartly dressed Union Cabinet, even though occasionally some of their leading lights come in for criticism from Subramanian Swamy for dressing like waiters.

The question is, will the homespun symbolism be enough to win Uttar Pradesh for the Congress? Will the khaat do for Rahul Gandhi what the aam aadmi topi did for Arvind Kejriwal? Perhaps we should all sleep over it?

Also read: UP polls: Rahul Gandhi's kisan yatra marks many firsts for Congress