Critics have accused him of conducting a PR stunt commensurate in scale to the ego of the Gandhi political dynasty, who have relentlessly pushed him forwards as a potential prime minister only to find he keeps getting rejected by the Indian people.

But a few weeks before the scheduled end of his yatra (march) in the Himalayan foothills, admiration and curiosity have grown.

Analysts say Gandhi has ignited debate on equality and the nature of modern India; successfully moved away from his aloof, elitist image of yesteryear; and been reborn as an earnest, thoughtful everyman who’s finally connecting with the country he so desperately wants to lead.

His companions say the mood radiating out from Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra (Unite India March) is a stark contrast to the tone of Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which stands accused of sinking India into a dangerous crucible of religious hatred, pitting the Hindu majority against the Muslim minority.

“I have opened a shop of love in the bazaar of hate,” Gandhi said while walking through Alwar in Rajasthan on December 19. And the message is resonating.

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Tens of thousands have joined him on his march, taking selfies and offering hugs, as his progress is relayed to an Instagram following of 2.5 million and to the wider public by trailing members of the media.

“You know, I realise Rahul sounds like a bearded hippie talking about love,” said Rajesh Mathews, a pharmacist in New Delhi who joined the march on Christmas Eve as it passed through one of the capital’s richest areas.

“But that’s exactly what we need, something as simple as love and goodwill for each other. That’s the only way to build a nation.”

A call for loftier ideals

The march has snaked past the changing landscape of this vast and diverse country – past forests of coconut palms, paddy fields, hills, rivers, forts, villages, mansions, and slums.

Throughout, Gandhi has been positioned as the future custodian of a kinder, gentler India than the one fashioned by Modi and the virulent Hindu far right of his party in the eight years since he came to power in 2014.

But instead of imploring the crowds to vote for his party in next year’s general election or talking about winning power, on his march Gandhi has issued a clarion call for Indians to reach for their better nature by aspiring to lofty ideals such as social harmony, goodwill and cooperation.

This is a counterpoint to the rabble-rousing of the BJP, which rails against young Indians for falling in love with people of other faiths, demonises Muslims as outsiders, and counts easily riled mobs of Hindu chauvinists among its supporters.

“We can’t survive as a society if we keep injecting poison into the social fabric, into our daily lives,” Nikita Verma, a 25-year-old call-centre worker, told This Week in Asia as the march entered the capital.

“I’ve been a strong critic of the Congress, but I’ve come out today because he [Gandhi] is the only one holding Modi’s feet to the fire.”

For many, walking with Gandhi is a chance to register their anger against Modi’s polarisation and the “anti-nationals” smear that his supporters wield at rivals and the country’s 210 million Muslims.

In an interview on Tuesday, right-wing Hindu leader Mohan Bhagwat said Hindus had been “at war for over 1,000 years” – a reference to Muslim rule over India – and said Muslims must abandon “their raucous rhetoric of supremacy”.

Viewing India up close

For Gandhi, the march has proved to be a once-in-a-lifetime personal discovery of India and an education like no other, analysts say.

As a young boy, he was sequestered for safety reasons following the 1984 assassination of his grandmother Indira – a former prime minister – and since entering politics in 2004, Gandhi has been largely cloistered among his close friends and colleagues in the drawing rooms of the capital.

It’s the first time in his 52 years that he’s experienced India up close in all its ethnic, regional, linguistic and geographical diversity for a prolonged period. As he has said, the moment he shakes hands with an Indian now, he knows instantly who is a farmer or a labourer from their calloused hands.

Seemingly spontaneous moments have been caught and amplified by the media.

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Despite the sub-zero temperatures, Gandhi last week said he would not be putting on a jumper as he walked through Madhya Pradesh, explaining to the assembled press pack that it was a “gesture of solidarity” with a group of girls he had seen shivering because they weren’t adequately clothed.

In addition to the media and his security personnel, Gandhi has been joined on the march by local Congress leaders and members carrying huge flags, as well as civil society groups worried about what they call Modi’s authoritarian tendencies and the shrinking space for dissent.

At times, celebrities such as Bollywood actors Pooja Bhatt, Riya Sen, Kamal Hasaan and Amol Palekar have joined the march, flanked by the vast crowds.

Each day, Gandhi rises at 5am and after a quick breakfast sets off walking. He decided early on there wasn’t time for shaving and grew a beard. The march aims to cover about 20km each day, with Gandhi stopping to listen to, hug, speak, dance and have tea with farmers, village women, workers, small businessmen, schoolchildren, pensioners, during breaks and mealtimes along the way.

At night, he and his core group retire to converted shipping containers that follow their progress and have been their home for months. Then Gandhi, dressed in his trademark fawn chinos, white T-shirt and trainers, emerges next morning to lead the march again.

Though he has spoken to local people about unemployment and inflation, there have been few overtly political speeches. Instead of anti-BJP rhetoric or attacks on Modi, Gandhi actually sent messages of sympathy to the Indian prime minister when his mother was unwell and later died in December.

“The simple message of love and harmony has resonated so powerfully that it has surprised even some of us who did not expect it to hit home,” said Nitesh Jain, a Congress party member in Madhya Pradesh.

‘Aimless wanderings’

Some analysts have described the march as all style and no substance. Others have disputed the Congress party’s description of it as a victory, with the BJP continuing to ridicule Gandhi as a dilettante or pappu (a small, dim boy).

Desh Ratan Nigam, a political analyst known to be sympathetic to the BJP, suggested in a television debate that the march was a “VIP” affair to which local Congress members had flocked, but that had failed to move the hearts of the masses.

“It’s the aimless wandering of unemployed leaders. They turn up, go and sleep in 100 air-conditioned containers and then reassemble the next day as the march moves on. It’s the same core people. It’s not a people’s response,” Nigam said.

Yet the crowds have kept on coming. And as the kilometres pass by, observers have noted Gandhi becoming increasingly relaxed and cheerful amid the festival atmosphere of smiles, posters, flags and bunting.

Further fanning the BJP’s private dismay at the march’s popularity have been expressions of support from a constituency – Hindu priests – the party regards as a bastion.

“The yatra and the fact that even some Hindu priests have lent their support to the yatra in recent days has perturbed the party,” said political analyst Arati Jerath. “Which is why BJP ministers have stepped up their attacks on Gandhi.”

Walking towards elections?

Even sceptics concede Gandhi has emerged as a more credible candidate for prime minister as elections due by May 2024 creep closer.

Pre-march, his reputation was that of a part-time, desultory leader practising politics like a flash mob.

Much had been expected of the son and grandson of former prime ministers Rajiv and Indira in the two years from 2017 when he was party president.

But his leadership was a disaster. He oversaw defeat after defeat, even losing his own seat of Amethi in Uttar Pradesh in the 2019 general election, seemingly cementing his reputation as the wrong man for the job.

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He would vanish on foreign jaunts at important moments, critics say, and he rarely landed a punch on Modi.

Veteran columnist Tavleen Singh, an erstwhile scathing critic of Gandhi and his mother Sonia, said the march is making her change her mind.

“Rahul’s personal stature has grown remarkably and there is no question that he has emerged as Modi’s main challenger,” she wrote recently in The Indian Express.

It’s a transformation Gandhi has achieved without being overly political, using a newly discovered charisma to cajole children, teens and the elderly into walking with him, slinging his arms around them and letting the march speak for itself.

The media montage has been overwhelmingly positive: Gandhi taking part in a snake boat race in Kerala’s famous waterways; Gandhi grabbing the hand of an elderly Congress party member; Gandhi playing football and grinning when a teenage boy broke through security to plant a kiss on his cheek.

“Look at the difference, how happy and relaxed he is as against Modi, the remote figure who appears during carefully stage-managed events but never meets any of us ordinary Indians,” said student Suresh Gupta, 21, who watched the march pass through Ghaziabad earlier this month.

But whether the march will translate into a long-term boost for Congress’s sagging electoral support divides experts.

Modi’s personal popularity remains high. As does support for the BJP – it won its biggest-ever electoral victory in the prime minister’s home state of Gujarat last month – and his party seems poised for another comfortable third term in office next year.

“The only thing – and it’s a big thing – the yatra has done is to make a small opening, smash a hole in what looked like the impenetrable wall of the BJP,” said politician and analyst Yogendra Yadav.

Congress party leaders, in charge of a moribund, demoralised organisation, have been surprisingly circumspect, warning that much work remains to be done and that the yatra alone has not improved the party’s ability to take on the BJP.

“Translating this into votes is the next challenge and doesn’t follow axiomatically,” said party official Shashi Tharoor.

Another big unknown is how Gandhi plans to dovetail with Congress as elections near. He has said he has no wish to be party president again or run its day-to-day affairs.

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It appears the unstated plan is for him to remain a figurehead focused on reaching out to Indians, rising above petty politics and providing an anchor for his party’s values at a time when it has been cut adrift.

“He has redefined himself,” said columnist Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jnr. “He clearly wants to ‘do’ politics in a different way while leaving elections and the nitty gritty to others.”

At a press conference in Haryana last Sunday, just weeks ahead of the march’s planned late January finish in Srinagar, Kashmir, Gandhi said the experience had given him a chance to “listen to what is in people’s hearts”.

When reporters asked him about his plans once he hangs up his trainers, Gandhi’s response was cryptic. “I have killed the Rahul Gandhi that exists in your mind. He is gone, gone.”