After placing India under an authoritarian Emergency regime in 1975, Indira Gandhi’s Congress threw an estimated 1.4 lakh people in jail. Dileep Singh, then in his early 30s, was one of them. He was imprisoned for 19 months.
In 2022, Dileep is walking with the Bharat Jodo Yatra, a campaign by Rahul Gandhi’s Congress to, in the grand old party’s words, “unite the country against hatred”. The yatra, which began on September 7 in Kanyakumari, will traverse the 3,500-km length of the country and culminate in Kashmir in January. Along the way, Congress leaders, workers and supporters will join it. Alongside them are also people such as Dileep, who aren’t with the Congress as such and, in fact, have had their reservations about the party, and in some cases still do, but are joining the yatra nonetheless.
