Kharge expresses hurt over muted CWC response to 'purification' ritual controversy

Mallikarjun Kharge arrived at the Congress Working Committee meeting with a specific grievance on his mind. Days earlier, after he had visited Haldwani in Uttarakhand, a ritual described as a "purification" ceremony had been organized in response to his presence. The incident had stung him, and he wanted the party's top leadership to account for how they had handled it.

When he raised the matter at the CWC table, Kharge did not mince words about his disappointment. He said he felt hurt—genuinely hurt—that the party's senior members had not spoken out against the ritual. More pointedly, he singled out those he called "good-looking people" who regularly attract media attention, suggesting they had a particular responsibility to use their visibility to defend the party's values and had failed to do so. He did not name anyone directly, but the implication was clear enough that other Congress leaders spent the meeting trying to figure out exactly whom he meant.

K C Venugopal, the party's general secretary, pushed back gently. He said the Congress had in fact raised the issue and condemned it. But those present at the meeting noted something telling in Kharge's demeanor: he was not persuaded. His body language signaled skepticism, even frustration, that the party's response had been insufficient or too slow or simply not visible enough.

Kharge went further, again without naming names, to suggest that some party leaders had a habit of making public statements and writing articles that strayed from the party line. It was a rebuke dressed in generality, but it landed as a direct criticism of the party's messaging discipline and the independence some senior figures seemed to claim.

When Venugopal briefed the media afterward, he framed the purification ritual as "unacceptable" and "condemnable," arguing it revealed the true character of the BJP government. But the party's official response, filtered through a resolution, had already moved on to other matters. The CWC passed language about student movements and youth engagement, about the Education Minister's resignation following sustained pressure from student groups and opposition parties. Kanhaiya Kumar, the party's in-charge of student affairs, had warned the leadership not to cede political space to groups like the Cockroach Janta Party, and many in the room agreed with him. The party would support the student protests while keeping distance from organizations it deemed problematic.

Rahul Gandhi used the meeting to amplify his "Chhatron ki Goonj"—a campaign aimed at youth and students—declaring it a successful movement and arguing that Prime Minister Modi represented India's past, not its future. He disagreed with senior leader Manish Tewari's suggestion that the last serious student agitation had been the anti-Mandal protests of the 1990s, which had resulted in 62 self-immolations and over 100 deaths in police action. The final resolution noted the campaign was receiving an overwhelmingly positive response.

There was also a minor skirmish over language. Shashi Tharoor objected to the word "bullying" in a draft resolution about American pressure on India, arguing it was too colloquial for an official party statement. Kharge and others defended it as perfectly parliamentary. In the end, the resolution was softened to say merely that the Modi government was "sacrificing India's agricultural and energy security, as well as its strategic sovereignty, in the face of American pressure." The word bullying disappeared.

What emerged from the meeting was a portrait of a party grappling with internal tensions over how loudly and visibly to respond to provocations, who should be the voice of that response, and whether the party's public messaging matched its private convictions. Kharge's hurt was not just about the ritual itself—it was about what he saw as a failure of nerve among those with the platform to speak.