The latest round of PR around Congress scion Rahul Gandhi involves building him up as a messiah of love and peace, out to ‘heal’ Bharat with his ‘Bharat Jodo’ yatra.

Trying to tap into the widely held belief about Indians being susceptible to the lure of the saint-politician, RaGa this time around has been re-launched with a gray-white beard and has self-anointed himself a Tapasvi, i.e. a Dharmic ascetic and meditator, who isn’t affected by cold. Tapasya or intense spiritual practice is said to generate heat and energy which enables accomplished yogis to survive in the upper reaches of the Himalayas.

He has also been trying hard to make profound-sounding philosophical observations about Self-realization, mostly producing unintended comedy like “Rahul Gandhi is in your head. I have killed him” reply to a journalist.

But a recent peek into the dynast’s living quarters during his ongoing yatra shows how desperately his spin masters are peddling their propaganda. The video shows Arfa Khanum Sherwani, an Islamist journalist currently working for the anti-Hindu propaganda outlet The Wire, visiting the inside of the container room which Rahul Gandhi is using as a temporary home during the yatra.

Sherwani says, “Many of you expressed the desire to find out how Rahul Gandhi, who has been labelled as a prince, born with a silver spoon, has been living as a tapasvi (sic) for the past 112 days (during the yatra)”.

She exults “See this very basic washroom without any special facilities,” while the camera pans over a neat attached toilet with an instant geyser, large square shower head, liquid soap and shampoo dispensers, a Western-style commode on a raised platform with a bidet spray, exhaust fan and a sink with a stylish faucet. “It’s very basic for people used to living a luxurious life,” Sherwani hastens to add, probably realizing that the bathroom she had shown would be considered par for the course in any modern high rise and luxurious by at least 80% of Bharatiyas.

Senior Congress leader and MP Jairam Ramesh then joins her and starts showing off the facilities in the neat, cozy and well-lit container-turned living quarters, unmindful of the image that Arfa Khanum Sherwani is trying hard to create of ‘tapasvi Rahul’.

He shows a large oil heater and informs that an AC was present earlier which was removed (once the yatra reached the colder parts of the North). Arfa takes him back into the ‘basic’ washroom, and Jairam complains that the instant geyser takes ‘too long’ to heat water.

There is also a ‘laundry service’, Jairam informs us, where one can get their clothes washed every 7 days. Rahul Gandhi has 30-40 of the same white T-shirt that has become his uniform during the yatra. 60 of these well-furnished travelling containers mounted on trucks have been rented from some private company, he adds.

An NDTV report inform us that like Rahul Gandhi, the 52-year-old Ramesh has one of the air-conditioned containers all to himself, while other yatris are sharing 2 or 6 or 12-bedded ones. Not all containers have ACs, but most have attached toilets.

This is the farce that Rahul Gandhi and his durbari media handlers have reduced the Dharmic ideal of tapasya to. This is how little they think of the intelligence of ordinary Hindus.