India, Sept. 17 -- The row over the shuddhikaran (purification ritual) performed at Haldwani's Ramlila ground on August 10, after Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge spoke at a rally there, has been fought entirely on the terrain of intent. Kharge says the ritual made him feel "the sting of untouchability". The organisation that performed it points instead to slogans raised at the rally and to Kharge's own remarks - an explanation, in effect, that the shuddhikaran meant something other than ritual caste purification.

Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi escalated Kharge's charge to a constitutional one, invoking Article 17 of the Constitution; the outfit that conducted the ritual answered with an FIR against him and a countercharge of...