Secularism dilemma: Congress won't recover its 'chi' through soft-Hindutva

Rahul should know that his inclusive Hinduism can never beat the BJP at this game; he should note that Narendra Modi earned his Hindutva spurs not in the Himalayas but in the Gujarat riots of 2002

The Congress in Madhya Pradesh is organising a “Ram Van Gaman Path Yatra”, a pilgrimage following the mythical route taken by Lord Rama to his 14-year exile in the forest. Maybe the Congress party needs to stop and remember that MP is among the top five states in terms of farmer suicides in India. It is also the state from which lit the spark of the nationwide farmers’ agitation in June 2017 when six protesting farmers were shot dead.

The attempt to retrace the path of Lord Rama comes in the wake of party president Rahul Gandhi’s trek to Mansarover to pay obeisance to Lord Shiva, at his Mount Kailash abode. It is of a piece with his new routine of temple-hopping in election-going states and the party spokesman’s boast that Rahul Gandhi is a sacred-thread wearing Hindu, and the party has “Brahmin DNA”.

Such blatant claims to ‘Hindu-ness’ suggest that the party has not overcome its dilemma over secularism. With every electoral defeat, a recurring fear surfaces in the party that by upholding strong secular values it runs the danger of being seen as pro-Muslim. By giving in to this apprehension it gets inevitably drawn into playing on the home pitch of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The Congress has made this mistake earlier and is heading towards it again.

The party’s electoral defeat took place in 1996 despite the soft Hindutva line followed by Congress Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao when he allowed the demolition of the Babri Masjid in December 1992. Congress leader V N Gadgil had blamed the debacle on the majority community viewing the party as anti-Hindu and Muslims suspecting it of a Hindu bias.

N D Tiwari, Arjun Singh and K Natwar Singh split from the party in 1994, criticising Rao’s soft-Hindutva line and calling for a return to Nehruvian ideals. However, the Congress never developed a comprehensive critique of Rao over this issue.

Neither the soft-Hindutva that facilitated the demolition of the Babri Masjid nor the return of “pro-Muslim” leaders like Arjun Singh helped the party to win the next election in 1998. Its tally increased by just one seat! Faintheartedness in adopting a robust secularism proved fatal and paved the way for the Vajpayee-led BJP government in March 1998.

This was not the first flirtation of the Congress with soft-Hindutva. Both Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi had done so earlier.

In 1984 Rajiv Gandhi won a stunning electoral victory after his mother’s assassination. A “Muslim” issue stirred public life in 1985 with the Supreme Court judgment on Shah Bano allowing her to claim maintenance from her divorced husband beyond the 90-day “iddat” period prescribed under the religious law.

Congress strategists advised Rajiv Gandhi to appease conservative Muslim opinion which interpreted the judgment as an attack on religious autonomy. He upturned the apex court judgment with the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, in 1986.

Reacting to the BJP’s allegations of “minority appeasement”, Rajiv Gandhi’s government tried to play to the Hindu majority. Within two weeks of upturning the Shah Bano judgment, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Bir Bahadur Singh, was persuaded to allow Hindu worship at the disputed Babri Masjid site.

The long-term political advantage of this ill-conceived act went not to the Congress but to the BJP. It facilitated the mobilisation of a militant Hinduism and a campaign for building a Ram temple at the disputed site.

Neither the Muslim nor Hindu constituencies favoured the Congress in the next election. The Congress lost more than half its seats. The BJP increased its tally from a mere 2 to 85 on the Hindutva vote. The Bofors issue carried the V P Singh-led National Front to power with 143 seats. Once again, both soft-Hindutva and ‘minority appeasement’ had failed the Congress.

Indira Gandhi always visited important temples in election-going states. This was for her a ritual, not just electoral strategy. She became more devout after Sanjay Gandhi’s accidental death, undertaking weekly fasts.

However, she too began to flavour her nationalism with a Hindu idiom in the years before her assassination. She launched the Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s ‘Ekatmata Yatra’ and inaugurated the Bharat Mata Temple at Haridwar where the yatra ended, in 1983. Her loyalist, C M Stephen, declared: “The wavelength of the Hindu culture and the Congress culture is the same.” Less than six months before her assassination, Indira Gandhi assured the majority Hindu community that “if there is injustice to them or if they do not get their rights, then it would be dangerous to the integrity of the country.” Indira Gandhi’s assassination meant that her ‘majority appeasement’ was never tested electorally.

Rahul Gandhi should know that his inclusive Hinduism will never be able to beat the BJP at this game. In today’s religious politics, the communal fractures are more sharply pronounced. He should note that Narendra Modi earned his Hindutva spurs not in the Himalayas but in the Gujarat riots of 2002.

People will see the Hindu symbolism of the Congress as being as bogus as the claims of Hindutva advocates to “real secularism”. The Congress cannot woo the Hindutva constituency or even ordinary Hindu voters by propounding the “real meaning” of Hinduism. Nor can it woo Muslims through symbolic appeasement by offering “chadars” at mazars and mausoleums.

The Congress party must analyse its electoral failures correctly. It might consider the argument that the party lost in 2014 not because the voters perceived it as being inadequately Hindu, but because Narendra Modi had a better developmental narrative. The Congress narrative for 2019 cannot be based on sacred threads or its Hindu DNA. The party will find its “chi” or life-force only by restoring secular issues such as economic development, accountable governance, the farming sector crisis, the problems of industrial workers, Dalits, tribals, and those marginalised by educational, social and cultural backwardness, to their rightful place on its political agenda. Otherwise, it is unlikely to recover its “chi”.

The writer is a journalist based in Delhi