Rahul's 'khoon ki dalali' comment leaves Congress members squirming

AFP PHOTO/FILE

Rahul Gandhi’s “khoon ki dalali” statement has validated party ideologue the late VN Gadgil’s comment that on emotive issues, the grand old party falls between the two proverbial hstools. At another level it also projects Rahul as unconventional and rather reckless leader. Interestingly, the “khoon ki dalali” remark finds a high rate of disapproval from within the Congress. There are several reasons for it. Unlike Sonia Gandhi, Rahul does not think much of in-house consultations and hierarchy. Minutes after the surgical strikes, Sonia had summoned Manmohan Singh (who had been personally briefed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the military operation),  AK Antony and Ghulam Nabi Azad to formulate the party’s structured response. Singh, Antony and Azad have decades of experience. Sonia then issued a congratulatory statement. She seemed to have learnt lesson from the 1999 Kargil war during which the party  had done a flip-flop. The Congress had first criticised Atal Bihari Vajpayee's Government and then had had to eat its words once India won the war. That response is believed to have been a cause behind the Congress's poor showing in the mid-term Lok Sabha election of 1999. In contrast, Rahul did not deem it fit to consult anyone before accusing Modi of “khoon ki dalali.”  Had he chosen to consult even the likes of Manish Tiwary, Salman Khurshid, Prithviraj Chavan, Shashi Tharoor and others, Rahul would have acted wiser. Perhaps someone may have given him an idea of covert operations like 'Operation Ginger' that Manmohan Singh's Government is said to have executed to take revenge for the 2011 ghastly beheading incident. Rahul seems taken in by a sense of entitlement without giving due weightage to the feelings and sentiments of millions of ordinary Congress workers, sympathisers and those who have voted for the party. After all, as the Congress vice-president about to take over the party, he is expected to articulate what his grassroots worker is feeling or wishes to hear from the leader. Rahul has never made any attempt to call for a Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting, AICC session or a workers' sammelan to take into account their inputs. For instance, a large number of Congress members are extremely proud of their party's heritage of being anti-Pakistan. According to them Indira Gandhi was singularly responsible for the division of Pakistan. Rajiv Gandhi had threatened to go to war with Pakistan in 1987. Natwar Singh had promised to give a “bloody nose” to Pakistan. Even the fuddy-duddy IK Gujaral who served as Prime Minister in 1997 (thanks to Congress support from outside) had told KP Nayar of The Telegraph (July 22, 2001): "One of the myths about Indian diplomacy is that there are hardliners and softliners on Pakistan. In the Indian `Establishment', you cannot deal with Pakistan and be what peaceniks would call a `softliner'." Gujral, a former Congress leader who had served in Indira Gandhi's Cabinet, was miffed at criticism that he was soft on Pakistan. He had told Nayar, “Do you think I will give away anything to Pakistan? I am as much of a nationalist as anyone else", and stressed that his `Gujral Doctrine' did not cover Pakistan. In 2012 Rahul had himself given credit to Indira Gandhi for breaking Pakistan. Flexing his muscles, he had told voters in Badayun, “I belong to the family which has never moved backwards, which has never gone back on its words. You know that when any member of my family has decided to do anything, he does it. Be it the freedom struggle, the division of Pakistan or taking India to the 21st century. At another level, since May 2014, the Congress’s ideological dilemmas have become more pronounced. The Congress has been cautious on the contentious issue of religious conversions. When ABP News TV ran a story on rise of beef exports during the first six months of Narendra Modi's Government, the Congress dithered commenting on it. Privately, some leaders said a comment on beef exports had a potential of upsetting Hindu or Muslim community.  In Madhya Pradesh, the State Congress unit has started keeping idols of Lord Ganesh at the party office, ostensibly, to pronounce its “Hindu identity.” Even during the last phase of the UPA around 2010-14, the Congress witnessed a subtle but significant battle of wits between conservative sections of the party and radicals who wanted to revert back to the Nehruvian position that Majority communalism is more dangerous than minority communalism. Influential party members had lengthy and often heated exchanges over selection of words in formulating the party’s stand on the trend of home-grown terror outfits in its political resolutions. The conservative sections, led by then Defence Minister AK Antony, often won the argument, insisting that terror had no colour. At the Burari plenary (2010) the Congress political resolution said extremism and terrorism of every kind and shade was a threat to civilised society. When Digvijay Singh called for a need to express greater anxiety over rise of Right-wing radicals, he was vetoed. Behind the scene, Pranab Mukherjee, Jairam Ramesh and others who drafted the Burari political resolution, deliberately decided to make a subtle distinction between the “letter” and “spirit” of the Congress’s position paper. While the party hovered around the known position of denouncing extremism and terror of all kinds in the political resolution, politically the Congress leadership stated that the time had come to take a more stringent stand against home grown terror outfits. Secularism has been an integral part of the Congress's ideology, implying separation of religion from politics. In September 1951,  Nehru got all the CWC members of Purushottam Das Tandon’s team to resign, thus obliging Tandon, a Right-wing Congress president, himself to resign. It may have been a mere coincidence that in the same month the Bharatiya Jana Sangh was formally launched with both Atal Bihari Vajpayee and LK Advani being present. Nehru, who had become the Congress president after Tandon’s resignation, pronounced the bottom line of the party’s secular creed at a meeting in the Ramlila ground on Gandhi Jayanti in 1951: "If any man raises his hand against another in the name of religion, I shall fight him till the last breath of my life, whether from within the Government or outside." However, the demolition of the Babri Masjid and successive events cast a shadow on the Congress’s commitment towards the minorities. While the Muslim leadership and religious clergy dubbed the Narasimha Rao-led Congress as furthering narrow ‘majoritarianism', a group within the Congress began calling for the need to review the concept of secularism. VN Gadgil, who served as AICC spokesman during the presidencies of Narasimha Rao and Sitaram Kesri, had told Congressmen at a seven-day training camp in Maharashtra that he disapproved of the Congress leadership’s policy of appeasing Muslims. At Kurla, which was a training camp to select ‘future Congress leaders’, Gadgil launched a scathing frontal attack on Congress policymakers. He observed, "Every time the Shahi Imam makes a statement, the party reacts as if god himself has spoken. Do minorities mean only Muslims? What about Buddhists, Sikhs and others? When 36 Sikhs were killed in Kashmir, not a single Congressman condoled their deaths. In Jammu & Kashmir, there is not a single Buddhist working in the State secretariat. The only Buddhist who was selected through the State Public Service Commission had to convert to Islam to secure a Government job... The Congress is silent on this." "While appeasing Muslims, we should not forget Hindus, who are a majority in this State,’ Gadgil said, pointing at an article published in The Economist, which had stated that "Islam and democracy do not go together". Quoting from the article, Gadgil said a province in China, which had a substantial Muslim population, wanted to break away and form a separate nation. When Gadgil was asked why he was saying all this, he explained, "I have said this earlier. Muslims constitute only 18 per cent of the vote share. Even if all of them vote for the Congress, the party will not return to power. We cannot go on ignoring the sentiments of the other 82 per cent." Sonia responded to Gadgil’s call equating the secular ideal with Hinduism, both as a philosophy and as a way of life. At the Ramakrishna Mission, on the occasion of Swami Vivekananda's anniversary in 1999, she said India was secular primarily because Hinduism "has been based on what our ancients said: Truth is one". The CWC met at 24 Akbar Road and adopted a resolution on 16 January, 1999, articulating the Congress's definition of secularism. It said, "The CWC endorses the views of the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, in her speech on the anniversary of Swami Vivekananda, where she had said, 'India is secular primarily because of Hindus, both as a philosophy and as a way of life based on what our ancients said, Ekam satyam, vipraha bahudha vadanti.' (The truth is one, the wise pursue it variously)." Following the rise of Narendra Modi and the BJP on the national scene since 16 May, 2014, many Congress leaders like Antony, Azad and Janardhan Dwivedi want Sonia-Rahul to showcase the party’s pro-Hindu image, but there are many within the Congress who feel such a measure would boomerang. Unable to take a call, both Sonia and Rahul seem to have decided to follow the path of least resistance and skirt the issue, a strategy that has dismayed many.

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