Congress’ divisive agenda - S. Gurumurthy

Congress’ divisive agenda

S Gurumurthy

Last Updated : 23 Jan 2012 11:38:54 PM IST

As a disparate Bharatiya Janta Party looks to a Kushwaha to steal OBC votes to reach the third spot in the Uttar Pradesh poll table, a desperate Congress is attempting to pick Muslim pockets to push the BJP to the fourth place. In their one-upmanship, while the BJP has blackened its face, the Congress has dirtied its history. But the Congress has done more. It is into a dangerous game. The neo-Gandhi Congress has almost revived the philosophy of pre-Partition Muslim League — namely that minority Muslims are not safe in the hands of the majority Hindus. This is precisely what the original Gandhi, Nehru and Patel fought against but lost to Jinnah. Thus, while the BJP has undermined itself, the fake-Gandhi Congress is breaking the nation itself.

The poisonous thought of the then Muslim League has become million times more potent for exploitation with the rise of global Islamic extremism and terror that it has given birth to. And this high potency arsenic, aided by the Muslim voter psychology that competitive secular politics had developed in India, has drastically changed the definition of what is perceived as pro-minority in Indian politics. Sympathising, even siding, with extremists, in India and elsewhere — whether it was the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) in India, or Osama bin Laden outside — is increasingly regarded as being pro-Muslim, making all socio-economic agenda for Muslims less attractive. And mostly marginal secular parties — the SP, the BSP, the DMK, the RJD and the like — were condoning and espousing extremists like the SIMI, Al-Umma, Indian Mujahideen (IM), Deendar Anjuman, creating the perception that all actions against Islamic extremism are anti-Muslim. This had led to two dangerous inferences. One, the Indian state, police or intelligence, even judiciary — insinuated as dominantly Hindu — cannot be fair to Muslims and two, Muslim themselves feel only those who are soft on, or sympathise with, the extremists are Muslim-friendly; others are not. Now the fake-Gandhi Congress desperate for Muslim votes is itself endorsing this dangerous logic.

Digvijay Singh, the Congress in-charge of UP and a mentor of Rahul Gandhi, initiated this vicious agenda by calling the Batla House (September 19, 2008) encounter fake. The Batla House encounter was the first counter-terror action against the IM by the Indian state. The Batla House terrorists were all from the Sarai Mir area of Azamgarh to which Abu Saleem, a D-gang don, belongs to. The Telegraph (September 20, 2008) wrote on Sarai Mir: ‘Salem is said to have flooded his hometown with cash. Sarai Mir’s rows of prosperous-looking shops and 60-odd phone booths give away how the town of 7,000 people has suddenly turned wealthy.’ No seer is needed to say why the IM has its base in Sarai Mir. A well-known writer on security issues, Pravin Swami, in his acutely analytical article (The Hindu, October 10, 2008) ridiculed the charges that the Batla House encounter was fake and castigated the denial mentality of Muslim leaders. Swami wrote: ‘In a recent article, the University of Delaware’s Director of Islamic Studies, Muqtedar Khan, lashed out at the ‘intellectually dishonest’ representatives of Muslims who ‘live in denial.’ “They first deny that there is such a thing as jihadi terrorism,” Dr. Khan noted, adding that they say that Iraq, Palestine and Kashmir ‘are the primary cause for jihadi violence’; a phenomenon whose very existence they have already denied.’. Swami also faulted Indian journalists who, without following the IM story, highlighted the denial stories. The fact is that before and after the encounter, the IM itself claimed involvement in 10 blasts: November 23, 2007 Uttar Pradesh serial blasts; May 13, 2008 Jaipur bombings; July 25, 2008 Bangalore serial blasts; July 26, 2008 Ahmedabad serial blasts; September 13, 2008 Delhi serial blasts; 2010 Pune bombing; 2010 Jama Masjid attack; 2010 Varanasi bombing; 2011 Mumbai serial blasts.

Yet, Digvijay repeatedly — as late as January 12 — labelled the encounter fake, even as the UPA government had kept insisting it was genuine. Digvijay had also moved deeper on his agenda. He went to Sarai Mir to console the families of the extremists killed in the encounter. There were violent protests in Sarai Mir when the Batla House encounter took place. The implication is clear. Not just separatism is acceptable; even extremism is condonable.

With UP election fever rising, the fake-Gandhi Congress has come up with yet another idea to separate Muslims from Hindus — namely a special 4.5 per cent reservation for Muslims out of the OBC quota. Salman Khurshid has gone a step further and said that the reservation would be doubled to 9 per cent! See the contrast. The original-Gandhi Congress had totally opposed communal reservation. The Constituent Assembly had unanimously rejected it. ‘A lengthy discussion took place on these proposals of the advisory committee.

The majority of the speakers — and these included members from all communities — Muslims, Christians, Anglo-Indians, Scheduled Castes, as well as Hindus — offered full support to the proposal to abolish reservations on communal grounds. Jawaharlal Nehru described the proposal as a “historic turn in our destiny”.’ (B Shivarao, The Framing of the Indian Constitution) Later when Pundit Nehru lamented and warned the chief ministers on June 27, 1961: “I am grieved to learn how far this business of reservation has gone based on communal considerations.... This way lies not only folly but disaster.” This disaster is now the agenda of the neo-Congress to win Muslim votes in UP.

Even the experiment of a separate homeland for Muslims has only made it worse for the Muslims as a whole. This is what a recent post in the World Defence Network site on Pakistan defence says: “It is no hidden fact that the economic condition of Muslims in India is far from ideal. There are a number of theories that give various reasons for this, like government apathy, lack of education and ignorance, but there is one reason that most miss out, the migration of upper class and rich Muslims to Pakistan. Though it may sound like a far fetched theory, but one cannot deny that most of the people who migrated to Pakistan were rich landlords. As they say, the cream of Muslims moved away from the country, leaving behind poor Muslims. This disturbed the balance of the society.” QED: Separation, even a separate Muslim nation, has only harmed the Muslims.

Yet what the Muslim League had disastrously experimented with and miserably failed is now the star agenda of the fake-Gandhi Congress. This is not to win the gold medal in UP elections but to attempt bronze. Will the nation wake up to this provenly dangerous politics?

(Views expressed in the column are the author’s own)

S Gurumurthy is a well-known commentator on political and economic issues. E-mail: comment@gurumurthy.net

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