Secular agenda must return

From: tehelka.com Posted on 24 April 2012 OPINION Ram Puniyani Ram Puniyani examines why Muslims have got alienated from the Congress over the years THE UP assembly election results gave a clear mandate to the Mulayam Singh’s Samajwadi Party. The Congress’s claim that UP results would be a shocker came a cropper as the results it was looking for were nowhere near what the party had expected. Led by Rahul Gandhi, general secretary and scion of the Gandhi family, the Congress campaigned vigorously. Muslims, the votebank of Congress, were given the lure of reservations, Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s tears on Batla house encounter were on display, but it seems the Muslim voters in particular were not impressed. So far, Congress had a very safe equation with the Muslim voters, also called ‘Muslim votebank’ by its critics. Congress hoped that since Muslims were averse to BJP for its communal politics, they would choose Congress as the viable alternative. But their calculations failed them. Where do matters stand? It is true that a large section of Muslims realise the BJP can never be the option for Muslims as BJP is the epitome of communal politics, it is the political child of the RSS, which is working for the agenda of Hindu Rashtra through its multiple progeny, like VHP, Bajrang Dal, Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram and myriad other organisations. As far as communal violence goes, the Congress played a despicable role in the anti-Sikh riots of 1984; it has also been mute witness to a series of anti-Muslim riots and pogrom against Muslims. Justice for victims of violence has not been actively pursued by the Congress wherever it has been the ruling formation, Mumbai violence of 1992-93 being the worst example of ignoring and marginalising the victims of carnage. The Muslims have also suffered at the hands of Congress-ruled governments in the aftermath of acts of terror, particularly those of Mecca Masjid, Malegaon, Ajmer and Samjhauta Express blasts. Post blasts, Muslim youth were arrested, tortured, their careers crushed, only for then to be released later for lack of any credible evidence whatsoever. Still, despite all these lapses, the Muslim community has realised that the Congress is a lesser evil, more particularly after the Gujarat anti-Muslim pogrom under the leadership of Narendra Modi, where the transformation of a democratic set-up to a semi-fascist Hindu rashtra is more than visible. They have also seen that the real culprits of bomb blasts mentioned above belonged to the RSS pantheon, for which BJP made all the efforts to shield them. This distinction between Congress and BJP seems to be more or less clear when one reflects on the acts of commission and omission of the NDA government at the Centre between 1998 and 2004. Having kept aside the BJP as an electoral option, what happens to the Congress claim to be a secular party or one committed to the interests of minorities? There is a mixed bag here. On one hand, the Congress instituted the Sachar Committee and Ranganath Misra Commission, which have given the true picture of the plight of Muslims. At the same time, implementation of the recommendations of these reports is too slow, if at all. The intimidated Muslim minority is looking for policies which can lift it up from the stifling atmosphere of ghettoes in which it has been forced to live due to the massive communal violence and the preceding and accompanying demonisation of the community in the social space. A large section of the community wants quotas, but putting this forward as an electoral promise cannot fool the community, which is witnessing the dismal fate of the Sachar and Ranganath Misra commissions. The Batla House encounter, the refusal of the UPA II government to institute a proper inquiry into it and the accompanying demonisation of Muslim youth was a big blow to the community, which is struggling against odds to come out of ghettoisation and wishes to embrace modern education and take advantage of opportunities to the best of its capabilities, which at present are not adequate to pull it out of the morass in which it is trapped. THIS BATLA House encounter and the negative attitude of the Congress for a proper inquiry committee showed that Congress does not have courage to take up the issue of security of Muslims in right earnest. Mere tears don’t protect you. The event in the neighbouring Rajasthan, where the police entered the mosque and opened fire to kill those inside was also something which cannot be pardoned at all. Congress seems be a mixed platform and a pragmatic party as far as the principles of secularism are concerned. It will go this far and refuse to take decisive steps for principled democratic-secular values. One knows that the state apparatus has also been heavily communalised and it takes a strong will to take a principled secular stand and to live up to that. In UP, it seems the Muslim voters had a choice between Mulayam Singh and Congress. Mulayam had also temporarily allied with Kalyan Singh, who had presided over the demolition of the Babri mosque. Riots had erupted in Mau and other places during the Mulayam regime. Here surely Mulayam must have sounded like the lesser evil vis-a-vis BJP or Congress. Is this the same Congress, which had the glorious tradition of Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Nehru, who put everything at stake for preservation of secular values? With the present dithering attitude of the Congress leadership, such claims are nowhere close to acceptable. Many a Congress youth are also much communalised. One does not know whether this grand old party, is sensitive to what secularism is, what is the truth behind the prevalent biases against minorities; how Gandhi (Mohandas) had ensured Hindu-Muslim unity by staking his life and how Jawaharlal stood like a rock supporting the edifice of plural values. A party is made by its workers and their mindset. While the leadership dithers on such issues the workers, by and large have no clue as to how to take up the issues of Muslim minorities, battered by the onslaught of communal violence and communal politics. The UP assembly election results, apart from other things, are a pointer for the party to take up the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, if it wants to make a positive contribution to Indian democracy. Ram Puniyani is a communal harmony activist based in Mumbai. The opinion expressed are his own. ram.puniyani@gmail.com