Fatal attraction
Guided by Digvijay Singh, Rahul Gandhi has weakened India's political will to fight Pakistani terrorism, says N.V.Subramanian.
New York/ Torrance, California, 20 December 2010: India's rise is threatened by China and by Pakistan and by Pakistan and China acting in tandem. There are serious troubles in the manner that India addresses the Chinese threat and the joint challenges posed by China and Pakistan. But there are more fundamental problems in the way India faces up to Pakistani terrorism, which this piece tangentially will deal with.
The UPA government has always been suspect on the issue of Islamist terrorism. It directly derives from the Congress's votebank politics. There is no evidence that the Muslims vote en bloc for the Congress anymore if they ever did before. The spectacular victory of the JD-U/ BJP coalition lead by Nitish Kumar in Bihar grounded on considerable favourable Muslim voting advertises that the Congress's votebank politics is not delivering.
And yet, the Congress has become unable to embrace mainstream politics, a politics, in a phrase, of non-appeasement. Non-appeasement politically was first advocated by L.K.Advani in the late-Eighties and Nineties, and much of the BJP's early attractiveness drew from it. With the Advani-led Ramjanambhoomi Movement culminating in the bringing down of the disputed structure in Ayodhya, accompanied by the rightward Hindutva lurch of the BJP and the removal of the feeling of second-rate citizenship on the part of Hindus, the concept of non-appeasement lost its salience and traction.
This writer believes, as always, that non-appeasement is a better political method to reconcile the secular objectives of the Indian state with the deep faith that pervades and enriches Indian society. A parrot-like repetition of secularism won't fetch secularism, especially if it is mouthed by opportunistic and venal politicians like Laloo and Mulayam Yadav and Digvijay Singh.
Digvijay Singh is perhaps the worst example of the opportunistic politician. He is in the divisive mould of Arjun Singh. It is no coincidence that Arjun Singh promoted Digvijay Singh as a fellow thakur in the caste-ridden politics of Madhya Pradesh and that Digvijay backstabbed him. With Arjun Singh bowing out, Digvijay Singh has fully taken over as a leading advisor to the Congress shadow government, whose shadow prime ministers variably are Sonia and Rahul Gandhi. It is of course no longer ironic that they shadow their own government whose nominal prime minister is Manmohan Singh.
If the Congress party had been truly introspective and intellectually interpretative about its decline in the late-Eighties and Nineties, paralleled by the rise of the BJP and Hindutva politics, it would have returned to re-examining the concept of non-appeasement. Certainly, non-appeasement is easier said than done. It would loosely be analogous to the Supreme Court advancing case law with hits and misses on a particularly tangled aspect of the Constitution. But to this writer at least, there is no alternative to seriously, consistently and coherently building on non-appeasement to make India genuinely and solidly secular.
Unfortunately, the Congress is unable or unwilling to make long-term investments in this direction. The tragedy of power politics is that nobody will make investments in personal time on such matters (the Congress has no Surendra Mohan, for example). With the result, there is no escape from the viciousness of politicians like Digvijay Singh, who would do anything to advance themselves.
For example, as the propagator of "muscular secularism" like Arjun Singh, Digvijay has no compunction in repeating what increasingly appears to be a fabrication that Hemant Karkare hours before falling to 26/11 terrorists expressed to him his fear of so-called "Hindu terrorists". Let this be clear. A tipping point is reached when a community can be tagged terroristic when a substantial proportion of it embraces terrorism and fundamentalist ideologies. That is not so with the Hindus, manifestly among the most tolerant of religious communities. India as a secular democracy would have been impossible without the wholehearted consent and acceptance of the Hindu community.
Trust this writer, but Digvijay well knows this. But his entire politics is based on demonizing Hindus, and he thoroughly has infected the Congress with this deadly virus. Digvijay Singh is Rahul Gandhi's political tutor. Rahul Gandhi has as much intrinsic understanding of India as his mother, Sonia, which is zilch. Therefore, Digvijay probably has had an easy run of brainwashing Rahul Gandhi suspiciously to look at the Hindu community. How else would you explain Rahul Gandhi's controversial madcap statement to a US diplomat put out on Wikileaks that India faces a bigger threat from "Hindu terrorists" than the LeT?
At a stroke, it washes away India's campaign against Pakistani terrorism particularly post 26/11.
And Rahul Gandhi's statement cannot be more insulting to the victims in India of Pakistan-inflicted terrorism.
But the point is not only about Rahul Gandhi or Digvijay Singh but the Congress's fatal attraction to votebank politics. Votebank politics is an end in itself. But the Congress party is also using it to cover the present gargantuan governance deficit and the corruption of the Manmohan Singh government. The government is still in early life and, for their own reasons, neither the Congress nor the BJP want immediate elections. The BJP is waiting for the peoples' cup of woes to fill and overflow (and it is getting to there fast) while the Congress wants to postpone defeat until after the end of the government's term.
For the rest of us, there is more condemnation to suffer from a government which entirely has lost its moral authority. As the saying goes, things are going to get a lot worse before getting better. And then, they may not. If Digvijay Singh succeeds with his political tutoring of Rahul Gandhi, we will lose all will to fight Pakistani terrorism and surrender our rise to the forces of darkness lead in our region by China partnering with Pakistan.
