Sonia Gandhi requests Imam for Muslim votes
It cannot be that Congress president Sonia Gandhi met a Muslim delegation led by the Jama Masjid's Shahi Imam, Syed Ahmed Bukhari, to exchange notes on health and the weather. The Imam gave the game away when he said that the Congress leader had appealed to him to ensure that Muslim votes did not get “split”. In other words, Ms Gandhi had approached the Imam with a request that he use his good offices to get Muslims votes for the Congress, at least in Delhi. If this is not a blatant act of communal politics, nothing is. But the Congress remains adamant that it is not. The party claims such meetings are routine. That they certainly are for the Congress is acknowledged. It is not the first time that the party has lobbied for Muslim votes in a brazen fashion, while simultaneously beating the secular drum. Under the leadership of Indira Gandhi and later under Rajiv Gandhi's prime ministership, the Congress had courted senior Muslim clerics — not to win their hearts but the votes of the minority community. In those days, when the Shahi Imam was an important Muslim voice, the party benefitted from his affections. The situation is different today. Not only does the Imam no longer enjoy the influence he once did, there have sprung other important clerics across the country, particularly in Uttar Pradesh, that have been speaking out against the appeasement policies of the Congress and the damage these have done to the community. These clerics have been also harsh on other so-called secular organisations such as the Samajwadi Party, which have been playing a game of minority appeasement similar to that of the Congress. Add to this the fact that the Muslim community is now once bitten and twice shy after been taken for a ride by the ‘secularists' who wooed them for votes but did nothing for their socio-economic development, and it is not difficult to understand why Ms Gandhi's initiative is unlikely to shore up the Congress's fortunes in the coming election. The young and the middle class voters from the minority community have been in recent years veering away from the politics of vote banks and demanding development. They have no use for terms like ‘consolidation of Muslim votes'. The Muslims do not, any more, vote as a bloc in one direction, although they do indulge in tactical voting where they feel the need.
The Congress president's meeting with the Jama Masjid's Shahi Imam, coming as it did days before the first phase of polling begins for the lok Sabha and in the wake of news that the party was trailing far behind the Bharatiya Janata Party in opinion polls, clearly indicates that the party is desperate to somehow proactively project a pro-Muslim face and reap political dividend. That it should seek to simultaneously call itself secular and appeal to the Muslims to avoid a split in their votes for the Congress, is an irony which is sadly lost on the party. Having expended much of its energy in targeting the BJP for its “divisive” politics and for “sowing the seeds of poison”, the Congress has plunged headlong into the worst kind of communal polarisation. While every party has the right to reach out to various communities and social denominations, it's dangerous when a party systematically targets a particular community and cajoles it to vote in a communal fashion. Such an approach can harden communal fault lines that exist across the social spectrum. But the Congress could not have been less bothered by this danger.