Sonia Gandhi’s road show to Rashtrapati Bhavan was yet another effort by the Congress to regain lost ground. The party should look back at its pathetic record on liberalism and tolerance when it was in power
Congress president Sonia Gandhi created a good road show by leading her flock to Rashtrapati Bhavan, to complain about what some see as the gathering clouds of intolerance in the country. The rally served her political purpose of finding yet another issue to pillory the BJP-led NDA Government at the Centre.
This, obviously, is part of the grand old party’s secular scheme to regain its relevance in a political environment, where it is fast ceding ground in the country. Because of its cheap shenanigans, the country is getting a bad name.
But in the Congress’s scheme of things, all this may just be collateral damage. Even a brief focus on the party’s own acts will reveal all the hollow spots in the party’s past performance on intolerance. How did it push the principles of liberalism and tolerance when it was in powerIJ The records have all the answers.
For example, instead of encouraging Muslims to go to regular schools and step into the modern economy, the Congress let them stew in the madarssa education where religious texts get priority, orthodoxy is perpetuated and women denied equality.
When the Supreme Court sought to fix Muslim personal laws so that Muslim women have equal rights, through the Shah Bano case, the Congress Government under Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi diluted the historic judgement, giving into pressure from the Muslim orthodoxy. However, few voices among the Muslim leadership opposed the Government, and eventually one bright star in the Congress, Arif Mohammad Khan, had to leave the party. What were the liberals and leftists, who are baying for the BJP’s blood today, doing thenIJ
History is replete with such instances of hypocrisy and duplicity on part of those who are leading the ‘manufactured’ tirade against alleged intolerance. The ban on Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses did not provoke the great liberal writers of the country to protest against intolerance with a symbolic gesture like returning their awards.
Even two years back, Mr Rushdie was not allowed to enter West Bengal by the liberal and supposedly tolerant Trinamool Congress Government. In Hyderabad, liberal Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen could barely escape being lynched by a crowd of Muslim leaders — among whom were Congress MlAs. The Congress was the ruling party in the then united Andhra Pradesh.
In academia, the one economist who dared to raise his voice against the economics of state-owned business, BR Shenoi, was isolated by his colleagues which included the likes of VKRV Rao to Raj Krishna. This happened in the era of state-controlled economy and state-led planning, right under the nose of the liberal Jawaharlal Nehru. This is not well-known but the fact is that brilliant academics at Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University were regularly sidelined because a caucus of official left-oriented professors ruled the roost. Even today, the situation has not changed much.
Academic freedom demands that if someone challenges the theory of Aryan migration from Central Asia to the Gangetic plains, he should have the right to project and promote his views. But what did our historical research academics, ensconced in official patronage, do to such rebellious theoreticsIJ They condemned them all the time as Sangh ideologues and kept them at arm’s length. They were unofficially barred from teaching and their publications banned within the portals of academia.
Now that these rebel theorists have been allowed to have their say and occupy positions that their scholarship entitles them to — irrespective of the ruling prejudice against the Aryans as original Indians — vested interests are crying foul, raising placards of intolerance and other hobgoblins.
In historical research or cinema as a social critic media, many schools must compete for establishing the truth. But our so-called liberals and their political patrons are claiming that the section that agrees with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s view of history or society should be a pariah. Bringing them in to compete with others in the market place of ideas is intolerance! Keeping them out, as was being done so far for the last seven decades, was democracy!
Silence on the part of ‘secularists’ was deafening when the virtual exodus was forced on the Kashmiri Pandits, the flag-bearers of the original culture and civilisation of Kashmir valley. None thought of returning the awards to empathise with the victimised Kashmiri Pandits. And yet, there has not been one instance since the NDA was voted to power in May 2014 that one can compare with the tragedy that was forced upon the Pandits.
This is not the first time that some organisations have raised the issue of cow slaughter and beef consumption as a major challenge to Hindu sentiments and religious sensibilities. Cow protection was an article of faith for Mahatma Gandhi. In the 1960s, we had thousands of sadhus who brought up this issue and even threatened to march to Parliament. So, what is new nowIJ
The 1984 massacre of Sikhs in Delhi and elsewhere still festers in the minds of the civil society. The Sikhs did not receive any sympathy from our social critics. Then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi dismissed this massacre as nothing more than some ground disturbance that happens when a “great tree falls”. And Gandhi is projected as a ‘secular’ leader and his party is leading the charge against ‘growing intolerance’ in the century!
The point is that in our vast country, with such diversity, any issue can be sensitive enough for one group or the other to agitate and even go for extreme steps like immolation. Fringe groups to mainstream parties get emotionally involved and impose their will on the others.
This is unacceptable but the mere existence or outburst of that does not mean that democracy and tolerance are doomed. What counts is what the rulers are saying, not those who are a bit players or sectoral leaders.
Records of the past 12 months have shown how Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been denouncing the fire-eaters and endorsing the President’s appeal for protecting the values of the Constitution. Dealing with the fringe elements is a nuanced job for any Government; just as they need to be reigned in, at the same time, too much attention to them will be playing into their hands, as they will be emboldened by the media footage they will get.
Meanwhile, the Don Quixotes of the secular pack, along with their Sancho Panzas continue their ‘expeditions’ against the ‘castles’ of communalism and fascism and the ugly giants who are determined to smother the lofty values of pluralism and liberty. Don Quixote may have been a fictional character, born out of the imagination of a 15th century Spanish author, but his tribe is thriving in independent India.