Faced with the possibility of having less than 100 seats in the lok Sabha, its worst tally since Independence, the Congress is presenting itself as a saviour of the minorities. But Muslims have spurned the helping hand
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has been quick to come to the defence of his most voluble and controversial Minister, Mohammed Azam Khan. A contender with the Shahi Imam of Delhi’s Jama Masjid for leadership of the Muslim community of the State, Mr Khan claimed that it were the Muslim soldiers of the Indian Army who captured the Kargil heights to drive out Pakistani infiltrators in 1999, and not the Hindu soldiers.
Mr Khan also demanded that more Muslims should be recruited in the Army. The obvious shadow of communal divide introduced into the Armed Forces by such talk naturally raised an outcry across the country. The Election Commission has now taken note of Mr Khan’s remarks.But is Mr Khan an odd man out in this circusIJ On the contrary, he has a fair amount of competition in the arena, which is now charged with election fever. In this period, every party is competing to prove its ‘secular’ credentials.
Whether it is Congress president Sonia Gandhi courting the Shahi Imam in Delhi or Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee pandering to Muslims in West Bengal or rival RJD and JD(U) leaders, lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar respectively, competing for Muslim votes in Bihar, nearly all political parties are seeking to dividing the electorate on communal lines. Ironically, this divisive politics is played in the name of ‘secularism’.
In fact, the regional parties are lesser sinners in this sordid game. The ball was set rolling by the Congress a long time ago. The Rajiv Gandhi Government’s decision to overturn the Supreme Court judgement in the Shah Bano case in 1986 stoked the flames of communal politics in the country.
More recently, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s infamous statement that Muslims have the first claim on national resources — obviously a crude and unabashed attempt to reclaim the minority vote-bank for his party — was in line with the trend set by Rajiv Gandhi.
The Congress has lost its electoral sheen, thanks to massive corruption, inflation and the manner in which it has compromised the security of the country and demeaned the office of the Prime Minister.No wonder the electorate is disenchanted with the Congress and Congressmen can read the writing on the wall. To make up for the loss of public support, they are falling back on their old war cry: “Secularism is in danger”.
The entire political establishment wears the lapel of ‘secularism’. Its daily discourse in this election campaign has revolved around the communal touchstone. The ‘secular’ campaign starts with the dubbing of whatever the BJP or its leader Narendra Modi says, in communal-secular terms.
Even a cursory look at the reports from Varanasi reveals how the anti-BJP forces from the Congress, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party view everything from this angle. Phrases like ‘polarisation of the electorate’ have become the daily chant of the anti-BJP camp members.
They ask: Why is Mr Modi contesting from VaranasiIJ They answer: It is to polarise voters. Why is the BJP giving so much importance to VaranasiIJ It is to polarise Hindu votes. It goes on like this, with our ‘secular’ politicians seeing communalism at every step.
Equally unfortunate is the inability of senior leaders of all parties to keep the election rhetoric within bounds. The BJP’s Murli Manohar Joshi perhaps spoke for many even outside his party when he appealed that “all senior leaders should show restraint while speaking in public and choose their words carefully”. Election Commission member HC Brahma has called the 2014 campaign the “worst” in the past 30 years that he has been conducting elections, as a Government officer at various places and now as a regulator. The exercise of choosing a leader can never be a one-horse race if it is to be meaningful.
Also the task of governing, after the noise has settled and the grind of fulfilling the promises has begun, requires a high degree of accommodation between the different political parties who will adorn the benches in the two Houses of Parliament.
When the Rajiv Gandhi Government found itself unable to run Parliament, despite its two-thirds majority in the lok Sabha, it was a warning for many future Governments. Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao, on the other hand, was able to steer the Government for a full five-year term even though he headed a minority dispensation.
The Congress-led UPA regime had a wider mandate when it came back to power in 2009 with more than 200 seats in the lok Sabha, as compared to its smaller strength in 2004. Yet it could not achieve consensus in its second term like it had done the first time. For all political parties, these are pointers on how to run a Government irrespective of the majority or minority numbers.
As some analysts have pointed out, the UPA2’s failure was largely due to the regime losing its moral authority — both within and outside Parliament. The same could have also been said about Rajiv Gandhi’s Government before and after the Bofors scandal.For Prime Minister Singh, otherwise a much-respected economist, the moral authority was lost within a year of re-election after the 2G scam broke. Despite being aware of the controversy around the mis-allocation of 2G spectrum licences by the DMK’s A Raja, Mr Singh did not put his foot down.
Had the Prime Minister taken the lead and removed A Raja from Government as soon as he found about the manipulation, without waiting for the Comptroller and Auditor-General’s report, UPA2 may have managed a consensus in the lok Sabha and retained its credibility outside Parliament.
There is no need to go to the pre-poll opinion surveys to get the feel of Congress’s absolute inability to inspire the people’s confidence in its governance record. It is because of this countrywide loss of credibility that the Congress, which has won large majorities in the last 65 years, will, in a best case scenario, sit in lok Sabha with just around 100 MPs.
No wonder, the panic in the party is showing in the language of its leaders who are pushing the single-point agenda of secularism. The other day, a Muslim cleric said it well when he listed hundreds of riots that have taken place under the Congress’s rule over the decades, including the demolition of houses of worship. He also listed the promises to his community that the party had made but not fulfilled. The loss of credibility for the Congress is across the board. Even the community it claims it wants to save is rejecting its hand of help.