The more things change in India, the more they seem to remain the same. How else would one explain the slapping of draconian National Security Act against three Muslims in Madhya Pradesh in the name of alleged cow slaughter?
Of course, such bizarre things have become commonplace under the blessed rule of the BJP. Most recently, everyone scratched their heads in wonder when some Muslims were charged with the notorious NSA for alleged cow slaughter in Uttar Pradesh’s Bulandshahr district while the killers of a senior police officer, shot dead with his own service revolver after being beaten black and blue by an angry mob, remain at large. But then India’s most populous state of 200 million people is ruled by Yogi Adityanath who himself faces a number of cases, including of rioting and murder.

The saffron-robed Hindu priest promised to install Hindu deities in every mosque in the country and “take 100 Muslim girls” even if one Hindu girl marries a Muslim. One of his supporters in his presence exhorted Hindu youths to rape Muslim women even if they have to dig them up from their graves. The speech was so shocking that the Washington Post quoted it after Yogi took charge of the state that sends the largest chunk of lawmakers, 80, to the Parliament.

However, unlike UP, MP is now ruled by the Congress party. In fact, a new Congress government led by Kamal Nath took charge less than two months ago, on December 17, to be precise after long years of the BJP rule, bringing much cheer to all those believing in inclusive politics and the idea of a secular, progressive India.

The return of the grand old party to power in MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh after years in the political wilderness in these states is rightly seen as a decisive vote against the Modi government at the Centre and its divisive agenda and the clearest sign yet that the Congress is on a comeback trail.

Perhaps no one has welcomed the renewal of the Congress and its return to power in the three battleground states as enthusiastically as religious minorities, especially Muslims, have. After all, they have been perpetually at the receiving end under the BJP governments at the Centre and in states, facing lynchings and witch-hunt in the name of holy cow and other sacred absurdities.

The Muslims have become the Jim Crows of the “new India,” even as the propagandist-in-chief preaches ‘sab ka sath, sab ka vikas’ with a straight face. The rank hypocrisy and duplicity of this order would have received Orwell’s nod of approval.

All this was supposed to have changed with the change of guard in the three states. After all, the Congress is supposed to represent the values and ideals that inspired India’s founding fathers and are celebrated by our fine Constitution. Religious freedom, secularism as the dogma of the state and the equality of all citizens before the law – these are the values that brought India global respect and recognition as the world’s largest democracy.

Rahul Gandhi, who formally took charge as the president of the Congress last year, has been championing and defending the same idea of India, vociferously and passionately, even as he attacks the governing BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi for undermining it.
Perhaps no Congress leader, including his mother and the late father and grandmother, has attacked the RSS, the mothership of the BJP and the rest of the Sangh clan, as fearlessly as this Gandhi has. He has repeatedly talked about the fascist worldview of the Parivar and how it has been exploiting the religious sentiments of Hindus on issues like Ayodhya to benefit the BJP electorally.

He hasn’t even shied away from shining the light on the Hindu Right’s role in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the nation, and how its top leaders sat out the country’s freedom struggle and collaborated with the British.

More importantly, as I argued in my last piece, Rahul has offered a doctrine of hope and inclusivity against the politics of hate and confrontation of his detractors. He has with great courage and sincerity portrayed the Congress and its idea of India as something that belongs to all communities and sections of society.

He has been reaching out to various sections of society, including religious minorities, Dalits and other marginalised groups, who have over the years drifted away from the party. And it seems his message is increasingly hitting home, right on the target, if the massive crowds that the Congress leader has lately been attracting are anything to go by.

As a result, a consensus is emerging in the country and even among the many regional stakeholders that the Congress led by Rahul Gandhi can offer a positive and much-needed alternative to Modi’s BJP.

Unfortunately though, it seems the old guard in the Congress, which has always practiced what is seen as ‘soft Hindutva’ even under Gandhi, Nehru and Indira Gandhi is still resisting and is keen to revert to old ways. This is the same lobby that persuaded the late Rajiv Gandhi to open the doors of Babri Masjid, locked since the idols of Ram were surreptitiously installed in the 16th century mosque in 1949, plunging the country into an endless Mandir-Masjid crisis and Hindu-Muslim conflict.

So what message is MP’s Congress government trying to send just ahead of 2019 elections? That there is no real difference between the BJP and the Congress when it comes to wooing the majoritarian instincts of the mob at the expense of rule of law and requisites of justice?
As the Times of India notes in a scathing editorial on Thursday, India’s two national parties mirror each other when in power. Slamming the extremes to which the Congress government in MP and elsewhere are resorting to in their faithful emulation of ‘cow protection’ policies of the BJP, the country’s largest newspaper comments: “It turns out that chief ministers Yogi Adityanath and Kamal Nath have more in common than they may care to admit. Three Muslims accused of cow slaughter in MP have been slapped with the stringent National Security Act. NSA is a draconian preventive detention law meant to be used sparingly – not for ordinary crimes or for punishing minorities but specifically in case of threats to national security. Its inapplicability in such cases constitutes a clear instance of abuse of power. Take the case of cow protection. A bad idea that has killed the cattle trade, diminished farm incomes, created a stray cow menace, and promoted overgrazing should have been allowed to die a natural death once Congress replaced BJP in MP. The invoking of NSA and zeal for cow protection reveal the contagion of bad ideas. Congress appropriates BJP’s bad ideas and vice versa.”

It’s about time Rahul Gandhi impressed upon his flock, including his chief ministers, that the Congress cannot return to power by trying to be the ‘B’ team of the BJP. If the voters want Hindutva, why would they choose its lighter, spurious version offered by the Congress? Wouldn’t they vote for the real thing? India wants and needs real change, a better, inclusive model of governance—not ‘Hindutva lite’ of pretenders like Kamal Nath.

Aijaz Zaka Syed is an award-winning journalist and former editor. Email: Aijaz.syed@hotmail.com Twitter: @AijazZaka

Courtesy: https://countercurrents.org/
 

The post Why Congress Can’t Win by Trying to be More Like BJP appeared first on SabrangIndia.

So Egypt’s pyramids had been more than mere last abodes of pharaohs and other members of the ruling class; they were the ultimate symbols of power and glory of a disappearing order that was supposed to inspire awe even in death.  The grand mausoleums of Muslim monarchs like the iconic one belonging to emperor Humayun in Delhi and magnificent seven tombs of Qutub Shahi dynasty in Hyderabad probably fall in the same category.

The Taj Mahal, the ultimate monument to love, is also a mausoleum and houses the remains of Shah Jahan’s beloved queen Mumtaz Mahal.  The Mughal emperor who also built Delhi’s majestic Jama Masjid and the Red Fort and went nearly crazy pining for his late wife was finally buried next to his love.

Matinee idol NT Rama Rao, who swept to power riding an unprecedented wave of popularity, had had his share of obsessions.  He had 33 statues of various historical figures and some obscure men and women from Telugu history erected along the picturesque Hussainsagar Lake in Hyderabad. Except for poet Makhdoom Mohiuddin, Nizam Mehboob Ali Khan and Qutub Shahi King Tana Shah, none of them had anything to do with Hyderabad or its grand past.

NTR is also remembered for the massive statue of Buddha, carved out of a single monolithic rock, that he had erected in the middle of the lake at a huge cost to the exchequer and environment.  He came up with the idea of a giant Buddha statue, again touted as the tallest in the world, after a visit to New York’s Statue of Liberty.

The gigantic statue of Sardar Patel that Narendra Modi has had built at a staggering cost of Rs.3500cr ($500 million dollars) is also said to have been inspired by the Lady Liberty. Modi’s ‘statue of unity’ at 182 metres is twice the size of the US icon (93 metres).
However, unlike the most popular American icon celebrating the ideals of freedom and democracy and offering refuge to the poor, wretched and rejected lot of humanity, this monument is nothing but a celebration of Modi’s own vanity and an inflated vision of his legacy. Indeed, a number of things about the Patel statue just do not make any sense.

First, the first home minister of India was a Congress leader. Indeed, he was Prime Minister Nehru’s deputy.

Secondly, unlike Modi, Patel was not a member of the RSS, the mothership of the BJP. Indeed, he had actually banned the extremist Hindu organisation after one of its members Nathuram Godse shot dead Gandhi. The ban was lifted only after the RSS promised in writing to stay away from politics.

Thirdly, if anyone needed to be honoured with the world’s tallest statue, shouldn’t it be Mahatma Gandhi, the undisputed leader of India’s Independence movement and the global icon of peace and nonviolence? He is feted as the Father of the nation.  Virtually every Indian city has a street named after Gandhi, not to mention tens of thousands of Gandhi statues.

While there had been a number of formidable leaders like Dadabhai Nauroji, Gopal Krishna Gokhale (both patrons of Mohammed Ali Jinnah), Mohammed Ali Jauhar and Tilak leading the freedom struggle before Gandhi appeared on the scene, it was the Mahatma who helped it capture the people’s imagination, turning it into a mass movement. Eventually, he gave his life for national unity and Hindu-Muslim peace.

And what about Nehru, the first PM and the architect of modern India? Having led India for the first 14 years after independence, it was Nehru, who literally built the country with the help of friends and fellow travellers like Maulana Azad, creating world-class institutions.

Of course, Nehru had had his share of warts and all.  But it was thanks chiefly to his inclusive vision and progressive leadership that India is today acknowledged as the world’s largest democracy with strong democratic institutions, a free media and independent judiciary. It was thanks to Nehru’s leadership that India adopted a fine, liberal constitution, drafted by Dalit icon Dr BR Ambedkar, that promises democracy, freedom and equal rights to all.

So after Gandhi if anyone deserves this monumental tribute, it is Nehru. Why are the Sangh members then falling over themselves to hail Patel as the greatest national icon — someone who actually banned them and held their politics of hate responsible for Gandhi’s assassination?
But then this had never really been about celebrating Patel but undermining Nehru and the idea of a secular, democratic and inclusive India that he represents.  Besides, having totally stood out and boycotted the freedom movement, they desperately need to usurp and appropriate the icons of the very party that they want India rid of.

From Gandhi and Patel to Ambedkar and Bose, the Parivar has been brazenly hijacking the national icons who had nothing to do with Hindutva and indeed abhorred its divisive worldview. But then, as Salil Tripathi puts it, the BJP doesn’t really have a choice.  The men that the RSS looks up to are not considered heroes by the majority of Indians!

In the words of Prof M Sajjad of Aligarh Muslim University, “Hindutva’s urge for persecuting minorities and this whole politics of brazenly opportunistic appropriation of certain makers of modern India are closely interlinked. This is basically aimed at dwarfing and vilifying Nehruvian ideals. Nehru’s leadership is seen by Hindutva forces as the one which did not let them have their Hindu Raj.”

By the way, everyone must read this brilliant piece in the Times of India by Swaminathan A Aiyar. “His (Patel’s) birthday is now celebrated as National Unity Day. Paeans of praise have been heaped on Patel. I, however, view him as a flawed hero. He was a great Independence leader. Yet his anniversary is an occasion to remember his failures as well as successes,” writes Aiyar before dismantling the icon celebrated as India’s Iron Man.

Aiyar holds Patel, along with Nehru, squarely responsible for failing to work with the Muslim League (as part of the Congress-League coalition government) which eventually led to the Partition and the killing of at least a million people. He tears into Patel also for the godawful mess in Kashmir: “Had Kashmir joined Pakistan, the human and financial cost of India-Pakistan wars and unending border clashes would have been a tiny fraction of actual outcomes. Most Indians think getting Kashmir was a great achievement of Patel. But today Kashmiris mostly hate India, and are in open revolt. This is not the Great Unity that Patel is credited with.”

Amid all this brouhaha, what few pay attention to is the great humanitarian tragedy of the thousands of poor farmers and tribals, India’s most marginalised communities, who have been deprived of their homes and livelihoods thanks to this ambitious project. Hundreds of victims silently protested in the run-up to the unveiling of the monument but few in India’s toady media bothered or dared to report it.  No compensation, if any, can bring back what they have lost for one man’s delusions of grandeur.

Aijaz Zaka Syed is an award-winning journalist and former editor. Email: Aijaz.syed@hotmail.com Twitter: @AijazZaka

Courtesy: https://countercurrents.org/
 

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