Is Congress anti Hindu? An inadequate & irrelevant question

“Has your wife stopped beating you?”

Many henpecked husbands, troubled by their own nagging spouses, in an attempt to achieve a sense of come-uppance with their co-victims use this phrase especially as the respondent is unable to answer it. A ‘yes’ would mean acceptance of the humiliation in the past and a ‘no’ would mean its continuation in future.*

“Is Congress anti Hindu?” is a similar question.

A ‘yes’ would mean a confirmation that Congress’ practice of competitive communalism projected as secularism is actually Anti Hindu whereas a ‘No’ while giving some solace for the present would mean an internal acceptance that a party is trying to project an image with the populace based on latter’s religious identities.

The answer though would be a 'yes' from many cadres, most supporters as well as all detractors. If it wasn't, the questions would not be needed to be asked. But the pertinent point here is not about the answer but the adequacy & relevance of the question itself.

Is this the question to which Congress needs to find an answer to, to arrive at a plan to revive itself? Would answer to this question decide the theme of such revival? 

If the answer to the second question is 'yes' then Congress has a bigger problem than what it finds itself in, at present.

It indicates that Congress believes that the route to revival goes through how a particular community or caste perceives it.  It also means that the Congress would continue to pursue the policy of creating and projecting a narrow, parochial image customized to attract a particular community or caste for electoral gains while having a completely opposite one in a different geography where that community or caste is less in number.

It does not mean that Congress would not project itself as Muslim party having blessing of Shahi Imam in Muslim areas, a Christian party having blessing of Pope in Christian areas and secular in the rest. It does not mean that it would not promise re-investigation of Batla House encounter  in Azamgarh while conferring awards on the police officers involved in the encounter in Delhi. It does not mean that it would not keep Punjab and Haryana at loggerheads for almost 50 years on the issue of a stupid state capital. It does not mean that it would not spawn a Bhindrawale again while keeping the pretence of stopping or arresting him. It does not mean anything of this kind.

The Family now starts answering questions, not asking them

It only means that Congress would like to continue to pursue its policy of hunting with the hound, running with the hare and making fool out of both of them but probably, wants the hound and hare to interchange places as the poor hare has become too weak to run along now and the hound has become a dangerous big brute to let it hunt along! And it hopes that none of them become any wiser.

These strategy of keeping opposite grouping in dark and making conflicting promises used to work in 1980s, when the voter in Varanasi did not know what the voter in Saharanpur had been promised, the law abiding citizen in Delhi did not know about contacts with Bhindrawale, The information asymmetry ensured everyone stayed blind to happenings anywhere beyond the vicinity. 

But the communication revolution, firstly fuelled by burgeoning news channels in 90s and later by the social media created a situation where the devious scheme of being different things to different entities got exposed. Now everyone knew what Congress was to the other group and stopped believing what he had been promised.

As the electoral ecosystem evolved, voter became more informed, information became available more freely and economically, Congress found itself headed by a clueless leadership, unable to understand the country, its polity or its people and  relying solely on advisers. To complicate the situation further, the advisers had been chosen not on merit but due to their loyalty to the family, not for their wisdom but their timidity to pose a threat to leadership, not for their ability to call a spade a spade but to say yes if the leadership was calling it a ship and their ability to provide easy to understand quick fixes instead of a fair, balanced view on issues confronting the country.

And now same leadership is expecting cadre to answer questions! It would be grossly unfair to the cadre if they have to answer for the shenanigans of the leadership. 

The poor cadre, who, for decades, is accustomed to living in an environment where loyalty to the owner is the ultimate virtue, where competitive communalism is a clearly defined strategy, where treating every voter according to his religious or caste identity is a perfectly honed art, where the spine has been lost to gain the trust of the owners, would find it difficult to even comprehend the question.

It is the leaders (or the owners) who have to answer the question and I take the liberty of suggesting two questions which Gandhi family needs to answer.

•    Why is Congress mostly perceived as anti-something. Anti Hindu, anti Sikh, anti Dalit, anti democracy, anti progress, anti rule of law, anti governance. Why is it such a negatively oriented party?
•     Is Congress a political party or a family owned firm? Is it the sycophancy which keeps family at the head of party or is the presence of family at the top which creates environment conducive to sycophants in the party? 

     By the way, to answer the original question as "What do you mean? My wife and beat me? Never did. Never would." one needs moral courage, a high level of confidence as well as wife's permission.

     The family has none of these. The moral authority was lost long back, recent elections have shattered the confidence and the approval has been taken away. 

  

* With advance apologies to all wives, husbands, feminists, menimists, Khaps and any other sensitive individual hurt by this analogy.