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Anatomy of "soft Hindutva" of Congress party

Pallab Bhattacharya
IS India's main opposition Congress party treading a path of soft Hindutva policy to counter the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in the coming national elections? Is it the right path to counter another and the more hard-line brand of Hinduvta of its main rival BJP? These questions have been doing the rounds in political circles in India since last November when Rahul Gandhi visited different temples in the run up to the assembly polls in Gujarat. The same question was asked again earlier this year during Karnataka state elections.
The result of Rahul's templehopping: Congress put up an impressive performance in Gujarat reducing the BJP to its worst-ever electoral show in Gujarat even though it could not prevent the saffron party from retaining power in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state. In Karnataka, the Congress emerged as the second largest party after the BJP but had to depend on alliance-building to grab power in the state.
While the debate may go on as to how much did Rahul's temple visits contribute to his party's electoral performance in Gujarat and Karnataka, Congress seems to have concluded that it is paying off politically. What has added more meat to such thinking is Rahul Gandhi's recent pilgrimage to the Kailash Mansarovar in Tibet, considered by Hindus as the abode of Lord Shiva. He brought the holy water from Mansarovar Lake and offered it to the memorial of Mahatma Gandhi before undertaking a "padyatra" on September 10 to drum up support for a
countrywide anti-government general strike in protest against fuel price hike.
The Congress' pronounced emphasis on religious symbolism in the political events including the coming assembly elections in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh is hard to miss. Madhya Pradesh, along with Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh states, will go to assembly polls in a couple of months. The BJP is in power in all the three states and Congress has been out of power in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh for three decades. On September 23, Rahul Gandhi held road show along a mythical route taken by Lord Rama on way to his 14-year exile. The party accused the BJP of swearing by Lord Rama but failing to develop the route after announcing it a decade ago. "We want Lord Rama's blessings ahead of the elections," Congress leader Harishankar Shukla, the brain behind the proposed yatra, said. The party is getting a chariot ready in which Hindu saints will sit and hymns and devotional songs will be played throughout the duration of the yatra.
Congress also announced that it will develop Madhya Pradesh into a religious tourism hub by developing all places of pilgrimage and conserving them according to ancient Hindu beliefs if it comes to power.
The party alleged that the state government has made several announcements about developing religious places and temple towns during elections but did not follow them up. Senior Congress leader from Madhya Pradesh and former Chief Minister of the state Digvijaya Singh
recently undertook a journey along the Narmada river considered sacred by Hindus and said the party will develop the 3,300-km route further by setting up Vishram Bhavans for the people who undertake the pilgrimage. The Congress also promised to build cow shelters in all panchayats in the state. It is in sync with the party's signals to the Hindu constituency.
Over the years, the BJP has repeatedly attacked the Congress espousal of the cause of religious minority as "appeasement". To some extent, this succeeded in creating a perception that anti-BJP parties are going out of their way to keep minorities in good humour even though their outreach has largely been tokenism and has not
made a significant improvement in their lives. This has put the Congress and other rivals of the BJP in a somewhat defensive position. Even a section of Muslim intellectuals is of the view that Congress should stop focusing on the community and instead talk about an omnibus development of all communities so that the party can be insulated from the charge of "minority appeasement." This was clear from the interaction Rahul Gandhi had with a team of Muslim intellectuals sometime back.
There is a view among a seaion of political observers that the anti-BJP parties' articulation of the minorities cause has helped a section of Hindus gravitate towards the saffron party over
the last few years and often triggered a consolidation of Hindu votes cutting across cast fault lines behind the BJP like the one witnessed in the 2017 assembly eleaions in Uttar Pradesh. Given such a milieu, will it be right for the Congress to stay away from religious symbolism at a time when BJP is trying to construa a polarising narrative in the run up to the 2019 national eleaions over the twin issues of National Register of Citizens in Assam and the arrest of five leading rights aaivists for their alleged Maoist links. While the NRC has a communal dimension to it, the rights activists arrest gives a political touch.
For the BJP, both fits into its efforts to build a "nationalism versus antinationalism" debate. This was clear from BJP President Amit Shah's recent high-decibel campaign on the two issues in Jaipur. On the other hand, the opposition has so far refrained the temptation of being drawn into the divisive debate.
Rahul Gandhi has come in for criticism for his temple visits and pilgrimage from a cross seaion of opinions ranging from the BJP to Left, liberals and a seaion of Muslims which consider the visits as compromising with the tenet of secularism. The big challenge for the opposition in India is to aeate a counter-narrative to BJP's and at the same time articulating the cause of minorities in a manner that does not put off a section of Hindus that is perceived to have become disenchanted with the BJP in its last four and half years of governance.
Pallab Bhattacharya Is a special correspondent to The Daily Star.