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NATION:
CONGRESS
Taking
The Plunge
Pushed by her spin doctors Sonia finally does it-the dip at the Mahakumbha
is clearly aimed at recovering the lost Hindu vote
By
Lakshmi Iyer
Until
January 22 afternoon, Congress leaders didn't believe their usually stiff
party President Sonia Gandhi would actually take the plunge. That is a
holy dip-more precisely ardha snan or half dip-in the Ganga during the
Mahakumbha in Allahabad. A day earlier, the party had announced she would
do aachman-ritually rinsing her mouth-to symbolically associate
herself with the mega Hindu event.
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| ACT
OF FAITH: Sonia with the Shankaracharya of Dwarka Peeth |
As images
of a Sonia knee-deep in water emerged, the Congress went catatonic. Its
Italian-born Roman Catholic leader had shed her European inhibitions.
It seemed she had ended the ambiguity about her faith on the banks of
a river most sacred to Hindus. She performed a mini ritual for the dead,
including brother-in-law Sanjay, befitting her status as a daughter-in-law
of a Kashmiri Pandit household. She then went to receive the blessings
of the party's very own Shankaracharya Swami Swaroopanand of Dwarka Peeth,
an unrelenting foe of the BJP and VHP. At the Shankaracharya's camp, veteran
leader N.D. Tewari spoke of Hindutva, and bhajans and kirtans were sung
by monks during the wait for Sonia. "Gau mata ki jai. Gau hatya
band karo," they chorused.
To Congressmen-in
quest of a formula to win middle Hindu India's approval-Sonia's profession
of faith in Hinduism could not have been better timed or better located.
It was made a day after the VHP-backed Dharma Sansad at the same venue
set a deadline for the Government to remove all hurdles in the path of
a Ram temple in Ayodhya. That the party saw the dip as a piece of competitive
mobilisation of Hindus wasn't left in doubt. The Mahakumbha cannot be
a monopoly of the VHP, asserted spokesman Anand Sharma. Says veteran party
leader V. Gadgil: "It is a bold and wise decision. It will halt the
alienation of Hindus from the Congress." Sonia's Mahakumbha journey
is in a way a triumph of his line. Last April he was dropped from the
Congress Working Committee for suggesting the party rethink the basis
of its secularism and socialism.
Spin doctors
place the latest riverside ritual in the continuum of Sonia's efforts
in the past two years to identify herself with Hindus. On January 12,
1999, she declared India was primarily secular because of Hinduism. Two
days later the CWC passed a resolution endorsing her viewpoint. "The
dip is aimed at drowning the propaganda against Sonia's foreign origins,"
says a senior party functionary. "It's a feel good factor for party
workers. Abstract secularism and anti-Hindu stands don't work in rural
areas." In a letter, Gadgil urged Sonia to crown her Mahakumbha dip
with a reiteration of her January 1999 statement. "If pluralism is
the source of secularism then Hinduism is nothing but pluralism. The party
must emphasise it."
If
the dip has put the caste Hindu leaders in the party on overdrive, it
has created disquiet among Muslim leaders. They feel it could raise Muslim
suspicions that the Congress was once again indulging in soft Hindutva
the way it did in 1989 by performing a shilanyas at Ayodhya and when Rajiv
Gandhi launched his election campaign from the town promising Ram Rajya.
They also feel it would give a handle to rivals like the Samajwadi Party
in Uttar Pradesh to wean away the community. "Muslims won't react
on the basis of one action; they will look at the cumulative steps she
will take," explains a Muslim leader. His worry is the leaders who
are pushing for soft Hindutva may now push harder to take more steps to
placate Hindus. "Next they will ask her to visit Somnath. Then we
will find it difficult to explain things to our people," he points
out.
On record
Muslim leaders are stoic and project Sonia's dip as an act of faith. "I
have been on the Haj. That doesn't make me anti-Hindu," says AICC
General Secretary Mohsina Kidwai. Former UPCC president Salman Khurshid
says, "Muslims have taken it in their stride. Sonia visited Ali Mia
at Nadwa. Her Sangam trip is personal." Even M.L. Fotedar, the prime
mover behind the dip clarifies, "Sonia's visit is in conformity with
the tradition of the Nehru family. It has always responded to the impulses
and beliefs of broad masses." He recalls both Jawaharlal Nehru and
Indira Gandhi visited the Kumbha when they were prime minister. "Allahabad
is after all home to them."
The dip
has certainly changed the mood at the party headquarters on 24 Akbar Road.
Gone is the secular belligerence that marked the atmosphere during December's
furore over Ayodhya. It is a season of redefinition of secularism there.
Says party Secretary Mani Shankar Aiyar, a self-confessed "secular
fundamentalist": "The Mahakumbha is a cultural event. How is
it an anti-Muslim act? To be secular one doesn't have to be anti-Hindu."
Maybe not. But who can deny that in rhetorical terms the post-Kumbha Congress
is sounding more like another party it claims to oppose.
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