Rahul Gandhi is spot on but what is the Congress doing about it?

It is completely ridiculous for the Congress to be defensive about Rahul Gandhi’s reported remark that Hindu radical groups are potentially a bigger threat to India than Jehadi terrorists. Hindu communalism can lead to civil war, while Jehadi terrorism cannot, by itself.


If India’s Hindu majority, who are more than four-fifths the population turn communal, the idea of India as a plural, democratic nation that manages to forge unity out of diversity will cease to be even a goal. The idea will not just die; rather, it will be killed in a pool of blood, a very large pool that can drown not just the lives of innocents of all faiths but also India’s promise of prosperity on a fast track.


Radicalisation of small sections of the minorities does not have the same potential. But this does not mean nor suggest that minority communalism deserves kindler, gentler treatment. It needs to be stamped out with vigour. And it needs to be stamped out with vigour precisely because minority communalism becomes a handy justification for majority communal ideologues to spread their virus among the populace at large.


The Congress is allowing the Jehadis free run if not actually promoting them, has been the cry of the Hindu right and its ideologues, ever since the news broke of the Wiki leak on Rahul Gandhi. The implicit juxtaposition of Hindu communalists with Jehadis from Pakistan as mutually exclusive categories is downright silly. A leadership that is aware of the threat immanent in possible communalization of the majority would be doubly determined to guard against Jehadi terror. Jehadi terror can create mayhem of the sort we saw in the attack on Mumbai in November by Pak-trained terrorists, that is bad enough, but it can also give a boost to Hindu communalism, which can lead to civil war.

This should be obvious to all Congressmen who swear by Gandhi, who was killed by a Hindu communalist, and Nehru, who understood the sources of danger to the idea of India with utmost clarity. But, clearly, Congressmen today have no such clarity. And this is the criticism that Rahul Gandhi has to face.


The Congress has degenerated from the party of Gandhi and Nehru to a party of powerbrokers. Since power is more important to the party than the end to which it must be wielded, the Congress compromises with both Hindu and minority communalism. How else can anyone explain successive governments of Maharashtra, led by the government, failing to act against communal actions by the Shiv Sena, for example.

The continued social backwardness of Muslims is not just against the interests of the community but also a source of vulnerability for India’s national security. In the interest of social justice and to strengthen social cohesion and national security, concerted government action to end that backwardness is an urgent imperative. But if that imperative is articulated in a political idiom that tells both Muslims and Hindus that the Congress is trying to curry favour with Muslims, it only serves to feed the threat which Rahul Gandhi rightly identified as being more grave than the threat from Jehadis from across the border.