Rahul Gandhi revealing his gotra is the final blow to ‘secular’ politics
The Congress President is repeating the mistake Rajiv Gandhi made in 1989.
Gotra: Dattatrey, Caste: Kaul Brahmin!
That’s the new identity of Rahul Gandhi, a youth leader, of 21st century India.
A leader who is the scion of a party that has been the self-anointed custodian of “secular politics”. Secularism, even if a “pseudo” one, has now been replaced by unabashed religious politics, and the Congress is desperate to be rebranded as a ‘Hindu party”.
BJP’s “defender in chief” spokesperson Sambit Patra had challenged Rahul Gandhi to let the people know his gotra on one of his temple tours. Apparently, Rahul Gandhi accepted the challenge. He was already showing off his sacred thread, he had announced his Brahmanical lineage too. When he visited the sacred Pushkar Lake for a puja recently, the priest later told the reporters that Mr Gandhi is a Kashmiri Brahmin, and his gotra is Dattatreya.
The priest could not have timed the announcement at his own behest. The Brahmin legacy was claimed at the opportune moment, when the nation is gripped in election fever and every step is seen as a move towards Mission 2019.
Yogi Adityanath claimed this as their ideological victory.
Indeed, this is not just an ideological, but also a political victory for saffron politics. At this juncture, ‘secularism’ isn’t getting votes, and hence it's disappeared under wraps, almost reduced to a political outcast.
Whoever wins or loses the electoral battle, the fact is that the Congress has ceded political ground by giving up on its own agenda and towing the Sangh’s line.
Rahul flaunts his 'janeu' (sacred thread), pitches a journey to Kailash Mansarovar as the high point of his 'Shiv bhakti', criss-crosses temples across India during elections, sports a ‘tilak’ on his forehead and tells the head priest in Pushkar that he is a Dattatreya Kaul Brahmin.
There has been an occasional detour to the Ajmer Dargah, but it wouldn’t matter even if he skipped it.
The Congress has been desperate to claim the Hindu legacy.
During the last couple of years, all attacks on Rahul Gandhi’s Italian links, his maternal grandfather’s “love for Muslims” and Nehru apparently actually being a descendant of some Ghiasuddin have not elicited an apt answer from the Congress. Rather, the Congress has let itself be cornered into proving its Hinduism.
In Indian political jargon, being ‘secular’ has always meant being pro-minority, and Congress had mastered this art — at the cost of keeping Muslims insecure, so that they would always need the Congress to be their voice. Any party opposed to the BJP could claim itself to be secular.
But secularism is not paying anymore — and hence, the Congress is now wooing Muslims only behind closed doors.
In a leaked video clip that has gone viral, Madhya Pradesh Congress chief Kamal Nath was recently heard telling Muslim leaders that if the Congress does not get 90% of the total Muslim votes in the state, the party will “suffer a big loss”. The fact that the plea was made at a private closed-door meeting, and that Kamal Nath also pleaded with leaders from the community that “you will have to bear everything till the day of voting” and “we will deal with them (RSS and BJP) later”, indicates that the Congress is now scared of showing off the “pro-Muslim” tag, which was its calling card till 2014.
The rise of saffron ideology has left other parties trying to catch up with the BJP. And the pertinent question now seems to be ‘Who is a better Hindu?’
Very recently, the AICC general secretary and senior Congress leader CP Joshi was heard saying at a rally in Rajasthan’s Nathdwara (a Brahmin-dominated constituency) that only Brahmins can talk about Hinduism, not Modi or Uma Bharti.
No sooner had Joshi been “chided” by the party president than Rahul’s Gotra was “leaked” to the media — reinforcing his Brahmin credentials.
Is being a 'blue-blooded Hindu' in an India which has boasted of a ‘Ganga Jamuni tehzeeb’ now the ticket to the voters’ heart?
The Congress manifesto in Madhya Pradesh promises cow shelters in every Panchayat — thus trying to hijack the 'cow protector' label from the BJP — start commercial production of cow urine, and build a corridor along the route taken by Lord Rama in his exile. This competitive Hindutva is almost comical and seems to be a tactical attempt to reclaim the ground that Congress assumes it has lost to the BJP.
The fact that the Congress feels it will be in a better place to reclaim it by revamping itself as a ‘Hindutva’ party — instead of by reinforcing its secular credentials — speaks of the quiet death of ‘secularism’ as a dominant narrative in politics.
A lack of agenda and looking for a shortcut to votes led Rajiv Gandhi to do the ‘shilanyas’ in Ayodhya in 1989. By doing so, the Congress actually fulfilled the Sangh’s agenda. It did not get the Congress Hindu votes, but it benefitted the Sangh entirely.
Today, Rahul Gandhi is doing the same.
The Sangh Parivar is setting the agenda — branding Sonia and Rahul Gandhi as “anti-Hindu” and “pro-Muslim”, and Sonia Gandhi, by sporting a tilak, and Rahul Gandhi, by flaunting his janeu and announcing his gotra, are trying hard to prove their Hinduism.
Even if the BJP loses an election, there is little hope for the return of the secular agenda in mainstream politics anytime soon.
‘Secularism’ has travelled a long way in India. It is no longer the driving force in Indian politics. A new narrative has been written, and India is being driven by it.