 Hello, welcome to NewsClick. You're watching Present the Past and the Future and I am Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay. In the recently concluded Assembly elections in five states, the Congress Party, especially in Madhya Pradesh, came out with a very Hindu-specific manifesto. It talked very specifically about promises related to cow protection and also improving various facilities related to Lord Ram. Now, just prior to that, the Congress was also very silent when there were protests against the Supreme Court verdict on the Shabrimala incident. Since last year when the Gujarat elections took place, Rahul Gandhi has been on a temple-hopping spree. It has continued. We have learned that he is a Shivbhakth. We have also learned that he wears the sacred thread of the Janu. And very recently, we also learned that he is from a very specific Gotra of Hindu Gotra. So, the question which arises is that why is this happening? Is this the beginning of what I call as the BJPization of the Congress? Are we seeing a situation where the BJP on one hand has become increasingly Congress-ized and the Congress is becoming a bit of a BJP, which means that both of are basically playing on the same terrain. This actually raises an entire issue that Hindu-nationalistic politics is possibly become the primary fundamental issue which is going to be around which politics and elections are contested. Now, I am going to be in conversation with Salil Mishra, a very reputed historian and G. Sampath, a very senior journalist who is also written recently on this entire issue in his paper, The Hindu. Sampath, let me begin with you that the Congress appears to be no longer being an alternative, an ideological alternative to the BJP. Why do you think is this happening? That the Congress is basically following on the same path that the BJP has been on. I would suggest that I think this is a considered decision on the part of the Congress leadership based on their own assessment of the political reality in India today. And as the name of your program suggests, I think we could probably come back to the present from the past to get a clearer picture of why this is happening. See, my own hypothesis would be that the Congress, if you look at the history of the Congress, right from its inception through the freedom struggle and after independence so on, you would find that you could probably have two or three distinct phases. There was the Congress before Mahatma Gandhi, which was a very elitist kind of a Congress which was more interested in negotiating with the colonial powers for rights and a certain amount of representation so on. It was not really a mass movement at that point of time. It was Mahatma Gandhi who turned it into a mass movement, gave it a mass character. And how did he do it? What was it that he did which was not done by the Congress before? He saturated the Congress appeal with a certain Hindu imaginary. He brought in religion into the heart of its politics by starting the Khilafat movement for the Muslims and the Dhramarajya in the form of non-cooperation movement for the Hindus. And ostensibly it was an anti-colonial mobilization but we know what happened in the non-cooperation movement in due course. After that it was this kind of a duality which Congress came up with after Gandhi sort of took over the reins here. I mean formally not really being a part of it but over and above it as well. It has sort of become very identified with those elements in the party who are very comfortable with this kind of a grammar of politics. If you look at the composition of the constitution and assembly, the social composition of the constitution and assembly, what do we find in it? It is primarily a Savarna, Brahminical, Apakast kind of an orientation. One in seven of adults who were eligible for universal franchise were part of the constitution and assembly. And they were the ones ideally if you are looking at purely a democratic ideal in terms of constituting the constitution and assembly, you should have called for elections once independence was announced, held elections for the constitution and assembly and then have them make the constitution for you. But that was not how it went. The question was that whether we would have an election under universal franchise or not at that time the electorate was extremely restricted. So little get it, you know, Sampath did give some historical background. I will just add to it, you know, that even prior to the advent of Gandhi during the Sadeshi movement, there was definitely a huge amount of religious favor was brought into the movement, especially in Bengal as a result of which the Muslims were not as did not participate in the movement in the agitation as much as they could have possibly had it not have such a quote unquote a Hindu flavor. But moving on a bit ahead, you know, that are we by what the Congress is trying to say, you know, I'm just trying to pick these various strands of, you know, going to temples saying that I'm not ashamed of going to temple. I'm, you know, convenient of wearing my Hinduism on the sleeve. Does this mean that somehow the other Congress is accepting that Hinduism is the basic ethos of this country? I think Congress is trying to give in to existing realities than trying to transform them. Let me put it this way, there are dangers in using the religious card and the dangers are that you're giving up your terrain and you're shifting to the terrain of your entries and there are there are serious there are dangers in using the religious card. But there are also dangers that are pitfalls in giving up the religious card altogether or ignoring religion altogether. After 1947, that does not mean that you get suddenly overburdened by the fact that you should also have a you have a responsibility of also articulating the concerns of the religious minorities in this country. You know, Sonia Gandhi last year made that very famous statement, you know, saying that unfortunately the Congress has got the image of being a pro-Muslim party. Now you are trying to shed the image that you have as a result of which you do not articulate a single concern of there. You do not even ensure, you know, that the Muslims or other religious minorities get the fair representation which they should have be should be given or what even what they were given once forgetting it, bringing them at par with the population represent, you know, percentage in, you know, within the entire population, but not in legislature being reflected. You see, this kind of politics is a kind of a tightrope walk. And in tightrope walk, it is quite difficult to get the proportion right and there is a possibility of tilting a little bit on the minority side and then there is a possibility of tilting a little bit on the majority side and political parties keep doing it till they get the balance right, which never really happens. Let me just say three things. First of course is, and I'm speaking, I'm trying to look at it through the prism of a leader of a political party. There are existing realities. Realities are that we do have religious communities in our midst. Community is constituted through a certain kind of consciousness. There are religious communities of the majority of the minority and so on, but they do exist. It is no use pretending that they do not. Second is that we are living in a democracy, which means that any political party will be successful if it is able to reach out to minds and hearts of the people. It has to get their support, their allegiance, lasting allegiance. And third is that any political party which is there in the business, it's not there only to do protest politics. It's not there only to contest elections. It is there to be in the decision making echelons, which is it must capture power. Now you put the three factors together. The inescapable conclusion is that any political party which is really seriously interested in capturing power would not like to give up or abandon the religious space like the left did. Left practiced a kind of a cosmopolitan neutrality on the religious way. Bengal is probably an exception and they were successful in Bengal. But all India level since the 50s left practiced a kind of cosmopolitan neutrality almost pretending that religion does not exist, only classes exist. And the result was that in spite of representing the best strand in Indian politics, they were completely marginalized. So that risk is there. Problem is, and there I think I do partly agree with Sampath, is that any political party must not give up its transformative role. You are trying to cater to existing realities. That's important. But you cannot accept the existing realities which are unsatisfactory. You have to also try and transform existing realities. Political parties are also agents of modernization, of transformation, of change and so on. So there are existing prejudices, religious prejudices. Political parties have not invented them. But point is, what you do with it? Do you try and turn those prejudices into projects of hatred? Or do you try and work on them to see to it that the politics is not vitiated by attitudes and religious prejudices, etc. For me, the best combination is that political parties must allow for this reality of religious communities and religious differences and so on. But it must not allow them to dominate the agenda of political parties which should remain firmly secular developmentalist. Sampath, what we have been seeing with the Congress is that one is what Salil is saying that yes, for the sake of contesting elections if you have to make quote-unquote a compromise, well, you have to win elections because if you are not able to win elections you get completely pushed out of the political space. That is what has happened to the left. But having seized political power, are you doing enough? Is the Congress doing enough? The Congress was in power for 10 years between 2004 and 2014. Prior to that, there had been a fair amount of, you know, entry by Hindu politics into the national space. Right from the time that the Ayodhya agitation was picked up in 83, 84 from that time it made severe inroads and it had become fairly dominant by the time. I think that by the time that the Congress formed a government in 2004 the BJP had become the principle pole of Indian politics. The entire politics was centered around whether you want to keep the BJP out or whether you want to give it some space to come inside. Now, 10 years you did not actually recover the ground which you had lost or seeded to Hindutva. Are we very seriously, you know, are we in any way certain that the Congress would be able to reverse certain processes? Let me ask you a very direct question. That if in future, if at all the Congress is in power with the kind of politics that it is pursuing in future if it is in a position to roll back the names of Prayaargaraj to Alabad and Ayodhya district to Fezabad district various other things which are going to be changed. Would it have the courage or would it say, no, let's not upset the Hindu sentiment? Well, to give you a simple answer, the answer is no. I don't think they would and to elaborate on this with your permission let me finish the thread which I was building up in the earlier this thing, whatever I was saying. See, in the 1930s, I think the last election which was held the Congress is mostly membership for 3%. 97% Hindu membership. And as you rightly pointed out, in the post-independence phase Congress was in power for a long period of time. It was in power again most recently for 10 continuous years. If we find that it has not done enough to sort of pre-empt the kind of damage which the Hindu politics is doing right now I would suggest that it is primarily because of the nature of the members it has had all through these years. How many congressmen, if you take away those members of the RSS, let us say. How many congressmen would be like in terms of their political views and in terms of their relationship with Hinduism very different from an average BJP person or a BJP party member. And I would suggest that has a lot of role to play in why Congress has taken the turn, we see it as a turn today. And I would say that it could be seen as more of a demand from congressmen themselves rather than something which leadership has taken strategically with the view towards doing a different kind of a ball game in the elections. This entire issue of doing something when in power. The Congress, you know Madhya Pradesh for instance, there was a Bara Singha used to be the state animal. It was the Congress which came out with the proposal to make the cow the state animal of Madhya Pradesh. So you have had situations where the compromise is not end there. So building this how do you actually ensure from where can a pressure be put on a party like Congress to ensure that it does what it is called to be the Nehruvian legacy and not Pushotam Das Tandon's legacy. After all the two differed very sharply during that period and Nehru at that point held his opinion and you know he was able to evict the Congress of various sectarian forces. I would not defend some of these moves. Obviously they are indefensible. But let me still put forward the argument. I think there is a distinction to be made between political opportunism on the question of religion and very consciously structuring communalism into the heart of Indian politics. The two are not the same. Our right wing parties did the latter and centrist kind of parties did the former which is to practice political opportunism. What is political opportunism? If you have a constituency which has Muslim majority then you make sure that a Muslim is fielded as a candidate and think like making some kinds of concessions, tactical, strategic concessions of that kind. The Congress has always done that. That is what I am saying. That is political opportunism. But the second is a very, very conscious ideological decision of very consciously, deliberately, through with the help of a cadre, structuring the ideology of communalism into the Indian politics, into Indian society and that gets to the minds and hearts of the people and that changes the entire social arithmetic. What I am saying is that the first political opportunism is to be condemned. It is not to be welcomed. I do not think it is a very good idea. But I can see why and that is not always so harmful. But there have been critics who have pointed out that if you accept the first type of concession to be made to sectarian for communal politics, you essentially end up becoming a pragmatic communalist. I think it is possible to do one without necessarily giving into the second thing. I remember there were times I visited some of the UP villages and I think in West UP there was a village where I came across this. This was the time of the Ayodhya movement where there was a very important interesting slogan that was written on the walls. We just said, Mandir Masjid ka Samman, Congress ki yeh pachan. Now this is obvious. The Congress leader said that it is ultimately going to be the Congress which is going to build a Ram temple in Ayodhya. I see the point that you and Sampath are making. What I am saying is that sometimes we speak from the vantage point of a kind of cosmopolitan neutrality and we tend to overlook or ignore what religion means to many people. Both the Hindus and the Muslims and the Sikhs and all. And sometimes it is an act of, it is not quite just to just take up that high handed, high moral secular ground. I think it is also important to come down from that high pedestal and use the language of the people. If it means religion, well so be it but one should not give into communalism. There is a distinction between being multi-religious, catering to religious sentiments, looking at religion as an act of faith and so on and yet not giving one inch to communalism. That is the famous Gandhian legacy and I think it should be possible to practice it without becoming completely cosmopolitan, cosmopolitan and neutral on question of religion. Sampath, today the situation, yes please. I wanted to basically ask Salil a question. He made the interesting distinction between the political opportunism of the Congress I believe and the ideologically driven communal agenda of the Hindu right. Now I would suggest that there is a dialectical relationship between these two and you cannot really have one without the other ever. And it is, if you are going to do only political opportunism and you somehow want to take a position that it is less condemnable or more acceptable than the other, then I would say that that is necessarily a very opportunistic stand to take because you cannot really expect that it will not have its own consequences in due course of time. That is a limited point. You know what I wanted to ask at this point is that we have reached a situation where it is considered to be politically incorrect. I use the word politically incorrect to in any way to be arguing the case for Muslims or other religious minorities. The Congress, I said you know Sonia Gandhi making that we have the burden of being labeled as a pro-minority party. That is why actually we are losing elections. Now how do you ensure that in a situation like this, you know that it is, I feel that it is very incumbent because there should not be a reaction from the other side also. You know after all if there is majority communism it is going to fan minority communism. There is a fair amount of very tremendous danger of what we use we call homegrown terror. There has been, we have seen certain specific instances. How does a party like the Congress, you know get the courage to be able to make a case for religious minorities. How is it to argue that it is necessary for political parties to reach out and convey to the Muslims specifically that their forefathers took the right decision of not leaving this country and going away to Pakistan. I think there is a responsibility because if we fail in that responsibility then you are possibly playing with fire. This is a very important point. I would suggest the way to look at it would be like Salil made a very powerful case where he said that if you are going to assess the political parties' strategies you need to look at it probably from the point of view of how can it capture power. And if you look at it from that perspective it is not real, it is a little bit understandable that Congress is doing this often for the people of any kind of business. But I would suggest that a more appropriate vantage point from which to assess the political parties' strategies would be to look at it from the point of view of the constitution and constitutional morality. Now what does the constitution have to say about the rights of minorities? You cannot have your politics for elections which is different from constitutional morality and then claim that once you are back in power you are going to follow constitutional morality. How does it even wash? You are not willing to speak up for minorities. If you are not willing to take the issues of lynchings when you are out of power why would you do it once you are in power? You would not do it. You would not do it. You would not roll back the old name of a law firm. We don't even know in what form let's say the Congress comes to power if it comes to power. Now you have the BJP which has got tremendous amounts of funding. It has got a very strong majority. It has got everything going for it and it has spent most of its energies, political energies on the campaign trail. It's leaders have spent most of their energies on the campaign trail despite being such a powerful position. How do we expect that the Congress when it's in power will not also be thinking about the next election or the immediate next assembly election and do accordingly? Do you think that the BJP is forcing the Congress to not just play within its own territory but also follow the same strategies that for it also to win elections becomes the sole objective of Congress? True, but I think Congress must realize that its long-term strength and advantage lies in its own territory and not BJP's territory. Which means that a kind of pro-minority position is absolutely indispensable. It's not in contradiction with secularism. Secularism in the Indian context has to mean reaching out to minorities if you look at Nehru's letters to Chief Ministers throughout the 50s. This is not the Congress party of the Nehru. This is the Congress party of Rahul Gandhi. This is the party of Rahul Gandhi. Rahul Gandhi, whose party leader say that he is a Jnayudhari. Jnayugetra may be okay. But the party needs to be told that there is its long-term, there may be short-term disadvantages but long-term strength and disadvantage will come from using and inheriting its own legacy of the 40s and the 50s which is a very powerful legacy. It's a legacy of secularism which is combined with reaching out to minorities making sure that the minorities are not discriminated against and so on. That must not be given up. So all the propaganda about minorities should not be bought and the leader should realize that its long-term interest and that of the society and the country lies in combining secularism with reaching out to minorities. One is not antithetical to the other. Both the ideas go together and then you can have all your rhetoric, religious rhetoric about Hinduism etc. There is no contradiction, you can do both but reaching out to minorities must not be abandoned. That would be suicidal for the party and for the society. We have said that it will be suicidal for society and for the party also. Sampath as a journalist who follows these events very closely do you think it's possible? To go back to what it used to be in terms of articulating the concerns of minorities in terms of being the protector of secularism the way it used to be at one point or is it now too firmly committed into fighting for space within the Hindutva canvas? It becomes a soft Hindutva party and you have now a Hindutva rainbow in place of the bigger rainbow which Congress used to represent at one point. I would say the answer to it depends on the quality and the caliber of the people who compose the Congress in the Congress leadership. I suggested earlier that it was a very narrow social composition of the Congress when it was sort of framing the Constitution Assembly debate and so on. But the quality of the people was such that even so you came up with a very good document, a fantastic document. Today what is the kind of people who compose the leadership positions in the Congress? Do they represent the diversity of constituencies or are they lateral entrant? Are they aristocrats? I think a lot will depend on the kind of people who compose the Congress and the quality that they bring to political leadership. And if one way to take an optimistic view I would suggest that I would like to have a lot of faith in the Congress system and what Ajnik Othari talks about where you do have space for a diversity of views, a plurality of interest to be represented within the Congress system. If Congress allows space for these kinds of forces to develop and come up in its ranks I would say that they could probably do this, but if they do not then that's... Party definitely remains, the Congress remains pluralistic but it is definitely much more fearful of one shade of in the entire canvas which is there. This conversation would continue because this is not going to be the last that we are hearing of the matter, I do not see that there is going to be an immediate rollback. The Congress is to my mind is fairly committed to the path that it has been on for the last almost three decades plus and let's anyway as you said you know that it must not abandon the path of secularism and its legacy cannot be abandoned. So thank you very much for coming and joining me and thank you for having watched this program. My worry is that possibly India has reached a situation where the language of faith has become the dominant language in India. On this note, goodbye.