Minority appeasement in the past seven decades has been the core of the DNA of the Congress party. Be it the general or assembly elections, the entire Congress ecosystem has always tried to woo Muslim voters to win the elections in the country.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, especially, has always favoured and extended support to the Muslim community. He has several times defamed India and Hindus on global platforms peddling lies that ‘Minority communities in India are under attack’. He made such statements against India in Washington, the Cambridge University, and also in New Delhi recently in September this year.
Congress has for decades indulged in appeasement politics but the truth is that the grand old party’s idea of minority empowerment has remained purely rhetorical
Rahul Gandhi has, however, only been carrying forward the grand old party’s legacy of appeasement politics.
As stated in his letter to Rajendra Prasad, Jawaharlal Nehru saw the reconstruction of the Somnath Temple as an ‘act of Hindu-revivalism’. Nehru oversaw the implementation of the Hindu Code Bill and other laws that forced the minority group into silos and separated them into a separate class, despite the calls of Rajendra Prasad and other notables for a Uniform Civil Code. Nehru insisted that Muslims required “extra protection.”
The Muslim Personal Law Board was established under Indira Gandhi’s leadership, which went directly against the letter of Article 44 of the Constitution, which demanded a uniform civil code.
Under Congress Rule, the ‘Waqf Act’ first came into being in India in 1954 and in 1964 Central Waqf Council was constituted under that Act. In August 2022, it came to light that the Congress-led-UPA government gifted 123 government properties in Lutyens’ Delhi to Waqf.
The Muslim Women Protection on Divorce Act was drafted by Rajiv Gandhi specifically to overturn the Supreme Court’s Shah Bano ruling (1986). The Supreme Court’s sanctity and women’s rights were of the least importance to Congress’s appeasement politics.
Manmohan Singh helped radicalization of Congress further by unabashedly stating that Muslims, in particular, have the first claim to the nation’s resources.
Over the years, the politics of minority appeasement have consumed the members of the Congress party. To the surprise of many, the party senior leaders—Salman Khurshid and Digvijay Singh, among others—questioned the 2008 Batla House encounter. Meanwhile, as attested by Salman Khurshid himself in one of his rallies during the 2012 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, Sonia Gandhi, the then Congress President cried bitterly after seeing the images of the slain Indian Mujahideen terrorists.
However, the party, later on, got into firefighting mode and Congress’ Digvijaya Singh denied any such meeting. Congress leader Pervez Hashmi, who was part of the delegation that met Sonia Gandhi also denied having seen her cry. “She was worried,” he had then clarified. Eventually, 7 years later, even Khurshid said that she never cried.
In the recent past one of the most glaring glimpses of the Congress party’s submission to Islamism was its decision to review AFSPA should it come to power in 2019.
Notably, the demand for the removal of AFSPA has long been the focus of radical Islamic organizations and far-left institutions inimical to Indian interests. These organizations have peddled the most nefarious of propaganda which has only served as a tool to radicalize the youth of Kashmir.
In addition to this, the 2019 Congress manifesto made other promises to the Muslim community as well. It said on page 42, “The Waqf Properties (Eviction of Unauthorized Occupants) Bill, 2014 will be re-introduced and passed. Waqf properties will be restored to the legal trustees.” In addition to that, “Congress promises to uphold the character of Aligarh Muslim University and Jamia Millia Islamia as minority educational institutions.”
The Congress, for which minority appeasement has been the most obsessive pursuit and political agenda, as recently as last year, expressed support for granting special rights to minorities in terms of national resources. The statement was made by Congress veteran leader and Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah. Former Karnataka Chief Minister and senior BJP leader Basavaraj Bommai had then slammed the state Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and accused him of indulging in minority appeasement politics while doing “injustice” to Dalits and tribal communities.
These are but a few examples of the many occasions Congress has resorted to appeasement politics. The Grand Old Party’s compulsive practice of appeasing minorities has not only radicalised the Congress but also forced India to confront the menace of illegal infiltrators in West Bengal and Assam, changing the country’s demographics and sparking decades of insurgencies. The impact is evident in Muslims who appear to maintain the sociopolitical perspective of the pre-independence era, according to which they belong to a separate class within the nation.
The nation has suffered more than benefited from the grand old party’s obsessive politics of minority appeasement. This political game has been played by the leaders of Congress for a long time, unfazed. Still, it won’t be a stretch to argue that Congress’ idea of empowering minorities has stayed purely rhetorical. You might be surprised to hear that Congress, in Karnataka, for example, has rarely fielded a Muslim candidate in the past in any of the parliamentary elections.
The grand old party has hardly given tickets to Muslim candidates in Karnataka
In fact, Karnataka has sent only one Muslim MP to Lok Sabha in the last 20 years- Iqbal Ahmed Saradgi from Gulbarga in 2004 – with the three major political parties (BJP, Congress and JDU) not fielding many candidates. And, independents and those from smaller unrecognised parties seldom stand a chance of winning in Parliamentary polls.
Let us take the 2014 Lok Sabha polls for example. Congress, BJP and JD(S) together fielded only three candidates from Karnataka. Out of these three, Congress fielded two, one from the Haveri constituency and the second from Bengaluru Central.
Likewise, in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the grand old party gave a ticket to only one Muslim candidate in Karnataka- Rizwan Arshad from Bangalore Central constituency, out of a total of 21 seats Congress contested after seat sharing agreement with JD(U).
Similarly, Congress and JD(U) in Karnataka together fielded four Muslim candidates in 2004 and three in 2009, which makes it a total of 11 Muslim candidates in the past four elections. BJP has not even fielded a single Muslim candidate in Karnataka in these years. This takes the numbers to less than 10 per cent of the 112 candidates they collectively fielded in the said period.
This year too, there is just one candidate, Congress’ Bangalore Central candidate Mansoor Ali Khan, who is taking on three-time BJP MP PC Mohan.