In politics there are enough occasions where all sides can justifiably claim victory. Former President Pranab Mukherjee’s speech at the RSS event last week falls into this category. The Congress leadership was understandably upset with Pranab and slammed him for having accepted the RSS’ invitation. It did its best to dissuade him from going. But Pranab at the Nagpur event spoke about India’s plural ethos saying that, “Our national identity has emerged after a long-drawn process of confluence and assimilation… any attempt at defining our nationhood in terms of dogmas and identities of religion, region, hatred and intolerance will only lead to dilution of our national identity”.

He also spoke about secularism and for good measure invoked Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and Tagore in his speech. So the Congress heaved a sigh of relief and claimed victory by cherry picking parts of speech to put the RSS in its place. Even intellectuals like Ramachandra Guha were appreciative of Pranab’s speech.

For the RSS, that it had managed to get a former President to preside over an event that few in the country would have heard of before last week was nothing short of a publicity coup. Also, Pranab calling RSS founder KB Hegdewar, “a great son of mother India”, would have gladdened the hearts of the Parivar. The Congress predictably chose to downplay this and asked the RSS to take Pranab’s “sagacious” advice.

But despite the Congress’ positive spin, it was rattled by the fact that a veteran Congressman accepted an invitation by the RSS, which represents the very anti-thesis of Congress’ core ideology, however frayed and tattered it is at the moment.

What motivated Pranab to accept RSS’ invitation? By saying that “political untouchability” was not a solution, was he being a statesman rising above the secularism-Hindutva binary, or was he sending a larger political message by giving secularism an acceptable ‘Hindu gloss’ and suitably positioning himself in a fluid political scenario?

Baskar BDeputy Editor

Related Topics