Pitfalls of Congress playing the caste card

As the Maharashtra elections draw near, it’s impossible not to be struck by the absence of ‘mohabbat ki dukan’ type of approach by the Congress party. It’s now shifted focus from community to caste because it thinks it can take the Muslim vote for granted. The strategy is take the Muslim vote, add a small percentage of the Hindu vote and voila! you will be back in power in 2029.

Whose idea is this? Will it work if not accompanied by a huge falsehood like ‘reservations will be abolished’? Most importantly, will this help the Muslims or harm them? History shows that Congress policies towards the Muslims have never helped them and indeed actually harmed them.

And this has happened because one of the greatest tragedies of Indian politics has been that, since 1920, the Congress party has been utterly undemocratic, dominated always by one person. For it, democracy hasn’t ever begun at home.

Personality politics

First it was Gandhiji (1920-48); then Jawaharlal Nehru (1950-64); then Indira Gandhi (1971-84), Rajiv Gandhi (1985-89), Sonia Gandhi (1998-2020) and now Rahul Gandhi. It’s as if the DNA of the Chinese Communist Party and the Indian National Congress are the same. It’s a one person show.

Amongst the consequences for India has been the khilafat movement of Gandhiji which no one wanted; the selective social reforms of Nehruji which upset his party colleagues; the animosity to the RSS of Indiraji; the extraordinary wooing of Muslims by Rajivji and Soniaji; and now the attempt, against saner counsel, to bring back caste as the driving force of our politics by Rahulji.

And because the party is run by just one person, each of these strategies has backfired and always cost the party and the people of India very dear. The Congress has nearly lost the Hindu vote. The country has lost opportunities to be governed with an even hand.

Thus, Gandhiji’s sudden withdrawal of the khilafat agitation eventually resulted in the Muslim leadership drifting away from the Congress and gave the British a crucial opening. Nehru’s decision not to amend Muslim personal law while amending the Hindu one created the opportunity for the Jana Sangh to expand.

Later, Indira Gandhi’s dislike of the RSS put wind in the sails of the opposition in 1977 which decimated the Congress in north India. Rajiv Gandhi’s Shah Bano nonsense permanently drove away Hindus from the Congress. Sonia Gandhi’s incomprehensible politics reduced the Congress to 44 seats in 2014. It’s an unending story of folly caused entirely by the dominance of just one person.

Not learning

Unmindful of this history, the Congress today has adopted a strategy that will wipe it out: caste politics. This has the potential, as earlier efforts of the Congress did, to make the Muslims even more irrelevant politically and thus more vulnerable. The more Rahul Gandhi tries to split the Hindu vote, the more the BJP will try to unite it by painting the Muslims as villains. This has started happening massively since July this year. But the thing is that caste politics works best at the regional level when caste-based parties practise it. It can’t work at the national level where a stronger glue is needed.

Until recently the Gandhi family provided the glue but it is now increasingly viewed as a Muslims-first party. But despite that the Muslims vote for regional parties because unlike their leaders, the Muslim voter says “I want neither the BJP nor the Congress”. It’s perfectly rational.

The Rahul approach will once again consolidate the Hindu vote sufficiently to let the BJP regain the initiative that it lost after December 2023 simply because the BJP will now say ‘if you say “Muslims+caste, we will say Hindus-caste’ — but we will give tickets exactly like you do on caste lines. You can see this in Maharashtra.

Hindu voters outnumber Muslims voters by six or seven times. Even with every single Muslim voting for the Congress it can’t push its vote share beyond maybe eight per cent. It needs another 30 percentage points to match the BJP. Hundred per cent of 15 crore Muslim votes is still less than 40 per cent of 100 crore Hindu votes.

It’s amazing that neither the Muslim leadership, such as it is, nor the Congress is able to see the dangers of the Congress bear hug. It would be wise of the Muslim leadership, liberal and mullahs, to tell the Congress what Gandhiji told the British, namely, leave it to us to sort out our problems and differences with the RSS and the BJP.