Congress' temple theatrics

Congress's selective Hinduism, from Nehru to Rahul, reflects political opportunism through temple theatrics and shifting religious postures for electoral gains

- ANIRBAN GANGULY

In his thanksgiving address to BJP workers and the people of Delhi after the resounding mandate in favour of the BJP, ending a 27-year hiatus, Prime Minister Modi referred to two very interesting characteristics of the Congress. One was the habit of its leaders, especially its first family members, to become Hindu when elections were around the corner and later, when they realised that it did not pay dividends, to hop to the other pole. Its other habit was that of a parasite. The Congress ate up, corroded, sucked and ultimately worked to desiccate smaller parties which it had ensnared into an alliance.

The Somnath reconstruction saga is too well-known to bear repetition. Yet, it is an episode that needs continuous reiteration. It needs to be remembered just like the saga of the First Amendment, in which Pandit Nehru sought to curtail freedom of expression and speech, like the infamously dark chapter of the Emergency in which Nehru's daughter had turned India into one big prison house, just like the Shah Bano episode and Rajiv Gandhi's jettisoning of women's right and kowtowing to anti-constitution fundamentalists, the Union Carbide carnage and how Warren Anderson was allowed to escape the clutches of Indian law. Many such episodes need reiteration and need to be underlined for every generation.