When undivided India was partitioned on the basis of religion, the blood sport of partition had turned the Punjab province crimson that was to spread like wild fire. Train loads of butchered and battered Hindu and Sikh corpses were packed off as an Independence gift from Pakistan to Nehru and Patel. With tens of lakhs of people killed, raped, converted, looted, orphaned and displaced the horrors of partition had left millions bitter with nightmares of inconceivable barbarism that its survivors had endured. Those that had lost their lands, property, people, their everything were rendered as refugees in their own lands, living miserable lives amidst the filth and stench of death and diseases in those abominable refugee camps, After those flurry of furious killings of the Hindus and Sikhs that went unabated in the new Islamic state of Pakistan where all administration had collapsed willfully or otherwise with no pre-conditions set for the safety and security of the migrating millions by their novice Indian administrators, the Indian side began erupting in vitriolic vengeance, Nehru the first Indian prime minister of Independent India had beseeched the British to take stock and help administrate a partitioned India that was now plunged in cataclysmic communal violence.
The masses in those moving trains of death had neither got justice from Pakistan, India or the British but Nehru had vowed to side and safeguard the Muslims. Even the British that had almost washed its hands off until then had now geared up with their Emergency Commission set up to contain the violence erupting in India and safely help transit the Muslims to Pakistan.
Even after two wars with Pakistan in 1948 and 1971, Congress under Indira Gandhi in 1976 had declared a predominantly Hindu India as a secular nation by making constitutional amendments.
Later this ‘Secular’ word was to become the catchword of political parties that would soon morph into blatant Muslim appeasement tool at the cost of the majority.
Over the years every other legislation made, every election manifesto was in sync with Nehru’s informal agreement of non-intervention into Muslim beliefs and practices that gradually rendered the majority Hindus as third class citizens in their own land paying up for all the privileges that the minorities enjoyed. It is for this reason that a Uniform Civil Code still stands pending as successive political parties have lined up to appease the 25-30% of minority population who ‘seemed’ to control the majority decisions.
The many disconcerted minority appeasement policies of the Congress gradually morphed into an anti-Hindu stand taking the Hindus for granted. The communal politics that the Congress practised in the guise of secularism had ultimately cost the Congress its throne that was otherwise undisputed until 2014. The renaissance of Hindu voices and the tectonic shift in countering the obsolete political narratives of the Congress with intelligible and dynamic mediums by the BJP at large and people in particular had brought the Congress on its knees.
But an adamant and arrogant Congress had still chosen to pass off the same apple pie as a prudent politician with the same secular strategies of minority appeasement promises by aligning with all and sundry until they were hit hard in the face in the UP elections where even a Prashant Kishore could not convince the voters.
The Congress’ anti-Hindu stand was a sentiment that resonated and still resonates with majority of Hindus as their brazen Muslim appeasement is now an evident fang that cannot be hidden beneath polished polity, so much so that even Muslims themselves are now switching towards the BJP. This was evident in Uttar Pradesh election results.
With the Muslim votebanks shrinking and vulnerable, the Congress had little spunk left to sell and no space to conquer, after seven decades of indifference they were forced to bow down to the Hindus, especially when their campaigning had to cater to a Hindu Gujarat.
Gujarat was a gamble they undertook with relentless politicking and polarization that began strategically early in the day with Una Dalit protests and Patidar protests where India’s oldest secular party had pitched their time tested, outsourced bets of Dalit separatism and caste divides backed by their Muslim and Christian messiahs who left no stone unturned to eat into BJP’s voteshare. Whether or not the Congress propped up the Patidar reservation demands, their overt and covert support to these wild card entries did make them seem like Siamese twins. But then their pitch had to look real as it was a new strategy to be wooing the Hindu voters for a change. While Indians have learnt it quite early in life to be a Roman in Rome, it took Rahul Gandhi 47years to act like an Indian in India for one day. The termites had spread considerably as the BJP had allowed it in their incumbent long years. The red tilak on the white face looked resplendent! The lies told innumerous times seemed real to the gullible, the inaction due to the infighting in the state BJP had been leveraged, their ad hominem divisive strategy has worked! They have now tasted blood!
Why then would they let go of it now when they have nothing to offer and nothing to lose except but to emerge as a resurrected Hindu Congress party especially in a plush liberal(Congress) ecosystem thriving everywhere as the BJP has been unable to contain and crush it in its roots,
With the BJP now metamorphosing into a soft secular party with incessant insistence on the same populist practices of Congress’s minority appeasement, increased reservation quotas, loan waivers and subsidies for the poor with no respite for the tax paying salaried class in general and Hindus and their causes in particular, the Congress’s soft Hindutva is bound to branch out.
But in the current scenario where each day twitter handles of the Government representatives respond favorably mostly to the who’s who of the liberal political eco systems or minorities or their causes, I am reminded of a story from the Bhagvata Purana….
Ajamila, once a noble Brahmin had fallen in all morals after he had sacrificed his dear family and all his noble qualities to win over and be in the company of a sinful woman who bore him 10 children. To attend and appease this indignant burden he had begun to commit many sins of cheating, fraud and blackmailing. Finally when his time had come, when Yamadhutas came for him hurling at him the Yamapaasha, he called out in agony, his youngest son’s name …..’Narayana’ upon which sprung the Vishnudhutaas who refused to allow Ajamila to be taken for punishment by the Yamadhutaas.
The fruit of uttering the divine name in the hour of death had earned Ajamila the mercy of the Gods with the blessing of life yet again, upon which Ajamila had reflected and renounced everything plunging himself into deep penance.
But in this Kaliyuga, the Ajamilas have morphed into Ajmals who may or may not reflect upon their past sins, but the fact that the Ruling Gods continue to nurse and shield these sinners with utmost care has left the noble souls wondering if Dharma is too narrow a path to take without the obligation of sinning!