Rahul146;s step backward

When I pushed him aside and went in anyway, I met young men who said they could not speak to me because they only spoke Arabic. In the half-hour that I spent wandering about the seminary grounds, I saw only one woman, and she was so heavily veiled that only her eyes showed.

The Dar-ul-Uloom represents the kind of Islam that we do not want in India 8212; which is why I found it so distressing last week to see the Congress party8217;s 8216;Crown Prince8217; use it as his launch-pad for his election campaign in Uttar Pradesh. Rahul Gandhi stuck an Islamic skullcap on his head and pronounced that had a member of his family been prime minister in 1992, the Babri Masjid would not have been demolished.

So the Congress party is not secular, only the Nehru-Gandhi family is. Right? And, this is a family that is so 8216;secular8217; that although it despises 8216;communal8217; parties like the Bharatiya Janata Party, it is perfectly happy to consort with jihadis whose aim is to convert the dar-ul-harb abode of war that is India into dar-ul-Islam.

Is this not too great a sacrifice to make for the Muslim vote? Will this kind of obvious ploy fool Uttar Pradesh8217;s Muslims into voting Congress? Personally, I think not, and personally, it saddens me that someone as young as Rahul Gandhi should need to resort to the sort of divisive politics that has destroyed states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

Last week the Planning Commission released a report on poverty that says that Uttar Pradesh has 17.34 crore poor people, most of whom live below the poverty line. This means that a rural family lives on a monthly income of Rs 356 and an urban family on Rs 538. That8217;s about how much a middle-class family in Delhi or Mumbai would pay for a meal in a restaurant. How horrific is that? Should this not be a big issue in next month8217;s election?

It should be younger politicians who shift the focus away from temples and mosques to issues of development and economic growth. The Congress party has so few seats in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly that it can afford to take the risk of setting a new agenda. Why not go to the polls with the promise that Uttar Pradesh8217;s schools will no longer have dirt floors and broken desks? Why not go with the promise that every child will get a proper, nutritious midday meal instead of just the sham of one? Why not promise that the state will get proper hospitals and health centres?

As someone who lives from time to time in a village in Maharashtra, I find myself horrified by rural living conditions in Uttar Pradesh. Maharashtra is one of the five states in which, according to the Planning Commission, 50 per cent of India8217;s poor people live, but in my village we do not have the open drains, flies and filth of Uttar Pradesh8217;s villages. In Uttar Pradesh living conditions are so squalid and primitive that every time I make a visit I come back in despair. We are never going to make it if our largest and most populous state continues to go from bad to worse.

No matter what Amitabh Bachchan tells us in Mulayam Singh8217;s hugely expensive television campaign to win the next election, there is a hopelessness and horror about Uttar Pradesh that speaks of politicians who put mosques, temples, caste and creed above governance.

If Rahul Gandhi wants to become prime minister one day, he should realise that now is the time to lead. If he shifts the agenda and loses, he would still be seen as a promising young leader, and if he shifts the agenda and wins, then what could be better? What he must not do any more is consort with people who have nothing to offer other than the poison of religious fanaticism. Whether Hindu or Muslim, fanaticism is only fanaticism and in India we have already had more than our fair share.