6 min readMay 7, 2023 04:42 PM IST
First published on: May 7, 2023 at 07:55 AM IST
It is both ironic and hilarious that it is the Congress Party’s manifesto that has brought Hindutva to the fore in the Karnataka election campaign. We now have the Prime Minister himself taking full advantage by encouraging cries of ‘Jai Bajrangbali’ at his election rallies. Rama has taken a temporary backseat and his loyal soldier Hanuman has taken his place. In the only southern state the BJP has ever won, temples since last week began recitations of the Hanuman Chalisa, and a senior Congress leader has been forced to publicly declare that if his ‘secular’ party wins Karnataka this time, he will build Hanuman temples in every district.
All of this has happened because some idiotic advisor in Rahul Gandhi’s inner circle decided to insert a paragraph in the party’s manifesto that puts the Bajrang Dal in the same bracket as the Popular Front of India (PFI). Clearly whoever did this is unable to distinguish between thugs and terrorists. The Bajrang Dal is made up of thuggish goons who spend their time spreading hatred against Islam and Christianity and obsess about assaulting girls who celebrate Valentine’s Day or go dancing in short skirts.
This is not to deny that the Bajrang Dal is capable of murder as well as mayhem. We saw this in the brutality with which Muslims were massacred in the Naroda Patiya district of Ahmedabad in the 2002 riots. One of the leaders of the murderous mob was called Babu Bajrangi and he along with the killers he led have never hesitated to boast about the pleasure they got in killing Muslim women and children. Since Narendra Modi became prime minister, this bunch of despicable lowlifes has spent much time seeking out Muslims to lynch on suspicion of killing cows. Like all religious fanatics, they are ugly, narrow-minded brutes. But they are not jihadis with clear links to the worldwide jihad.
The Popular Front of India (PFI) is made up of exactly such jihadi terrorists whose main purpose has been to introduce in India the kind of Islam that the Taliban has used to ruin Afghanistan. The PFI until it got banned organized military parades of its cadres. They never deny that for them Islam is more important than India. After that incident in Kerala in 2010, when they hacked a Christian professor’s hand off for allegedly blaspheming the Prophet of Islam, their activities have been more insidious but, in every sense, dangerous and divisive.
In Karnataka, it was the PFI that organized the hijab protest in schools and colleges. Exactly when the brave women of Iran risked imprisonment and torture to defy the Ayatollahs by publicly removing and burning hijabs, young Muslim girls in Karnataka were demanding the right to go to classes wearing hijab. It was an absurd and ludicrous protest but there is more to hijabs than modesty. Experts who have studied the worldwide jihad have found that the first signs of radicalism are when Muslim communities suddenly decide to force women to start wearing Arab clothes. In India, the PFI has led the movement to radicalize the very gentle Islam that was once practised here. It was a religion associated with refinement, elegance, romantic poetry, and romantic films. This was the Islam I grew up with in northern India and I have seen it change before my eyes.
There are those, mostly leftists and liberals, who like comparing Hindutva with radical Islam but these are people blinded by liberalism and a defunct ideology. Hindutva has done real harm to the great Sanatan Dharma, and it has been responsible for many acts of violence against Muslims and Dalits, but it has so far not become an international terrorist movement. It has spread hatred but not come anywhere near close to creating a Hindu version of the barbaric Islamic State.
The world is a better place with that wretched country dead and gone but the return of Taliban rule in Afghanistan indicates that the founding ideas that the Islamic State espoused have found a new country. The worst sufferers have been Afghan women who have lost the right to education and the right to work. Nothing like that has happened in India or will ever happen because fanaticism of the kind that bred the Bajrang Dal has no religious sanction.
The Congress Party has in the past made the mistake of equating Hindutva with jihadism. BJP leaders never fail to remind us that a senior Congress leader tried to blame the 26/11 attack on Mumbai on the RSS, or that Rahul Gandhi himself told an American ambassador that in his considered opinion Hindu terrorism was more dangerous than Islamic terrorism. Since then, Rahul and his sister have done their best to wear their Hinduism on their sleeves by trotting off to temples at election time and making it a point to post pictures of themselves at prayer on social media.
This does the Congress Party more harm than good. And the reason is that with the BJP ranting and raving about gods and religion what we need most now is a political party that proudly flaunts its secular credentials. This is best done by reminding Indians that there was a time when election campaigns were not conducted like religious festivals. It is with deep nostalgia that I remember elections past when political leaders did not ask for votes in the name of gods and goddesses.
Congress' manifesto for the Karnataka polls 2023 puts the Bajrang Dal in the same bracket as the Popular Front of India. (PTI) 
Share
