Digvijay’s choice

Digvijay is a brilliant strategist and tactician. But the problem is that in competitive politics like ours, one who adopts an extreme posture holds greater appeal. He can never speak the language of a Togadia or a Vinay Katiyar, a Sadhvi Ritambara or a Uma Bharati. This became clear in Dhar. Once the MP CM agreed to open the Bhojshala to the Hindus once a week, the Hindu Jagran Manch again upped the ante. They said they would not be satisfied till it is opened to Hindus for worship every day.

This can be a dangerous game. Competitive politics created Bhindranwale, and the Akalis proved no match for him as he pandered to the Sikhs’ sense of grievance. Much depends on being able to sense the pulse of the people and draw the line where it must be drawn.

Things can go out of control, as they seem to have done on the issue of the PM eating beef. It can rebound, with Vajpayee opening virtually every speech in Himachal Pradesh by saying that he would prefer to die than to eat beef, and that he belongs to MP. Shilanyas backfired on Rajiv Gandhi in 1989.

The issue has also backfired because the BJP is now putting the Congress on the mat and asking Sonia Gandhi when she stopped eating beef. It is possible that Digvijay’s enemies have used the opportunity to do him down by distributing the anti-PM posters, as is being alleged by those close to him. It is, however, unclear why the MP Youth Congress chief who sent out these instructions has not yet been sacked when both AICC and Digvijay have dissociated themselves from what she did.

Then there is the long-term impact of this strategy. When both mainstream parties jump into the fray, it will lead to a greater Hinduisation of the polity. Some will argue that this is happening anyway, that there is a Hindu undercurrent in the country today. And that the parties, the BJP and now the Congress, are just chasing this sense of grievance, right or wrong, in the majority community, rather than creating it.

There are two courses open to the Congress in a situation which is becoming highly charged on religious issues. One is to hang on tightly to its secular agenda as it has been defined so far, and stick to it even if it means losing an election or two, and wait for this sentiment to subside. But this is difficult for any political party.

The second option is to appropriate the prevalent mood, which Digvijay has tried to do, and to then give it a direction that does not prey upon the insecurities of the minorities. Merely talking about development may not work in the high-pitched atmosphere created by the BJP and its offshoots. Aware of the rightward shift after Margaret Thatcher’s rule, the Labour party had to move rightwards to beat the conservatives in Britain.

Of course, religious symbols have been used for political mobilisation before. Gandhi resorted to them — though not in the context of electoral politics — because it was an idiom a large number of people understand in a religious country. Before him, the secular group had reached an audience limited to the western educated liberals.

Neither of the options before the Congress today is an easy one. Either way, it calls for clarity on what the party stands for and leadership of a high order. What is tragic, however, is that in this day and age when a Kalpana Chawla can make her odyssey in space, the agenda before the country’s main parties should only be whether a temple existed at a particular spot hundreds or thousands of years ago.