Should cow and temple be the only two things that define the Hindu Majority electorally?
Lo Behold, it is the season of appeasement this election year! The development is out of stock and issues of the common man aren’t doing well on the political menu card. But who cares when the appeasement politics is selling widely. The only difference this time the buyer is not a minority now but the majority.
Appeasement politics is not new to Indians. We all know how Congress and other self-proclaimed secular parties gave rise to minority appeasement by granting them policy favors, then be it Shah Bano moment of Rajiv Gandhi or Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Muslim Appeasement. The 2014 elections that placed BJP’s Narendra Modi on the Prime ministerial throne was expected to reverse this practice. However, four years into the Modi government and not the practice but the roles have reversed.
While BJP had always targeted Hindus as its core vote bank, Congress too is now shifting its boat towards the Hindu majority community. After facing the worst defeat in 2014 that reduced the party to only 44 MPs in the Lok Sabha and losing out several Assembly elections to the saffron party, the Congress too is following BJP’s footprints and appealing the Hindu majority.
Though, initially, the appeal to the majority began in form of Soft Hindutva, as the 2019 election is approaching the party has intensified its moves. Off late, the party has thrown away the veil of soft Hindutva and is establishing a direct connect with the Hindu majority. In its rule of almost a decade, Congress was accused of ignoring the majority’s interests. With a fund crunch and fading public support glaring in the face, the party doesn’t want to upset the majority, especially considering how focusing on the majority vote bank paid off well to the BJP in the elections.
Now, both the national parties are in a race to appease the Hindu majority. Recently, President of Madhya Pradesh Congress Kamal Nath came up with the promise of constructing cowsheds in every panchayat. Not even two days have passed and the chief spokesperson of the party commented that Congress has inherent Brahmin DNA. Addressing an event in Haryana’s Kurukshetra on Monday, party media-in-charge Randeep Singh Surjewala played the caste card and reportedly said, “One of my colleagues asked why a Brahmin conference is being held using Rahul Gandhi’s photo and under the Congress party flag and the Tricolour? I said that I will respond to this from this platform one day. Indian National Congress is that party, my friends, in whose blood there is Brahmin Samaj’s DNA.”
प्रदेश की हर पंचायत में "गौशाला" बनाएंगे ..।
ये घोषणा नहीं वचन हैं। pic.twitter.com/ZGeA590n6Z— Office Of Kamal Nath (@OfficeOfKNath) September 3, 2018
From Congress’ attempt to position Rahul Gandhi as a devout Shiv Bhakt Hindu, Congress even felt the need to assert that he is “janeu-dhari”. These days, the Congress is handing out clarifications that the party president ate only “pure veg” food at a Restaurant in Nepal on his way to Kailash-Mansarovar.
What good these controversies and debates over trivial subjects like the food consumed by Rahul Gandhi to Brahmin DNA remark, on which both, Congress and BJP feeding on to, are doing for the majority Hindu community? The problems of falling rupee, rising fuel problems and employment that affect the common man are being shadowed by the efforts of both the parties to prove that they’re the true messiah of Hindu majority.
Does that solve the problem of Hindu majority? No. On the contrary, this dangerous precedent of appeasement only gives rise to the monster that will take the Hindu majority on the same path as India’s minority: reducing them to just a vote bank. With Akhilesh Yadav jumping in the battleground with the promise to construct Krishna Mandir, I am compelled to wonder should cow and temple be the only two things that define the Hindu Majority electorally? Shouldn’t there be more to the Hindus of India than just cows and temples? Shouldn’t the election manifesto of parties focus more on development that has gone missing out of the political lexicon in the election year, or the education, economic reforms for that matter?
With the 2019 elections around the corner, one thing is for sure- Minority appeasement is now a passé, it is the season of majority appeasement now.
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