Rahul Gandhi, the fledgling and burgeoning politician, has been misinformed—yet again—by his advisors that revolution is what India needs, and being projected as a revolutionary will purvey himself to be an alternative to Narendra Modi. After the election manifesto launch by the Indian National Congress, Rahul, in his public addresses, started harping on the terms “revolutionary” and “wealth distribution”, terms that are seemingly and etymologically Maoist.
In a public engagement in Hyderabad, a day after the manifesto launch, he observed, “We will conduct a financial and institutional survey to find out who holds the country’s wealth, what section holds it, and then we will undertake revolutionary work. Whatever your right, we will work on giving you the same.” This was bound to allure untoward, undue and unwarranted reactions from political quarters, but none could fathom that this would give a fertile pitch and snowball into one of the main polling planks for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), entailing a frontal assault from PM Modi leading the offensive.
PM Modi, addressing the sea of supporters in a rally in Rajasthan, said that the Congress would distribute the country’s wealth, if voted to power, to “those who have more children.” Promulgating the Congress as an “urban Naxal” party, he added, “The Congress manifesto says they will calculate the gold with mothers and sisters, get information about it, and then distribute that property. They will distribute it to whom? Manmohan Singh’s government said that Muslims have the first right to the country’s assets.”
PM Modi said during a rally in Banswara, “Earlier, when their (Congress) government was in power, they said that Muslims had the first right to the country’s assets. This means to whom will this property be distributed? It will be distributed among those who have more children. It will be distributed to the infiltrators. This is urban Naxal thinking, and mothers and sisters, they will not even spare your Mangalsutra. They will stoop to this level” thus suggesting that the Congress mandates to redistribute public wealth to Muslims.
Before the Opposition or the Congress could comprehend the polity, the emotion, and the defacement that this shift in the PM’s priorities had caused, the offensive continued the following day in yet another public engagement, where Modi added, “The Prince (alluding to Rahul Gandhi) says if his government comes, they will investigate who earns how much and how much property they have. Not only this, but he further says the government will take over the property and redistribute it. This is what their election manifesto is saying.”
Let us delve deeper into the chain of events hitherto, the political speeches and the newly released Congress manifesto, for this necessitates a closer examination of the documented facts and contexts rather than merely tangential rhetorical social media retorts offered by interested parties or allied trolls. It is noteworthy for an objective and rational critique that we understand the basic premise that an election manifesto is a letter of intent, and vision and intents are unquantifiable. A manifesto does not underscore the execution or implementation part.
The Congress manifesto in the equity section asserts, “Congress will conduct a nationwide socio-economic and caste census to enumerate the castes and sub-castes and their socio-economic conditions. Based on the data, we will strengthen the agenda for affirmative action.” It also notes that the party guarantees to pass a constitutional amendment to raise the 50 per cent cap on reservations for SC, ST and OBC.
Under the religious and linguistic minorities subsection in the very same section, it is mentioned that they will ensure the minorities receive their fair share of opportunities in education, healthcare, public employment, public works contracts, skill development, sports and cultural activities without discrimination. This adds up to only one cogent and coherent inference: apart from the wealth distribution to Muslims in line with what the former PM Manmohan Singh asserted, the Congress is planning for ‘Muslim reservation’ in education, employment, contracts and even sports!
As per PM Modi, “As soon as the Congress took office in 2004, the UPA, under its leadership, decided to grant Muslim reservations out of the SC/ST reservation in Andhra Pradesh. They tried to implement Muslim reservations but failed to do so. This was a pilot project that the Congress wanted to try across the entire country. Between 2004 and 2010, the Congress tried four times to implement Muslim reservations in Andhra Pradesh. However, due to legal hurdles and the alacrity of the Supreme Court, it could not fulfill its sinister plan. In 2011, Congress tried to implement it across the country. They snatched the rights given to SC/ST and OBC and gave them to others for vote-bank politics. The Congress gives two hoots to Babasaheb Ambedkar and the Constitution. Its only primacy is to its vote-bank politics of appeasement.”
But this is something that would come as a shock only to politically uninitiated minds. Political observers concur that Muslim appeasement or minorityism has been a sine qua non for the Congress since its inception. To elucidate and expound on what PM Modi said is the chronology of a slew of events that transpired to create a conducive atmosphere for the cutting of a Muslim sub-quota under the existing constitutional reservations for the downtrodden.
The Ranganath Mishra Commission, formulated in 2004 by the Congress government, stands as a striking testimony to its peak Muslim appeasement and anti-poor (tribes, poor, downtrodden, untouchables, etc.) stand. The said committee stipulated, if enacted, to cut out religious reservations for Muslims under the existing reservations for the STs, SCs, and OBCs—15 per cent in government jobs and 6 per cent out of the 27 per cent OBC quota—paving the way for unabashed religious conversions to Islam while still availing of the reservations.
The Veerappa Moily-led Congress government, through an order dated April 20 and April 25, 1994, announced a four per cent reservation in Category 2B, identified as “More Backward”, for all Muslims including Pathans, Sayyads, Sheikhs, Mughals, etc.
Manmohan Singh also made a pitch for Muslim reservations in government jobs on November 3, 2006. Also, during the same time, the Sachar Committee made its report public on similar lines, saying that the “socio-economic conditions of Muslims are worse than any other groups.”
Around the same time circa first week of December, while addressing the 52nd meeting of the National Development Council (NDC), Manmohan Singh underlined his view that Muslims have first claims on national resources. He said, “We will have to devise innovative plans to ensure that minorities, particularly the Muslim minority, are empowered to share equitably the fruits of developments. These must have the first claim on resources.” In April 2009, in the run up to Lok Sabha election, he reiterated his statement that minorities, especially poor Muslims, should get priority when it comes to the nation’s resources. He categorically stated that he stood by his earlier assertion that Muslims should have first right when it comes to resources.
And even as we witness the grand democratic celebration of general elections knocking on our doors with Phase 2 voting concluded and the retrospective discussions on the Muslim appeasement politics of the Congress, even in the midst of all the firestorm and heated exchange of words between the two political parties, even when the entire Congress party is hit by the indomitable Modi juggernaut, even when the Congress party is wrongfully caught with its hands in the cookie jar where its own history belies its credibility, as of today, i.e., April 27, 2024, the Congress-ruled Karnataka government has categorised the entire Muslim community as a backward class which simply put, means that Muslims will now cut into reservation meant for OBCs, in gross violation of India’s Constitution. The National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC) has decried the decision of the Congress government.
In his 1969 book, ‘Muslim Politics in Secular India’, Muslim scholar Hamid Dalwai critiqued appeasement politics as the furtherance of Jinnah’s separatist mindset. He observed that the real problem was Muslim obscurantism—that Indian Muslims had shunned their doors and, in a way, evaded public scrutiny. In a way, they are secluding themselves from the rest of the country’s majority, i.e., the Hindus. He also observed that Indian Muslims are more likely to blame Hindus than to reflect. This “obscurantism and medievalism” needs to be confronted instead of evading it using political chicanery and the charade of “minority protection” or “secularism”.
Last but not least, Sam Pitroda, the Chairman of the Indian Overseas Congress, publicly advocated for the implementation of an inheritance tax law in India, wherein if an individual with substantial wealth passed away, only a portion of their assets can be transferred to their children and the government claims a significant share. “In America, there is an inheritance tax. If one has 100 million USD worth of wealth and when he dies he can only transfer probably 45 per cent to his children, 55 per cent is grabbed by the government. That’s an interesting law. It says you in your generation made wealth and you are leaving now, you must leave your wealth for the public, not all of it, half of it, which to me sounds fair,” Pitroda said.
It is another instance where the Congress put its foot in the mouth while peddling falsehood brazenly as there is no such federal inheritance tax in the US which applies nationwide. This is a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black, where the Congress is tilting to an extreme form of communism that even the Marxists and Maoists shy outside closed walls.
Rolling back to Marxism, for all we have seen in this world, phoney secularists and rabid Islamists make for strange bedfellows. This is the very commune that has taken over the reins of the Congress party, the very cabal pandering to the Muslims by means of appeasement but keeping them confined in ghettos and then mobilising these ghettos as vandals against the wealth creators and law-abiding citizens.
Modi is breaking the shackles by extricating the downtrodden, irrespective of their religious identities. He might sound direct, blunt and antagonistic to many, but remember, him assuming the responsibility of “140 crore ka rakhwala” and for all practical purposes, he desires the vikas of Muslims and his performance and the stats of his government are a living testimony to the claim that he has worked in an unprecedented and staggering way for the Muslims unlike any of the prime ministers in living memory.
Yuvraj Pokharna is an independent journalist and columnist. He tweets with @iyuvrajpokharna. Here’s the link to Yuvraj’s official WhatsApp channel: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaBKt038vd1QvwLPp515. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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