Opinion: Udhayanidhi remark row - Narasimha Rao-VN Gadgil questions still haunt Congress

Why should we not have a uniform civil code?

What justification was there for negating the Shah Bano judgement by an act of Parliament?

What is the logic of persisting with Article 370?

Why should Hindus adopt family planning when Muslims resist it?

Why build a Haj Manzil in Mumbai for Muslim pilgrims embarking for Jeddah when there is nothing similar for Hindu pilgrims proceeding to Nepal?

Why does the government of India subsidize Hajis when it does not similarly subsidize Hindu pilgrims?

Why should we make such a hue and cry over secularism when no Muslim country practises it?

Does not a religion which talks of ‘Kafir’ (non-believer) and ‘Jihad’ (holy war) pose a special threat?

Why do Muslims cheer for the Pakistani team at sports events?

Does not the demand of Azaadi on the part of Kashmiri Muslims show that a Muslim can never be a patriotic Indian?

Why are Indian Muslims so worried about the Al Aqsa Mosque when there are so many dilapidated mosques in India?

There have been cases of Muslim shrines being shifted to other locations in Islamic countries such as Saudi Arabia. Why not in India?

Why do Muslims object to singing the national song ‘Vande Mataram’?

Why do Muslims seek a separate identity in India when they do not do so in countries like Indonesia?

Why do foreign missionaries proselytize in India?

Why should we permit Christian missionary activity?

A cursory look at these questions may evoke an instant and unanimous remark that these are being posed by the BJP, RSS or any Hindutva outfit or its protagonists.

But hold your breath.

These were queries Mani Shankar Aiyar and MJ Akbar had faced from P V Narasimha Rao and VN Gadgil in 1990 when the Aiyar-Akbar duo had gone to Rao and Gadgil to prepare a theme paper for a party convention against communalism. Both Rao and Gadgil were considered to be Congress ideologues and credited with drafting numerous party positions on political, economic and diplomatic issues.

Aiyar and Akbar met Rao-Gadgil at the behest of the then Congress President Rajiv Gandhi in May 1990, who wanted to hold a day-long convention against communalism at Delhi’s Talkatora Stadium. Rajiv was reportedly concerned over the rise of Hindutva forces in the wake of the Ram Janmabhoomi - Babri Masjid stir and the Shah Bano judgment.

In his recent book Memoirs of a Maverick, Mani Shankar Aiyar gives a graphic account of Congress’ ideological dilemmas confronting them. The soft Hindutva lobby or what Sitaram Kesri would later describe as ‘Phool Chhap Congressi’ within the Congress was so powerful that the convention against communalism was held without a theme paper that Aiyar and Akbar had thought of drafting.

Some would argue that many of these posers raised by Rao and Gadgil continue to haunt the present-day Congress. Ally DMK leader Udhayanidhi Stalin’s remarks on 'Sanatana dharma' too have sharply divided the Congress from within.

While officially, KC Venugopal, AICC general secretary and member of the INDIA bloc coordination panel, sought to underplay Stalin Junior’s remarks, several party leaders from the Hindi heartland wished to oppose, criticise and distance themselves from Udhayanidhi’s derogatory comments on 'Sanatana dharma'.

Aiyar recalled how both Rao and Gadgil virtually pounced upon him and Akbar (who was AICC spokesperson then) when they had gone to veteran party leaders, seeking some direction for the convention against communalism. “....they began, almost offensively, denigrating the traditional Congress line on secularism, saying people were not interested in listening to standard cliches. They were seeking answers to questions about the Tushtikaran (Appeasement) of the Muslim minority. They listed the question and asked us how we propose to answer these,” writes Aiyar in his engaging memoirs. Aiyar says he responded to the questions Rao and Gadgil had posed in his earlier book, Confessions of a Secular Fundamentalist, in 2004.

(Views expressed in this opinion piece are that of the author.)