Half-dip Hindu

Half-dip Hindu

It would be entirely unprofitable to quibble over whether Sonia Gandhi's dip in the Sangam was personal or political. There was nothing personal about either the orchestrated build-up or the final media event -- the half-dip followed by pooja and archana, the visit to a Shankaracharya, or the offering at a yagna conducted by 1100 Brahmins. The Congress chief's motions were smooth and rehearsed and it is not incidental that she sought the blessings of Swami Swaroopananda Saraswati, the Shankaracharya of Jyotishpeeth and Dwarka, who is among the section of sadhu-sants that has openly hit out at the VHP's attempts to corner the limelight this Kumbh. Yes, the Sangh Parivar, and particularly the VHP with its noisy posturing on the Ram mandir, has reduced the Mahakumbh virtually to a launching pad for the election campaign for the impending Uttar Pradesh assembly polls. And no, the Congress is not contesting the dangerous mix of politics and religion patented by organisations in the saffron fold. As it has done onso many occasions in the past, India's main opposition party is only queuing up behind the BJP, on the latter's plank, in the hope of reaping what can only be its leftover electoral spoils.

It could not have been difficult for members of her coterie to sell the stratagem to the Congress chief. To Sonia, it must have appeared a tremendously irresistible and painless way of projecting herself and her party as more Hindu-than-thou. If one ablution, or almost, can wash away her "foreignness" that little bit more and also send out messages that will go some way towards recobbling the erstwhile unbeatable social alliance of Brahmin-Dalit-Muslim that anchored the party's claim to power for so many long years, why not brave a little cold? Clearly, Sonia's advisors have traded on two things -- their leader's crippling insecurity and her evident ignorance of history. Had the Congress president cared to look back into even the recent past, even she could not have resisted at least one glaring lesson. The Congress has not profited from engaging in a game of competitive religiosity with the BJP. When the late Rajiv Gandhi deployed the Hindu card, for instance -- be it his invocation of Ram Rajya to kick offhis party's election campaign or his government's permission for shilanyas at Ayodhya -- it was the Congress's rival that profited at the hustings. Over the years, the Congress's feeble me-too Hindutva has only prodded the targeted voter in the direction of the more authentic architect of the so-called Hindu votebank, the BJP.

Sonia Gandhi's much-hyped dip at the Sangam is also a reminder of another kind. Shirking the effort of ground-level mobilisation on real issues, political parties continue to take refuge in the far less arduous politics of symbolism. While symbols are important, there is danger in trading on empty symbolism alone. The voters have often reiterated this sobering message. The Congress's latest gambit proves once again that this is a lesson our political parties are unwilling to learn.