An imaginative Congress could say all this and much more and also believe it to be true. But the Congress is incapable of admitting that it has lost all faith in the ideals and the vision of the party. The Congress was created through what Gandhi called the Constructive Programmes. Khadi, basic education, removal of untouchability, regeneration of village communities and communal harmony were not empty promises. The Congress worked tirelessly to build the nation and the civil society through these programmes. It gave the potential to a political movement to become a transformative force and create a nation. It also gave the party the moral and ethical framework to think about itself and its politics. That Congress was not afraid of religion and faith like the Congress of the present. It engaged with the question of faith and belief at a fundamental level. It accepted the availability of religious ideas for all. It was deeply secular as it understood the religious instinct and accepted that Truth was not a preserve of any one community or religion. Its notion of equality of religion was not based on equal distance from all religions nor on equal ignorance about all questions of faith. It was based on an equal engagement with all religions, on deep and abiding faith in the capacity for Truth that religious ideas provided. This gave the Congress the capacity to distinguish between bigotry, communal politics and faith. It gave it the moral and political courage to condemn the former and deal unsentimentally with the violence that it generated. It also had the capacity to atone and repent. But that was in the past.

... contd.