Antony is right; pseudo-secularism doesn’t work

At long last, an admission that the secularism the Congress has been advocating all along has been hypocritical, has come from within that party. Former Minister for Defence AK Antony spoke that truth the other day when he said that the kind of secularism preached and practiced by his party had lost its credibility mainly because of its misplaced emphasis. According to Mr Antony, perhaps the first senior Congress leader in the entire country to admit this fact, the party is in a serious crisis of credibility and it should try to avoid a situation where people believe that it has been giving special consideration to some particular sections, meaning the minority communities, instead of being truly secular. Mr Antony had made this statement in Thiruvananthapuram and, obviously, his immediate reference was to the conduct of the Congress unit of Kerala. He also reminded the party that it should not be reluctant to fight ‘minority communalism’ just as it had been opposing what it called ‘majority communalism’. The Congress, leader of the ruling UDF coalition in Kerala, has faced the allegation that it has been bestowing undue favours on the Muslim and Christian communities and their organisations mainly because of its dependence on the Muslim league and Church-backed Kerala Congress (M) for continuing in power. The over-dependence of the Congress-led State Government on these sections had become obvious when Chief Minister Oommen Chandy himself had to defend the Education Department under Muslim league's Minister PK Abdurabb when it penalised a Dalit school principal for not being “properly respectful” to him when he reached her school to inaugurate a function several hours behind schedule. Also, when hundreds of children were trafficked from Jharkhand, Bihar and West Bengal to orphanages run by Muslim outfits in Kerala in May, the Government had gone out of its way to defend those orphanage managements. This alleged bias of the Congress and its Government in favour of minority communities has often come under intense criticism from several Hindu community outfits but neither the party nor its Government has cared to take those criticisms seriously. It is also alleged that one of the reasons for the State turning into a breeding ground of extremist elements is the policy of minority appeasement the Congress has adopted.

However, what is more pertinent about Mr Antony’s remark is that it is relevant to the Congress's politics and policies not just in Kerala but nationally, although one cannot be sure whether the Congress Working Committee member will be bold enough to speak to his party president Sonia Gandhi and vice president Rahul Gandhi about this. Even after its rout in the lok Sabha election proved the futility of that particular brand of secularism, the Congress is reluctant to drop the policy of appeasement. This was proved in Maharashtra just in the past week when the Congress-NCP Government there decided to provide five per cent reservation in Government jobs and educational institutions to Muslims. The Congress must realise — as Mr Antony has — that what the country needs in this modern age is not a policy of appeasement but affirmative action.