The acquittal of all the accused, including former BJP MP Pragya Singh Thakur and Lt Col Prasad Purohit, in the 2008 Malegaon blast case by a special court Thursday has given the BJP fresh ammunition to target the Congress, which has been groping in the dark against the ruling party’s charge against it of being a “pro-Muslim” and – by extension – an “anti-Hindu” party.
The Congress has often fallen between two stools in navigating this territory since the BJP’s rise in the 1980s and, on Thursday, the central leadership maintained a telling silence in the wake of the Malegaon judgment.
The 2008 blasts, blamed on accused with links to Hindutva groups, had come amidst a string of terror incidents under the UPA government. The attack in Malegaon was preceded days earlier by the Batla House encounter, in which alleged terrorists linked to the Indian Mujahideen and to several incidents across the country were killed. Two months later followed the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, one of the worst the country has seen.
Even as the government dealt with the attacks, statements by several Congress leaders in their wake landed the UPA government in a sticky situation.
Digvijaya Singh, the Congress general secretary, raised doubts over the Batla House encounter by security agencies, suggesting it was “fake”. In the wake of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, he said he had spoken to Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad chief Hemant Karkare hours earlier, and that Karkare had told him he was receiving threats from Hindu extremists. Karkare was at the time heading the investigation into the September 29, 2008, Malegaon blasts.
In 2010, the then Union Home Minister P Chidambaram first used the word “saffron terror”. Addressing an annual conference of DGPs and IGPs, he said: “There is no let-up in the attempts to infiltrate militants into India. There is no let-up in the attempts to radicalise young men and women. Besides, there is the recently uncovered phenomenon of saffron terrorism that has been implicated in many bomb blasts of the past.”
The Congress distanced itself from Chidambaram’s remarks then, saying “terrorism does not have any colour other than black”.
The same year, one of the secret diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks quoted Rahul Gandhi as telling then US Ambassador to India Timothy Roemer during a lunch in 2009 that “the bigger threat (than outfits such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba) may be the growth of radicalised Hindu groups, which create religious tensions and political confrontations with the Muslim community”.
In 2012, then Union Law Minister Salman Khurshid also sparked a row when he said that Sonia Gandhi “wept bitterly” when she was shown images of the Batla House encounter.
Then, at a Congress Chintan Shivir in 2013, just ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Chidambaram’s successor as Union Home Minister, Sushilkumar Shinde, said: “Reports have come during investigation that the BJP and RSS conduct terror training camps to spread terrorism… Bombs were planted on the Samjhauta Express (the train that went to Pakistan), at Mecca Masjid (in Hyderabad), and a blast was carried out in Malegaon. We will have to think about it seriously and will have to remain alert.”
In his recently released book Five Decades in Politics, Shinde wrote: “I had come across the term ‘saffron terror’ in one of the confidential papers prepared by the Union Home Ministry. But it was an issue that had the potential to snowball into a huge controversy since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its ideological fulcrum, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), were apparently involved. I was, therefore, careful to first check the veracity of the allegation before going public with it… If anyone refers to my media statements from that time, they will notice that I carefully chose the term ‘saffron terror’. I remember someone from the media had asked if it was Hindu terrorism or saffron terrorism. ‘This is saffron terrorism… ’, I had replied’.”
Asked about the Malegaon verdict Thursday, Shinde refused to comment. Digivijaya said terrorism should not be associated with any religion. “There is no terrorism on the basis of religion. There is neither Islamic terrorism nor Hindu terrorism. Every religion is a form of love, harmony, truth and non-violence… Na Hindu aatankvaadi ho sakta hai, na Musalman, Sikh or Christian (Neither can a Hindu be a terrorist, nor a Muslim, Sikh or Christian). There are only a few people who use religion as a weapon of hatred. They give rise to terrorism.”
Following its rout in 2014 and its struggles to rebuild, the Congress has attempted course-correction, with a section in the party emphasising the need to reach out to Hindus. Rahul Gandhi’s frequent temple visits and assertions of being a “Shiva devotee” are seen as a part of it, as well as the party’s engagement with the Hindutva vs Hinduism narrative.
In 2018, Sonia Gandhi admitted at an India Today Conclave that the BJP had managed to “convince” people that the Congress was a “Muslim party”. “The BJP has managed to… I don’t say brainwash because that is a rude word… but has managed to convince people, to persuade people that the Congress party is a Muslim party,” she had said.
On whether Rahul’s temple visits were a bid to ensure that the BJP did not monopolise Hinduism, she had said, “There is a bit of that because we have been pushed into a corner. Perhaps rather than going to a temple quietly… maybe, a little more public focus on that.”
But long before the 2008 row too, since the BJP’s rise in the 1980s, the Congress has wrestled with the question of Hindutva. The Rajiv Gandhi government’s decisions to allow opening of the locks of the Babri Masjid and performance of shilanyas at the spot, for example, followed its move overriding the Shah Bano verdict of the Supreme Court. The first two steps were seen as a bid to mollify the Hindus, after the government was denounced for its “capitulation” to the Muslim clergy in the Shah Bano case.
Again, when the demolition of the Babri Masjid happened in 1992, under its watch at the Centre, the Congress nudged the blame on to Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao – seeking to preserve its Muslim vote bank. In 2007, Rahul Gandhi even suggested that the demolition would not have taken place had the Gandhi family been in politics in 1992 (they had taken a backseat after Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination in 1991).
However, the more it has tried to keep both sides happy, the more it has left itself open to BJP charges of being intrinsically “pro-Muslim”. After the tumultuous 1990s, the BJP seized on the Sachar Committee report on the condition of Muslims under the Manmohan Singh government as an example of its “Muslim appeasement”.
The UPA government also found itself in rough waters over the Sethusamundram Canal Project, with the BJP claiming threat to the mythical ‘Ram Setu’ from the project.