Feroz Khan
Sep 6, 2018 · 2 min read

I like Rahul Gandhi, but his temple visits and religious acts are unwarranted for a public individual. He has spent more hour’s visiting temples & travelling to Kailash rather than visiting Amethi, which has elected him as a MP. If he is a Hindu and he feels important to visit those places I guess he should resign from the position of MP and visit all those temples he want. The people of Amethi did not vote him to go for a religious tour nor does each member of congress party for which he is the President. I had the similar opinion for Salman Kurshid before as well, when he wanted to go to Hajj, I felt he should resign from the UPA cabinet & go, but that fellow changed his plans and did not do both is a different story.

Politically the counter to religious politics of BJP cannot be politics that are even more religious. Congress has to take hold of caste narrative rather than the religious one. It is difficult to beat BJP on religion but it is easier to counter or corner it on Caste. Congress should align more with the marginalized sections of the society, which feels beaten by the brutal upper caste dominated politics of the BJP.

In a way, Rahul is trying to be a mix of his father Rajiv, by making foreign visits and doing non-scripted interviews and following his grandmother Indira Gandhi, by getting associated with religion in India. In my opinion, he should be more of his great-grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru. However, he cannot equal his intellect but he can practice the foundations laid by him. He is following Nehruvian consensus based politics in alliance formation but his advisors (which I believe largely upper caste) are taking him to the wrong path when it comes to religion in political life. He should be natural and be as he is which I believe will be more liberal, decent & pluralistic rather than being cozied to a faith or temples & yatras for votes and trying to change majoritarian BJP imposed fake news perception on him. For the fact, fake news is like uncles & aunties; you cannot defeat it.

The need of the hour in, Indian politics is more of the rational Nehruvian Scientific Temper from one side, to the rejection of Darwin’s theory, peacock sex, denial of climate change, gas from the gutter,plastic surgery & pushpak viman existence in ancient era from the other end. The more the kailash yatra or the promise of gaushala’s in each village if voted to power in Madhya Pradesh for e.g. will lead to stronger narrative from RSS-BJP’s end which will sound very unpleasant to the ears of non-Hindutva type Hindus and terrorizing for non-Hindus and will lead to further destruction of Indian society.