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| Defeat of Hindu candidates in Jammu and Kashmir | | Rahul Gandhi a worried man | | Neha
Early Times Report
Jammu, Dec 27: AICC vice-president Rahul Gandhi is a worried man. What has added to his worries and difficulties is the impression across the country that the Congress is an "anti-Hindu" party. The extent of his worry could be gauged from the fact that two days ago he asked the general secretaries and other functionaries in the party to give him "feed back" so that he could take remedial measures to dispel the growing impression that the Congress as an anti-Hindu party.
There are potent reasons for him and others like him in the Congress party to review its whole stand towards the various communities so that it becomes acceptable to all the sections of the society. For example, the Congress, which could win only 44 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha in the last general election, has been losing state after state and the BJP has captured most of the major states and virtually become a pan-India party. The Congress think-tanks have realized that the one of the fundamental factors responsible for the decline of the "grand old party" of India is the mistrust between the party and the majority Hindu community. The election results in Jharkhand and J&K further made the Congress think-tanks realize that there was something fundamentally wrong with the party's approach towards the majority community and some very drastic steps have to be taken to make the Congress acceptable to it.
In Jharkhand, the BJP+ won 42 seats in the 81-member assembly and it happened for the first time after the formation of Jharkhand State that any political party got an absolute majority in the assembly election. The BJP will form government in Jharkhand on December 29. As far as the Congress was concerned, it could not win even five seats and lost its relevance in that state.
Similarly in J&K, the Congress failed to win a single seat where a Hindu was its candidate. The Congress had fielded many Hindu candidates in Jammu province, its core constituency. In 2008, the electorate in Jammu province had elected 13 Congress candidates, including seven Muslim and six Hindu candidates. Four Hindu Congress MLAs, including Tara Chand, Sham Lal Sharma, Raman Bhalla and Manohar Lal Sharma had become ministers in the Omar Abdullah-led coalition government. But none of them and the other two former MLAs - Ashok Bhagat (Ramban) and Krishan Chander (Chenani) could make it to the assembly this time. All were defeated by the BJP. The Congress had also fielded two Hindu candidates in Kashmir and both of them also lost the election. Sham Lal Sharma lost the election to the BJP despite the fact that he repeatedly appealed to the people to give the Congress a chance so that a Hindu could become Chief Minister of the state. That the people of Jammu province rejected all these Congress candidates was a clear indication that the Hindus of Jammu province, like their counterparts in the rest of the country, have no love lost for the Congress party.
The decision of Rahul Gandhi to get feed back from Congress general secretaries and other functionaries in the Congress party about the nature of relationship between the majority community and the Congress party needs to be viewed in this context. However, it is extremely unlikely that the Congress would be able to win back the trust of the alienated majority community. Only on Friday, the Congress national spokespersons rejected out-of-hand the suggestion that a Hindu should become Chief Minister of J&K. |
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