THE young politician shows up at Mount Kailash in Tibet, and proclaims his youthful Hindu-ness in lighter sportswear than the freezing weather warrants. He then resumes his frenzied temple-hopping, balancing it with an occasional visit to a Muslim shrine. This is yet another election season in India.

Rahul Gandhi is again competing with the Hindu revivalist Bharatiya Janata Party on its turf. He claims to be the better Hindu of the two. While the young Indian leader was performing the religious trapeze to woo India’s strangely insecure majority, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib became the first Muslim women to be elected to the US House of Representatives. One unapologetically proclaims justice for Palestine as a key pursuit, and the other, a hijab-clad Somalian-American, works her heart out to provide more accessible education to less-privileged children across ethnic barriers.

When everybody had declared America to be a right-wing haven, a spitting image of Modi’s India, the country pulled a rabbit out of its hat and gave President Trump a few useful thoughts to ruminate on. Similar examples abound from secular democracies elsewhere, not excluding the fact of a Muslim home secretary in the UK. If Trump stacked his politics with Islamophobia and racial innuendo, the American people, led by the white community, sent the maximum number of coloured women to their parliament in the November mid-term elections, including Omar and Tlaib. This is perhaps how tables are turned on errant adversaries in a democracy, by setting one’s own loftier agenda, and not by yielding to the follies of the opponent.

Gandhi’s display of his religion and caste mocks Indians who were looking for their own Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders in the pack. Even a Hindu variant of Kemal Ataturk — and such men and women do exist — could help rescue India from the reigning cult of religious charlatans. By allowing his party to hug symbols of a regressive appeal, Gandhi unwittingly smudged the vision of Jawaharlal Nehru and those who hitched their hopes to his liberal ideals. To be sure, the young leader still would make for a more presentable representative of what remains of a secular India.

Rahul Gandhi’s display of his religion and caste mocks Indians who were looking for their own Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders in the pack.

But India is not a baby pool of low-bar contests. Also, is Gandhi going to become an avid drinker of cow urine to garner votes, now that his party has promised to manufacture refined gau mutra as a commercial proposition? Is this what Indira Gandhi had in mind when she underscored secularism and socialism as the guiding principles of the constitution? Or would sipping the hallowed elixir embellish the scientific temper that Nehru had envisioned for the country? One was hoping Gandhi would take the cue from democracies elsewhere and weave a tapestry of pluralism and reason into the grand alliance he is cobbling together for general elections next year.

Having said that, India’s Muslims as none other are perennially counselled by their sympathisers to keep a low profile against the Hindutva onslaught and to let friendly folk do the battle on their behalf. The argument goes that Muslims give easy traction to Hindutva purposes, and any retaliation to a provocation, of which there’s no dearth today, would add grist to the reactionary mill. Had the assertion produced a worthy result, there would be reason to believe in the lore. The fear of Muslims being the red rag to the Hindutva bull should not be the ruse for their self-proclaimed supporters to feel hassled by their association with the community. A Muslim MP from Bihar and two legislators from Uttar Pradesh won important by-polls recently to defy the red-rag theory.

This is not a case for a mandatory quota for Muslims in the coming elections, far from it. The argument put simply is that the minority communities, particularly their women, often suffer in the proclaimed quest for ethnic rectitude. I would argue that Muslims generally form a perfect ballast and they improve the stability of any political party in India. In fact, their inclusion is useful not only to win elections but also to keep the promise of democracy alive with greater zeal. Saving the constitution is the stated objective of most political parties, but for India’s minorities, it is their lifeline, and they must secure it at all costs.

Put bluntly, will the parties they support stand with them when their constitutional guarantees are threatened? Let’s take the Ayodhya dispute currently being studied by the apex court. Would the Congress and its allies have the moral courage to stand by a court verdict should it favour the Muslim case? Would they stand up to the Hindutva challenge then, or should the Muslims start praying for an adverse verdict against their own petition?

Happily, this is not the dilemma for the two women who have made it to the Congress in the United States. Few are as outspoken as they are about Trump’s follies among their other urgent concerns. True, for that and more, they are abused and threatened on the net. They are trolled daily. But they have the unqualified support of the people and the party behind them to see to it that their worldview is not stifled. One thing worse than the stifling of the minorities in a democracy is to make them parrot the majoritarian point of view. Look at what happened in Pakistan. A Hindu man was elected for the first time from a general constituency to the National Assembly. That should be celebrated. But what was his battle cry? He wooed support by prescribing the death penalty for blasphemers. Likewise, in India. The Muslim author of a most adulatory book on Nehru joined the BJP. And now he seems sanguine at the daily abuses heaped on his erstwhile hero by the party’s tallest leaders. That’s not a route for Rahul Gandhi or Indian Muslims to pursue.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.

jawednaqvi@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, December 11th, 2018