archive: Brave heart
Brave heart
Editorial
The Telegraph
July 12, 1999
Title: Brave heart
Author: Editorial
Publication: The Telegraph
Date: July 12, 1999
The success of the prime minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, in Kargil
has put the Congress on the back foot in the preparations for the
forthcoming elections. It cannot be easy to campaign against a
government which seems to have captured, at least for the moment, the
popular imagination. This situation is to an extent of the Congress's
own making since in the initial stages of the war it failed to come
out strongly against the government's obvious intelligence failures
and the statements that the defence minister, Mr George Fernandes, had
then made. The Congress president, Ms Sonia Gandhi, has thus decided
that she will clear her back garden first before she ventures forth to
launch a campaign against the Bharatiya Janata Party government. This
is a task which has for long been crying out for Ms Gandhi's
attention. She has rightly begun in the most important state of Uttar
Pradesh which in the halcyon days of Congress rule was the party's
stronghold. Now the Congress does not even qualify for a consolation
prize in the UP election race. In a speech to the state party unit on
Monday, Ms Gandhi did not mince her words. She made it clear that
faction mongering and backbiting have ruined the party in UP She
emphasized the need to address the interests of the people instead of
nurturing individual vested interests. These were brave and timely
words but they may not be enough to alter ground realities in India's
largest state.
When the Congress was powerful in UP, it was seen as speaking for the
interests of Muslims and all the backward classes. The Muslim vote
fled from the Congress after the demolition of the Babri Masjid and
the back-ward classes flocked to those parties, like the Samajwadi
Party and Bahujan Samaj Party, which sought to represent only their
sectoral interests. The Congress lost its umbrella character. The
stopping of inner party squabbles alone will not bring back the
umbrella. The political arithmetic in UP has changed radically It is
still possible though to win back the Muslims. It is in this context
that Ms Gandhi's visit to Maulana Ali Mian, the chairman of the all
India Muslim personal law board and eminent religious scholar, assumes
some significance. Ms Gandhi is obviously aware of the Muslim vote
and the importance of winning back the confidence of the Muslim
populace by reiterating the secular identity of the Congress. Here
the looming presence of the BJP should actually help the Congress to
regain its position as the protector of the Muslims. Ms Gandhi has
also committed herself to clean the Augean stables by aiming to weed
out corrupt and criminal elements from the party. She might discover
that a curse has already blighted most of the flowers. There can be
nothing more unenviable than a leader pursuing and performing a
thankless task.
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