The debate around the farm laws and the agitation to scrap them serves a copybook case for those studying politics of populism. History repeats itself, but it shouldnt be allowed to in such a grotesque manner. Right since Independence, the Congress party has always chosen safe ways over hard and politically courageous decisions. As the ruling party, it played to the gallery to avoid political reverses. As the opposition, it has always fished in troubled waters, riding piggyback on popular sentiments. For Indias GOP, low-hanging fruits have always proved to be too tempting to remember its long-term vision for the future of India!

The Congress partys populist politics has proved to be extremely costly to the nation. The three important issues that are routinely referred to as core issues of the BJP are a testimony to this. Regardless of the expressed constitutional mandate, successive Congress governments refrained from nullifying Article 370, enacting a common civil code and preventing the silent invasion of Bangladeshi infiltrators into Assam. While the Congress used all these three issues as a protective shield around its vote bank, they were in fact laying red carpets to multiple threats to the very unity and integrity of India.

An important factor common to these three issues was Muslims in India. Sadly, Congress leaders have viewed Muslims only from the perspective of losses and gains in elections. For them, Jammu and Kashmir was more of a Muslim-majority province and hence a showcase item to be cited as a living example of Indias commitment to secularism. The party was always hell-bent on exhibiting secularism than being truly secular. At the cost of J&Ks progress on the human development front, the Congress allowed secessionist elements to thrive under Article 370.

It turned a Nelsons eye to many things, from repeated terrorist attacks to injustice in Ladakh and from mindless corruption to denial of constitutional safeguards to women and marginalised communities there. The Shah Bano case was the pinnacle of its politics of populism through minority appeasement. Rajiv Gandhis decision to amend the Constitution in order to undo the impact of the Supreme Court judgment further emboldened obscurantist elements in the Muslim community. In effect, justice to Muslim women facing acute vulnerability due to the retrograde practice of triple talaq continued to remain a chimera. To secure its own vote bank, the Congress committed the sin of making the lives of Muslim women even more insecure. Similarly, the IMDT act enacted during former PM Indira Gandhis second tenure gave the illegal migration of Bangladeshis more fillip instead of preventing it.

Again, the example of Terrorists and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, introduced by Rajiv Gandhi, is equally educative. Later, the TADA was used and abused but it continued as a law. During the investigations into the 1993 Mumbai blasts, this Act proved to be very effective. However, in the face of a campaign by certain sections in society, TADA came to be portrayed as an anti-minority law and hence the Narasimha Rao regime meekly gave in to the pressures and repealed the act. Later, when the Vajpayee government decided to bring the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) in 2002, the NDA government was compelled to call a joint sessionsomething that happened only very few times in Indias parliamentary historyof both the Houses to get the law passed.

All these examples show how the Congress lacked courage of conviction in abiding by the guiding principles of the Constitution. Now, while actively supporting forces of manufactured unrest on the farm bills, the GOP and other opposition parties are doing a great disservice to parliamentary democracy. How can a group of a few hundred stubborn agitators pressurise the government to undo what Parliament has passed? If we allow this to happen, it would amount to stifling the voices emanating from the very temple of democracy! The government has been engaging with the agitators patiently and peacefully. It is time that the Congress and opposition parties shun populism and instead prepare the agitators so that wiser counsel prevails.

While doing so, they may do well in recalling what Edmund Burke had said almost 250 years ago: Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays you instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion. (Speech to the Electors of Bristol, November 3, 1774)

VinaySahasrabuddhe(vinays57@gmail.com)President, ICCR, andBJP Rajya Sabha MP

Originally posted here:

The Congress Partys politics of populism - The New Indian Express