Temple visit is not a new phonomenon
It is wrong to assert that the Congress and its leaders are playing soft Hindutva. This has been alluded to in the past as well. The Congress contests and wins elections on the body of its work.
At the time of the Gujarat Assembly elections too the question was raised about why Congress president Rahul Gandhi was visiting temples. The answer is that he is and has been a devotee of Lord Shiva, and often visits temples. What’s is wrong if he is visiting temples and reaching out to people? No temple, mosque or church in this country is exclusive property of any religion. Our party leaders have always visited religious places in the past. We Indians are secular people who learn from other places of worship. Almost everyone who visits Amritsar visits the Golden Temple. It is only the media and the BJP who are seeing tactics in this move.
Mr Gandhi is not the first one in the NehruGandhi family to visit a temple as even Sonia Gandhi has visited the temples in the past.
The practice of visiting temples is not a new one. Several senior leaders of the Congress have visited temples at different times. Mr Gandhi has always been visiting temples and nothing more should be read into this. In his recently-concluded tour of Karnataka, Mr Gandhi visited temples, dargahs and met a cross-section of people from across society. Now a controversy is once again being stirred that before visiting a temple Mr Gandhi had nonvegetarian food. Even in Gujarat, during the Somnath Temple visit, a controversy was made out about an entry in a register. This shows that the BJP can stoop to any level for political gain.
The BJP is evading key issues that we have been raising, and is busy fomenting communal trouble in poll-bound Karnataka. It is deliberately sending leaders who are polarising society on sensitive communal issues. It is a very serious problem.
The BJP waxes eloquent about its attack on corruption and its penchant for development. But its track record does not back its utterances. Several cases of corruption have been brought forward, but the BJP and its government is conspicuous by its silence. The leader of the Opposition in the Karnataka Assembly, Jagdish Shettar, has said that he will expose the fake Hindutva of Mr Gandhi. Now I would, in all humility, like to tell Mr Shettar to stop doling out certificates about who is a Hindu and who is not.
People have seen through the non-existent agenda of the BJP. The winds of change have already started blowing. Look at the recently concluded Assembly elections in Gujarat, the BJP just about managed to form the government in the state. And it lost wholesale in the Rajasthan byelections.