India’s secular parties lack ideology

Ideas have to be made tangible through symbols; the Congress made a mistake thinking welfarism was enough to defend secularism

The consecration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya on Monday marked a historic defeat of India’s secular politics. We have come to this pass because secular political parties completely surrendered their ideological positions.

They did not become ideologically the same as the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, but left their own ideological fort unguarded. As a result, they appear to have no ideology today.

The BJP’s delegitimisation of secularism — the word and ideology both — made secular parties defensive about it. They came to a consensus that the best way to save secularism was through other means. The Congress party thought welfarism was enough for secularism to win. With the benefit of hindsight, we know how wrong that was.

With the exception of the Bharat Jodo Yatra, the last time the Congress did any impactful investment in ideology was the

Mile Sur Mere Tumhara song that the Rajiv Gandhi government aired on national television in 1988. Those who grew up watching it remember it even today.

There’s no reason why secular parties can’t argue that pluralism, diversity and equality are key elements of nationalism. It is part of our national identity. Nationalism is the glue that can bind anything: Just see how the

BJP is seeking to merge Indian and religious nationalism.

How many people know that Indira Gandhi’s birth anniversary — November 19 — is officially National Integration Day?

Not many. That’s because the Congress never celebrated it in the way the Modi government does International Yoga Day.

No public engagement

The lack of ceremony, the lack of pomp and show are seen as virtues by the intellectualminded leadership of secular parties. They amount of an absence of public engagement.

The protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act in 2019 saw ordinary people carrying placards with the image of the Preamble, which emphasises secularism, unity, equality and fraternity. As the protests died, the power of the Preamble as a political symbol was forgotten.

The lesson was clear: Secular parties could also use Constitutional nationalism. They also need to value symbols and icons of the freedom movement.

To effectively use symbols and icons, to wage a campaign for diversity or secularism, the key is scale. Narendra Modi built the world’s tallest statue of Sardar Patel, a Congress leader appropriated by the BJP. When was the last time we heard of any non-BJP party building statues? Congress leaders would rather create a new welfare law.

India should have had public parks dedicated to the Preamble, monuments to the Constitution. Why couldn’t the UPA have built a large monument to unity in diversity, or just Gandhi’s non-violence?

Ideas have to be made tangible with the power of symbols, icons, statues, festivals. Just how many Congress leaders write books is inversely proportional to how many of them think in terms of mass public engagement at scale.