Whenever there is bull run and the stock market is on fire, bourse specialists warn of an impending correction. I think India is headed for a mandate correction. The Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party’s dream run is about to end. India will witness a massive mandate correction in Delhi polls or elections in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh later this year or next year. The correction clock is ticking.

Philosopher George Burns wrote: “Everything that goes up must come down. But there comes a time when not everything that’s down can come up.”

Burn’s first sentence could well have been about the BJP’s decline after peaking; its fall from grace. But the second sums up the pathetic state of the Congress Party — it’s down in the dumps and unlikely to stage a comeback anytime soon.

While the law of averages is catching up with the BJP, Congress is at its nadir with only 44 lawmakers in the Lok Sabha.

The usual reasons cited for its downfall range from the Gandhi family’s vice-like grip on India’s oldest political party to corruption-ridden governance for two terms despite a woman and a man of unquestionable integrity at the helm — Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh. Both accusations are highly debatable. What is worse, they camouflage a big Congress failure, which deserves to be discussed threadbare without any inhibitions.

Congress committed two deadly sins, which are responsible for its current comatose state. Its cardinal sins are its failure to deal with Modi in 10 long years when it had the wherewithal to defang him, and denying justice to Muslims in states like Maharashtra, which Congress ruled for long periods. And these are unforgivable sins beyond repentance.

The failure of Congress to sort out Modi when he was still the Gujarat chief minister might even result in the arrest and imprisonment of Robert Vadra — Gandhi’s controversial son-in-law — when Modi gets down to executing his nefarious plans for a Congress-mukt Bharat, or Congress-free India, which he has been propagating ever since the BJP named him as its prime ministerial candidate in September 2013.

Businessman Vadra is a sitting duck unlike his wife Priyanka, her brother Rahul or their enigmatic mother. Throwing Vadra in prison will not only humiliate the Gandhis but thrill Hindu fanatics — Modi’s core constituency — because he is a church-going Christian who wears his best clothes on a Sunday. Congress swept the national elections in 2004 and was re-elected in 2009. It came to power two years after more than a 1,000 Muslims were massacred in 2002 in Modi-ruled Gujarat. Modi’s role in the pogrom was so well documented by the media and human rights groups that he became a global pariah.

Blood on his hands

The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance federal government too knew that Modi had blood on his hands. But, unfortunately, it didn’t do enough to bring Modi to justice — a failure which led to Modi’s rise and Congress’s downfall.

I’m not arguing that the Congress regime should have manipulated the Central Bureau of Investigation or the Supreme Court from 2004 to 2014. But it should have ensured that the police investigators and prosecution lawyers did a great job. In retrospect it seems that delivering justice to the victims of Gujarat’s barbaric anti-Muslim violence was never a priority. The CBI did a very shoddy job right under Congress’ nose. Congress did not display the political or administrative will to nail the perpetrators despite the enormity of the crime and the role of the state in the mass killings.

Congress denounced Modi as Khoon ka Saudagar, or Merchant of Death. But the rhetoric made no difference as Modi wasn’t brought to book. A few apex court judges stepped in after realising that a massive cover-up was underway in Gujarat. They appointed a Special Investigation Team (SIT) panel which was promising but delivered too little too late.

In The Fiction of Fact-Finding: Modi and Godhra, Manoj Mitta writes that “it seemed as if the SIT panel’s brief was more to place Modi’s defence on record rather than to ferret out any inconsistency or admission of wrongdoing”. Summing up Modi’s triumph over India’s fact-finding capacity, Mitta remarked: “When the right questions are not put, there will be neither the right evidence nor the right conclusions.”

According to civil rights crusader Shabnam Hashemi, Congress helped the BJP to win Gujarat elections in December 2012, ensuring a third term as chief minister for Modi. Hashemi, who resigned in disgust from five UPA-constituted committees, says Congress facilitated Modi’s victory because it knew that the BJP would field him as PM candidate in the 2014 national elections, which would force Muslims across India to vote for Congress ensuring a third term for the grand old party!

Congress not only treated Modi with kid gloves to suit its purpose but betrayed Muslims in Maharashtra and elsewhere where it was in power. It did nothing to free Muslim youths languishing in jails across India on trumped up terror charges. It took no disciplinary action against police or intelligence officers who framed them.

It did precious little to lift the Muslim community from the pits of poverty and despair. No wonder Congress has sunk so low that rising again seems an impossible task.

 

Credit: S.N.M. Abdi is a noted Indian journalist and commentator.