CWC ifs & buts on Hindutva: - Shankar Vyas; Daily Pioneer

The Congress Working Committee (CWC), which met last Sunday under the shadow of 'Hindutva', saw senior member Arjun Singh being vetoed by his younger colleagues. Going by the trend at the meeting it would be wrong to assume that the party is going back to its traditional secular slogans and other vote-catching techniques. Interestingly, Arjun Singh did not want any mention of the word 'Hindutva' in the resolution, yet it was very much there at more than one place.

Even Kerala Chief Minister AK Anthony said pampering the minorities would not help. The party must worry about the majority community's vote. Throughout the meeting, which lasted some eight hours, Sonia Gandhi maintained a studied silence. However, at the outset, she read out her written speech and ended the sitting reading out the resolution drafted by Pranab Mukherjee and Jairam Ramesh. Arjun Singh had strongly pleaded for deleting the word 'Hindutva', saying the Congress should avoid any discussion on it. Resenting the view, Kamal Nath said if Hindutva was a reality, the party should better counter it effectively.

The CWC meeting was significant from the point of view of the election strategy the party might adopt in the wake of the Gujarat verdict. Our investigations show that the Congress has made no policy changes. The media might have carried the CWC resolution slanted with Arjun Singh angle. But in reality, Sonia Gandhi and other office-bearers in the party do not regret the election strategy they adopted in Gujarat.

This is borne out by the fact that the very next day, Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot paid obeisance before Murari Bapu in Jaipur and MP Chief Minister Digvijay Singh observed that the Congress was not opposed to the construction of a Ram temple in Ayodhya.

Nath stuns Arjun

Arjun Singh is disturbed over the way he finds himself irrelevant in Congress politics. To assert his supremacy, he spoke a lot in the CWC meeting where he received indirect support from three elderly members - Madhavsinh Solanki, JB Patnaik and K Karunakaran. Targeting Ahmed Patel, Solanki accused him of having caused immense damage to the party organisation in Gujarat. Arjun Singh wanted to use the party's debacle in Gujarat to prove the incompetence of the younger-generation leaders.

However, it was Kamal Nath, in charge of Gujarat elections, who carried the day by effectively rebutting every charge made by the older generation leaders. For instance, when somebody said the party erred in adopting soft Hindutva, Kamal Nath retorted by wanting to know why, in the first place, Shankersinh Vaghela with his RSS background was projected. And when Vaghela's name was decided, why 90 per cent of the CWC members had congratulated him (Kamal Nath)? He caused a stunned silence by offering to name all such members.

In the event of the Congress campaign starting from Sabarkantha, where the party had no chances to win, was it wrong to offer puja at Ambaji, the most revered temple in the region? Kamal Nath further pointed out that it was not a joke to keep united a party which was an amalgam of the original Congress, Janata Dal Congress and Vaghela's party.

To the criticism about wrong selection of candidates, Kamal Nath told CWC that out of the 182 nominees, a few could be wrong choices but to run down the entire list would amount to ridiculing the AICC's selection committee.

Arjun Singh, who was not prepared for such a sharp rebuttal, questioned why minority leaders were kept away from campaigning. Kamal Nath's reply was that, in the past, campaigning used to start some two months before the polls. With lesser time being available these days, the choice of the speakers for the campaign was left to individual candidates. What could one do if a Congress nominee decided to invite Murari Bapu to his election meeting? And how could the party force a candidate to seek help from leaders of the minority community if he thought it was not in his interest. Kamal Nath was fully supported by Mani Shankar Aiyar.

Head to the ground

In her sole intervention after Kamal Nath's long speech, Sonia Gandhi had this to ask him: If everything was in order, why did the party get a drubbing? This provoked a discussion. Arjun Singh called for carrying on secular traditions, taking Muslims into confidence and ignoring factors like Hindutva. While
nobody supported his contention, younger leaders stressed the need to keep political ground realities in view during polls. RK Dhawan pointed out that Gujaratis treated it as a Narendra Modi versus Sonia Gandhi fight. This should not happen in HP. AK Anthony's call for shaping party's policies according to political realities, in fact, found expression in the draft of the CWC resolution. Arjun's plea for removing the word 'Hindutva' failed repeatedly.

Dilemma over Sukh Ram

For chalking out a suitable strategy for elections in Himachal Pradesh, Manmohan Singh called a meeting of leaders which was attended by party's State chief Vidya Stokes, general secretary incharge Mohsina Kidwai, secretary Satyajit Gaekwad and former Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh. Asked whether the party should have any alliance with Sukh Ram, Virbhadra stoutly opposed it. The row between Singh and Stokes came to the fore.

So what does poor Manmohan Singh do now? It seems the Congress still has an edge in Himachal but following its success in Gujarat, the BJP would go all out to retain HP. Venkaiah Naidu and Arun Jaitley have decided to leave their indelible imprint on the party organization by winning the Himachal Assembly polls. Jaitley brought the feuding duo, PK Dhumal and Shanta Kumar, closer to consolidate Thakur and Brahmin votes, a combination that works in the State. The Congress may face problem without Sukh Ram but Virbhadra Singh can't go along with him. Singh is undoubtedly a Congress leader with a broad electoral base but his following among the Thakurs is now shared with the BJP because of Chief Minister Dhumal. Naturally, the Congress would need votes from other castes. Given Manmohan Singh's temperament to avoid complicated issues, he may not go in for an alliance with Sukh Ram, leaving matters undecided till the last minute.