Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, who is expected to become the party president soon, is playing the Hindutva card in Gujarat by frequently visiting temples ahead of the Assembly elections there. This year, Rahul has visited 15 temples until the end of the second week of October. A clutch of these visits has come during his Gujarat campaign tour. Rahul started his Gujarat campaign in the last week of September with a three-day road tour of the Saurashtra region. His first stop was the Dwarkadhish temple. After which he visited the Chotila temple and then the Khodal Dham temple in Kagvad village to offer prayers to Khodiyar Mata, the deity of the local Leuva Patel community. Gandhi’s temple tour of Gujarat ended with a visit to the Goddess Chamunda temple in the Rajkot region, where he also attended late night religious functions. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has visited 12 temples this year, with his latest visit being to the Dwarkadhish temple on the shores of the Arabian Sea in Dwarka.
Politicians visit temples, especially during election time, but for Rahul Gandhi, this is an unusual move as before this, in a long time, he visited only one temple, the Hanumangarhi temple in Ayodhya, ahead of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. Political observers see Rahul Gandhi’s sudden attraction for temples as a conscious strategy to correct the perception that the Congress favours the minorities over the majority community. However, the Congress has claimed that these visits do not have any “political meaning”, but are “part of his private faith”.
In Gujarat, the Congress has also launched a campaign demanding strong cow protection laws.
K.C. Patel, Bharatiya Janata Party MP from Valsad constituency, told The Sunday Guardian: “Rahul Gandhi is frequently visiting temples as the Congress is in fear of defeat in the upcoming Assembly polls in the state. Voters have rejected the Congress in Gujarat and any such theatrics will not work in favour of the party. They are going to be defeated, hence this love for temples.” The Congress has failed to win any elections in Gujarat since 1995.
However, defending Rahul Gandhi’s temple visits, senior Congress leader and former legislator Akhilesh Pratap Singh said, “Visiting temples is part of his private faith. Congress is a party which represents all sections of society, be it Hindu, Muslim or any other religion. Since Independence, our party has been providing equal space to all citizens across the country.”
Singh rejected the allegation that the Congress is trying to woo Hindu voters, who are in a majority in Gujarat. “Unlike the BJP, the Congress has always treated all faiths as equal and there is no question of wooing any particular community in elections,” Singh claimed.
Shailesh Amin, Gujarat Pradesh Congress spokesperson, told The Sunday Guardian: “Congress is not anti-Hindu; it is a deliberate attempt by the BJP to paint the Congress as anti-Hindu which is incorrect. The BJP has been exposed for spreading the lie that the Congress is an anti-Hindu party. For the Congress, every community is equal and their equal development is all that the party wants.”
Explaining the visits, M.N. Thakur, Professor of Political Science at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, said, “Division among communities is an unfortunate reality of politics in Gujarat, where wooing Hindus helps garner votes. In the Godhra Assembly, where Muslims account for 22%, the Congress has defeated the BJP in six of the 12 Assembly elections held so far. The results of the Godhra elections show how polarisation has worked in favour of both parties.”
Professor S.M. Khatik, who teaches Political Science at the Gujarat University, said, “The BJP’s rise to power in Gujarat in the last decade has been accompanied by a sharp caste-class polarisation of the electorate. The BJP has succeeded in breaking the KHAM (Kshatriya, Harijan, Adivasi, Muslim) formula of the Congress, by mobilising and polarising the rest of the Hindu society in its favour.”
“The BJP bagged most of its votes from the non-KHAM sections in previous elections held in the state, especially the upper caste, upper class voters, including the dominant peasant community of Patidars. In the upcoming elections, the BJP will attempt to wean away the Kshatriyas, Adivasis and Dalits from the Congress,” Khatik added. “The current voting pattern in Gujarat indicates that the BJP has held on to its social base and made some inroads into the traditional social base of the Congress, which is mainly the Muslim community,” he added.
In the December 2012 Assembly elections in Gujarat, the BJP won 116 seats out of the total 182 seats, while the Congress won 60 seats.