Indian National Congress has been battling its existential crisis for a few years now. Every election does not matter how big or how small it is, it becomes an existential crisis for the party. It has a mere 50 members in Lok Sabha, 31 in Rajya Sabha, rules in mere 3 states on its own and 3 more in coalition.
And yet, it can’t let its appeasement along with divide and rule tactics be a thing of past. The manifesto it issued for its Karnataka election corroborates the very fact that it doesn’t want to change and the people if at all any who were expecting any kind of change should rest their hopes in peace.
I am not just talking about the Bajarang Dal and PFI being put in the same category, as a matter of fact this was just the tip on an iceberg. There are many more disturbing things mentioned in the manifesto. I present to you just seven of them in this post.
I started reading the manifesto with only one point agenda to confirm if what BJP says is true about Congress’ manifesto. Indeed it is true.
It is true that Congress put Bajrang Dal and PFI at the same pedestal. By equating PFI and Bajrang Dal Congress once again tried to compare communal crimes orchestrated by an Islamic organization that has ties to terrorist organization to nuisance created by a Hindu Organization that makes news by ambushing and creating a spectacle out of the love birds (irrespective of religion) making out in public places. Apples and Oranges!! This indeed is in line with Congress’ strategy of comparing RSS with Muslim brotherhood or trying to pin 2008 Mumbai attack on RSS or Siddaramaiah calling Bajrang Dal and RSS as terrorists in 2018. There have been plenty of such cases where Congress had gone to great extent to retain its sacrosanct vote bank intact by attacking Hindus, Hindu deities and Hindu Organizations.
Even though Kashmir and its issues don’t have anything to do with Karnataka, but Congress for some reason mentioned Kashmiri Pandit issue in their manifesto. By the way was it a migration as called by the party in the manifesto or was it a mass exodus, ethnic cleansing and genocide? I am a little surprised that BJP did not pick this up.
If BJP had put this in its Manifesto, many would have called it an attempt by the party to polarize the election. Infact the entire left ecosystem would have been crying foul and call BJP names. So what was Congress’ intent here? Creating a mockery of those Hindu who had to suffer?
To add on to the communal tensions, there is another interesting point in the manifesto which looks quite harmless on its own:
Where is the problem here? The problem arises as soon as we look at the following:
This Aaradhana scheme was launched in the past (and later cancelled when BJP came to power) where the government was using the offerings made in the Hindu Temples to modernize, beautify and renovate Mosques and Churches. The financial provisions in the first point are generated from the Hindu Temples via the scheme mentioned in the next point. On one hand we have people who have been trying very hard to get Temples out of Governments control and here we have a party who will do exactly the opposite. A recipe of disaster!
The appeasement did not end here. I found something extremely annoying in the manifesto. It looks like any other freebie offered by the party. But if you just pay a little more attention, you might see the issue.
What is so different about Barber occupation? Why not cooks? or Rikshaw pullers? or Drivers? Why?
Can you guess?
I am 34 years old, and in my entire life I am yet to see a non-muslim barber let alone get a hair cut by him or her. How many have you seen?
It is an indirect appeasement freebie. Earlier the same party came up with a 4% reservation for Muslims in the state. Its the same 4% reservation that BJP promises to take away if it wins. And after all this, some people would want me to believe that there is no religious biases in Congress’ policies. If this does not qualify to be called religious appeasement what will?
This is not all. So far was the Muslim appeasement. Lets move on to the divide and rule part. The worst and most disturbing part of the manifesto:
Seriously? More reservation?
The initial idea for reservation during the formulation of Indian Constitution was to bring the backward castes especially SC/ST in the mainstream and slowly and steadily phase out reservation. However, here we are after seven decades thinking to increase the ceiling of reservation from 50% to 75%. Why not just make it 100% and get rid of all the upper caste kids. What will a Baniya or a Brahmin do by living in the first place? They are pure evil!
Looks like the country and its castes are getting more and more backward rather than forward.
Or may be caste based reservation servers a greater purpose to the politician in winning election by doing nothing. It was the British who did the very first caste census in India. They had a clear agenda, they had to rule no matter how or at what cost. Maybe Indian National Congress, learnt the tactics from the British Raj itself as to how to divide and rule and that’s why they promise this:
Caste based census for any parameter, be it socio-economic or otherwise will only promote caste discrimination.
Now the last but by no means the least, in fact the most threatening promise by the INC:
That’s congress’ nationalism in one statement. Every separatist that has ever lived rakes up the exact same discussion federation of states vs union of states. The only reason why it was extremely difficult to counter Hurriyat and other separatists in Kashmir was its Article 370 which tilted the state towards a federation of states framework which makes it autonomous where as all other states in India had their policies that tilted them towards the union of states framework with limited autonomy. Congress wants power, no matter what. If the country splits up in different parts like 1947 and it gets to rule one part, it would have not compunction what so ever.
The only silver lining for people like myself and my readers is that people of India are getting more and more aware as the time passes and Congress is getting thinner and thinner as the passes by. Hopefully, we would not make make the same mistakes that we made in the past and hopefully we will learn from our own history.
Thank you for reading! Please do share the article with your friends and family and spread the awareness.
Also read:
Infinite Sea of Opportunities 
Agree with most of the points except two.
1. The barber community is not muslim community. It was shocking to know that the author has not seen a non-muslim barber in 34 years! The author has not even heard of Savita Samaja (community of barbers) who are Hindu.
2. The author thinks that asking for the state’s fair share of GST money leads to separatism. This was the stupidest point in the entire article. Tax resource distribution is a problem not only for Karnataka, but for all the southern states. Many states are suffering the central govt policy of taking out resources from slightly developed states and distributing it to states like Bihar, UP, Jharkhand etc. This hampers the growth rate of Karnataka. All Karnataka leaders irrespective of party lines should be raising their voices on this issue. Unfortunately BJP let us down on this issue and hence lost the election.
The author is probably not from Karnataka, (going by usage of the word Baniya) so he doesn’t seem to know the actual issues of the state. Otherwise the article was spot on on some other issues like muslim appeasement.
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