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GUEST ARTICLE

        There is something pathetic in the way Mahatma Gandhi is remembered today by a spineless Congress. What now we have is not the Congress of Gandhi but a wholly different organisation. Gandhi wanted the Congress to be dissolved following partition. As he put it: 'I am convinced that no patchwork treatment can save the Congress. It will only prolong the agony. The best thing for the Congress would be to dissolve itself before the rot sets in further. Its voluntary liquidation will brace up and purify the political climate of the country. But I can see that I can carry nobody with me in this'. This was some time in November 1947. By then the Mahatma had already been marginalised.

        Now there is much sense in what Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh told delegates to a New Delhi conference marking the centenary of the Mahatma's satyagraha movement that he initiated in South Africa. 'We need' said Dr Singh, 'a now paradigm that caters to everyone's needs' but he did not care to go deeper into the subject lest he stirs up a hornet's nest. The truth is that there are no Gandhians in the Congress left anymore.

        There are only power seekers. In 1935 Gandhi went on his famous Harijan Tour, often inviting the wrath of upper caste Hindus. Who among Congress leaders would follow his example? Gandhi lived in Wardha, in a far away village that hardly had any urban amenities to speak about. How many Congress 'leaders' would go and live in a village? Gandhi was a realist. When on 13 January, 1948 a vicious attack on a refugee train at West Punjab's Gujarat station killed or maimed hundred a of Hindus and Sikhs, the Mahatma reacted frankly.

        He asked: 'If this kind of thing continues in Pakistan, how long will the people in India tolerate it? Even if 100 men like me fasted, they would not be able to stop the tragedy that may follow'. What he might have said were he alive following the incineration of some fifty old innocent women and children in a railway coach at Godhra is anybody' guess.

        What would Gandhi have done faced with a situation such as the gruesome murder of four members of a dalit family in Khairlanj or the suicide of - according to one account - of one lakh farmers? Would he have stayed in Delhi when ULFA cadres killed 72 Bihari labourers in Assam? Where are our Congress leaders? Gandhi went to Naokhali. What was happening in Bihar shocked him beyond belief.

        He wrote to Babu Rajendra Prasad: 'If the Bihar fury does not abate, I do not wish to remain alive because my life would be meaningless'. When the post-Godhra killings took place, what did Congressmen do? Or the Congress president. If Gandhi were alive he would have walked the streets where Muslims were being killed saying.'Before you kill Muslims, kill me'. Why is there so much violence in the country? It is because there is no Gandhi among Congressmen. Violence has become so much a part of our daily life whether it is in Mumbai or in Gorakhpur that one has begun to take all killings casually. According to figures available there were 69, 216 atrocities in India against the dalits between 2003 and 2005.

        Of these, four States, namely Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh accounted for about 60 per cent. And this, despite constitutional safeguards and various legislations such as the Prevention of Atrocities Act. Paying lip service to the fate of dalits while looking the other Way when dalits are beaten, tortured and killed is not the Gandhian Way. Instead it is an insult to his memory.

        The trouble with the Congress is that it is presently capable of giving only some kind of economic leadership to the country and not moral leadership. There is not one single Congressman or Congress woman one can think of capable of giving moral leadership. The party is good at mustering large paid audiences to hear its president. How many Self Help Groups has the party sponsored in rural areas to create employment? How many Congressmen have gone to live among dalits to understand their problems and help them gain their self-respect?

        As one newspaper put it: 'Politics has been reduced to a cynical exercise of managing identifies at the risk of compromising the collective well-being of society; the leaching of a dalit becomes a concern only of dalits while institutional discrimination against Muslims is reduced to a minority issue'. The double-speak among Congressmen has now become the talk of the town. If Shiv Sena has done well in the Mumbai municipal elections it is because Congress hypocrisy stands exposed. Most talk of secularism has proven itself to be humbug.

        Earlier in January this year, two mosques in Islamabad were demolished after it was feared that they could be used to launch attacks. When the mosque administrators did not heed the notices that the Capital Development Authority (CDA) had issued, the CDA anti-encroachment staff demolished the Amir Hamza mosque near Murree Road and another mosque on the Islamabad highway. Not a single secular dog barked. Does anyone remember what happened when a masjid in Baroda was sought to be demolished to make way for the broadening of a road? Obviously, Pakistan can demolish any number of mosques that turn out to be a nuisance. In India such a stance would be damned as unsecular.

        The term 'secular' has lost its meaning. There is far too such talk and far too little action. According to the Congress President, 'the challenge for us now is to find creative inspiration from Gandhian ways to evolve a satyagraha appropriate to one times'. It is time some Congress leaders practised satyagraha in Assam and challenged ULFA to kill them. Yes, Gandhi should be remembered but not through arranging conferences attended by international celebrities. He must be remembered in action. How any Congress leader gone on a hunger strike / stop communal disturbances? None has, for the simple reason that they have no moral standing. It is easier to turn Gandhi into an icon and feel that justice has been done.

        Gandhi walked through Noakhali all by himself, a one-man army, as Lord Mountbatten, then Governor-General, described him. Our Congress leaders want security men all the time. The argument will be that times have changed. Times haven't. That is an illusion. Congressmen have. And that is a fact. There is no Gandhian - in its true sense of the word - exists today. Can't we leave the poor man alone and go our way, rather than make a farce of ourselves by paying him lip-service? What Gandhi said, he lived. Who can say that of Congressmen today? Idealism no longer exists. It is the power game that Congressmen play often at the expense of the poor.