We got secularism wrong, says Antony; but will Cong listen?

In the run up to the Lok Sabha elections, the Congress dismissed charges of ‘minority appeasement’ by saying that it was being ‘secular’ unlike the ‘communal’ BJP.  Therefore all the sops designed to benefit minorities - such as all round reservations for minorities as promised in the Sachar report and in the Congress manifesto - were played up as ‘secular’ counterpoints to the BJP campaign.

As the Congress found to its detriment on 16 May this was simply not enough. However the party still stubbornly clung onto its ‘secular’ positioning within the political framework of India.

However, it looks like at least some elements within the Congress are now willing to accept that the party perhaps pandered too much to ‘certain communities’ which hurt its ‘secular’ image.

A comment to this effect was made by none other than former defence minister AK Antony, who had told a gathering in Thiruvanantapuram that, “People have lost faith in the secular credentials of the party. They have a feeling that the Congress bats for a few communities, especially minorities”.

“This doubt is created by the party’s proximity towards minority communities, and such a situation would open the door for the entry of communal forces into Kerala,” Antony had said, according to this report in the Indian Express.

What Antony essentially seemed to be saying was that the Congress party seemed to have defined ‘secularism’ all wrong - that it seemed to have confused the term with giving only to a particular minority to the disadvantage of the majority.

If Antony is coming out in public and admitting that the Congress did get its definition of secularism all wrong, it is significant, especially given the former minister’s relationship with Congress President Sonia Gandhi and vice president Rahul Gandhi, to whom he is considered close.

He has said as much before, most notably as Chief Minister of Kerala in 2003, when he criticised the Muslim community, calling them  powerfully organized, and saying that they had secured privileges by collective bargaining. This could not be allowed, he had said then.

In its desperation to garner minority votes however, the Congress leadership then chose to ignore his criticisms on the issue.

However now that he has been put in charge of a fact finding mission to analyse the reasons behind the Congress party’s worst ever defeat in a general election, will his words be heeded more carefully? Is the Congress willing to accept that secularism, as they defined it, is not really secularism at all?