While BJP doesn’t even pretend to be secular, Congress remains the safest refuge for minorities in India.

As I address audiences around the country, one of the questions I find myself increasingly being asked is: “Isn’t the Congress now practicing a form of ‘soft Hindutva’? Haven’t you become ‘BJP Lite’?”

The short answer is no. I have long argued that any attempt to emulate ‘Pepsi Lite’ by ‘BJP Lite’ will end up like ‘Coke Zero’ – that is, Congress Zero. Congress is not BJP in any shape or form, and we should not appear to be attempting to be a lighter version of something we are not.

But the question is asked repeatedly, and it requires a fuller answer. The questioners tend to point to Congress President Rahul Gandhi’s temple visits, Digvijaya Singh taking credit for banning beef in his state, Kamal Nath promising gaushalas in every district of Madhya Pradesh, the Congress Party’s support for Sabarimala devotees in Kerala against the Supreme Court verdict allowing women of reproductive age to worship at the shrine, and for that matter even my own book Why I am a Hindu, to suggest that the Congress party is emulating the BJP in appealing to Hindu sentiment rather than to its own secular traditions.

The respected columnist G. Sampath, writing (ironically enough) in The Hindu, even questioned “whether the Congress can emerge as a meaningful alternative to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its Hindu majoritarian politics”. Repeating the ‘soft Hindutva’ charge, Mr Sampath averred “that even an outright victory for a Congress-led alliance in 2019, however improbable it may seem at present, may not really signify a defeat of communal forces”. He concluded that “liberals and other good-hearted people hoping that Mr. Gandhi and the Congress would rescue them from Hindutva may be in for a rude awakening”.

Such criticisms do not take the Congress’ own assurances at face value – that it remains a party for all, the safest refuge for the minorities, the weak and the marginalised, and fundamentally committed to secularism. But the truth is that Congress is the only major party to say all of this and mean it. The BJP does not even bother to pretend that it has the interests of any of these sections at heart.

Our critics see the Congress party’s distinction between Hinduism and Hindutva as specious. They reject its leaders’ arguments that the Hinduism respected by Congress leaders is inclusive and non-judgemental, whereas Hindutva is a political doctrine based on exclusion. They are quick to conclude that what the Congress offers is merely a watered-down version of the BJP’s political messaging.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. Rahul Gandhi has made it explicitly clear that, for all his willingness to avow his personal Hinduism, he does not support any form of Hindutva, neither soft nor hard. The Congress understands that whereas Hinduism is a religion, Hindutva is a political doctrine that departs fundamentally from the principal tenets of the Hindu faith. While Hinduism is inclusive of all ways of worship, Hindutva is indifferent to devotion and cares only about identity. Hinduism is open to reform and progress, which is why it has flourished for 4,000 years; Hindutva is reactionary and regressive, with its roots in the ‘racial pride’ ethos that spawned Fascism in the 1920s, which is why it is unlikely to outlast its current pea

Source: https://theprint.in/opinion/dear-troubled-liberal-dont-fear-the-congress-party/156690/