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Sonia and her advisors have learnt nothing from history

Sonia Gandhi dipped her feet into the waters of the Ganga and Yamuna (and, if mythology be believed, the Saraswati which flows underneath). She asserted she has a right to be a part of the Kumbh Mela, and that taking a dip was something her mother-in-law Indira Gandhi had also done.

How wetting one's feet only up to the knees amounts to a dip is, of course, a difficult question, but we shall let that pass. And how such feet wetting in the one of the world's most polluted rivers is holy is altogether a far more difficult question to even attempt to answer.

But what cannot be ignored is the message she is sending out, or trying to? By so very publicly taking dip at an ostensibly Hindu religious festival, Sonia Gandhi, in true Congress style, has dealt a body blow to the efforts by some committed people to keep India secular in the sense that the mandir and the State must be separate.

The strongest, and certainly genuine, criticism against the BJP has been that it mixed politics with religion. Such a mixture is not just explosive in the short run, amply borne out by the violence that rocks India so very frequently, but a threat to the very existence of India in the long run.

Just take a look around the world and it is clear that the nations that are prospering are those who try, and succeed in varying degrees, to keep religion and politics separate. The entire Western world follows that method. On the other hand, nations where religion is mixed with politics are floundering, the best example being Pakistan, a model of what every country should not be. Even in the West, those countries where the church was powerful (Spain, Portugal) were much weaker than nations that kept the bishops at an arms's length.

Today, in India, there are many of us who firmly believe that secularism does not just mean equal respect for all religions, but also, keeping religious and State affairs distinct and separate. And unlike what some of the so-called Hindu leaders say, this is not a Western idea but a very Indian idea, born in the antiquity of the caste system that ensured the Brahmin and Kshatriya were never the same person (shows that our forefathers were far more sensible than the present crop of leaders who swear by our ancient traditions; and that India actually became weak is because the caste system itself got corrupted!).

It is bad enough that the BJP, in its desperation for power, carried out sinister campaigns that finally culminated in the destruction of the Babri Masjid. Perhaps it is poetic justice that the legacy of this act is an albatross cross around the neck of L K Advani, the person most responsible for this mixing of religion and politics, which stalls him from becoming prime minister!

But Sonia Gandhi and her Congress advisors have obviously learnt nothing from the fatal mistakes made by this party in the past on the dangers of mixing religion and politics. Incidentally, the Congress is far more responsible than the BJP for mixing politics and religion into an explosive cocktail, right from the days when Indira Gandhi pandered to various sadhus, brahmacharis, and people like Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. The last led to one of the greatest threats India faced as a nation, the rise of Sikh separatism. Mercifully, that danger has passed, but obviously little has been learnt.

Rajiv Gandhi showed his utter lack of intelligence when he first allowed some Muslim bigots to bully him into overturning a humane Supreme Court judgment, and then overplayed his hand by opening the locks to the Babri Masjid one night in 1985. Later, Rajiv tried to prove his Hindu credentials by allowing the shilanyas and making noises about a Ram mandir.

But as history shows, every step towards proving his "Hindu-ness" by Rajiv only helped the BJP grow from two seats in the Lok Sabha to ruling the nation today.

Is Sonia really so stupid as to believe that by taking a "dip" in the river at Allahabad, she will prove her Hindu credentials? The fact is that is someone wants to vote for a Hindu, he will never vote for Sonia.

But her act at Allahabad has only further alienated secular Indians (and let us be honest, they are still in the majority). Despite her act, Sonia is not a Hindu, just as the Congress is not a secular party (wonder if it ever was).

Second, if at all Sonia wanted to actually take a dip for purely spiritual reasons (the very reason that tens of millions have braved the cold and the crowds to be present at Allahabad, millions who the sensation-seeking media have simply ignored, besotted as it is with naked foreigners, mobile-toting sadhus, and the VHP's antics), she should have kept it private.

The very fact that she went to Anand Bhavan in a blaze of publicity, then took a boat ride to take her dip only raises doubts about her spiritual motives, if any. Of course, this is not to imply that she has no right to take a dip as some of the crazies in the VHP suggest, but such a brazen political stunt is embarrassing, and not at all spiritual.

Alas, in all this tamasha, the losers are Indians and India. The former, because their choice in politics has been reduced to either the BJP or the Congress's brand of fake Hindu politics (the Third Front does not exist to merit attention at this point).

And India, because by blurring the line between politics and religion, its leaders are trying to make it a clone of Pakistan.

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The great bath, et al: Saisuresh Sivaswamy
Sonia's holy dip: T V R Shenoy

Amberish K Diwanji