Although Congress poses as a secularist opponent of the BJP, it bears much of the responsibility for the nationwide communalist escalation of the last two decades. Shiv Sena was created by Congress in Bombay to kill Communists and suppress the labor movement. The Bajrang Dal was formed as an anti-Sikh militia during Indira Gandhi’s chauvinist offensive in the early eighties. Rajiv Gandhi in the mid-eighties went along with the campaign to tear down the Babri Mosque and called for “Ram Rajya”--the rule of Ram.
While it’s true that, as an electoral maneuver, Congress can accommodate Muslim fundamentalism as well as Hindu nationalism, at bottom it has always been the main party of the uppercaste Hindu big bourgeoisie. Mohandas Gandhi was the first to call for Ram Rajya in India. Gandhi and Nehru’s Congress let 2 million Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs die in order to consolidate a Hindu-dominated nation.
Congress has criticized the BJP over the Gujarat massacre, but where was Sonia when Ahmedabad was burning? In state elections in the wake of the massacre, Congress ran a former hardcore BJP/RSS cadre for chief minister in what was widely described as a “soft Hindutva” campaign. It should also be noted that the Hindu right took as a precedent and a model for the Gujarat massacre the Congress-led slaughter of up to 5000 Sikhs in 1984.
And, of course, it has been the imperialist-sponsored economic “reforms” introduced by Congress in the eighties that have fueled the rise of the communalist far-right. Most of the so-called left parties in India are supporting the new Congress-led coalition in the center that promises to carry on these policies.