A court verdict and measured silence: Why the Malegaon judgment has left Congress in a bind

Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi. (File: PTI)

The NIA court's verdict on Thursday in the 2008 Malegaon blast case appears to have left the Congress in a bind. Party MP and Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi tiptoed around the question even as reporters pressed for his response to the BJP's assertion that the court's verdict has conclusively demolished the "bogey of saffron terror".

"Please don't...It's just a...Please don't try and digress the issue. The main issue sitting in front of India today is that the government has destroyed our economic policy, our defence policy and our foreign policy. They are running this country into the ground. You people don't see it. You want to talk about other issues," Rahul said responding to a question on the Malegaon blast verdict.

Party leader and former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijaya Singh said that terrorism should not be associated with any religion. "There is neither Islamic terrorism nor Hindu terrorism. Every religion is a form of love, harmony, truth and non-violence… Na Hindu aatankvaadi ho sakta hai, na Musalman, Sikh or Christian. There are only a few people who use religion as a weapon of hatred. They give rise to terrorism," he said.

Notably, the Congress' response, or lack thereof, to the Malegaon verdict that has armed the BJP with fresh ammunition to target the grand old party is part of an ongoing strategy guided both by past experience and its struggle to rid itself of the "anti-Hindu" and "pro-Muslim" tag.

The trouble for Congress began before the 2008 Malegaon blasts which came after the Batla House encounter just days earlier when terrorists linked to the Indian Mujahideen were neutralised. The Mumbai 26/11 terror attacks came soon after.

Stung by attacks, the party was left fighting a different battle altogether as comments by Congress leaders left the government squandering for cover.

Sample the following:

- Digvijaya Singh, Congress general secretary, termed the Batla House encounter "fake". After the 26/11 attacks, he said that he had spoken to Maharashtra ATS chief Hemant Karkare, who was leading the Malegaon blasts case, who claimed he was receiving threats from "Hindu extremists".

- Former Union Home Minister P Chidambaram first used the term "saffron terror" while addressing the annual conference of DGPs and IGPs in 2010. "There is no let-up in the attempts to infiltrate militants into India. There is no let-up in the attempts to radicalise young men and women. Besides, there is the recently uncovered phenomenon of saffron terrorism that has been implicated in many bomb blasts of the past," he was quoted as saying by The Indian Express.

- In 2010 again, secret diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks quoted Rahul Gandhi as telling then US Ambassador to India Timothy Roemer during a lunch in 2009 that “the bigger threat (than outfits such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba) may be the growth of radicalised Hindu groups, which create religious tensions and political confrontations with the Muslim community”.

- In 2012, Union Law Minister Salman Khurshid sparked a huge controversy when he said that former Congress president Sonia Gandhi "wept bitterly" when she was shown images of the Batla House encounter.

- In 2013, then Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde said BJP and RSS were conducting terror training camps. "Reports have come during investigation that the BJP and RSS conduct terror training camps to spread terrorism… Bombs were planted on the Samjhauta Express (the train that went to Pakistan), at Mecca Masjid (in Hyderabad), and a blast was carried out in Malegaon. We will have to think about it seriously and will have to remain alert," he said.

- Over a decade later, Shinde wrote in his book 'Five Decades in Politics' that he came across the term "saffron terror" in a confidential paper prepared by the MHA. "If anyone refers to my media statements from that time, they will notice that I carefully chose the term ‘saffron terror’. I remember someone from the media had asked if it was Hindu terrorism or saffron terrorism. ‘This is saffron terrorism… ’, I had replied’."

The post-2014 pivot

Cut to 2025 and the voices responsible for driving the Congress' narrative are either silent or relegated to the sidelines. The Congress' silence on the Malegaon verdict, therefore, doesn't come across as telling.

There has been a concerted effort by the party in wake of its defeat in the 2014 elections, that saw it reduced to its worst tally of 44, to mark a course-correction. The clear attempt was to rid itself of the tag of being anti-Hindu.

So, Rahul Gandhi became a janeudhari, started visiting temples with the party declaring him as a 'Shiv bhakt'. The party started to try and carve out a place for itself with the Hinduism vs Hindutva debate and silently began to position itself as a believer of soft Hindutva.

Speaking at the India Today Conclave in 2018, Sonia Gandhi said BJP had managed to convince people that Congress was a "Muslim party".

"The BJP has managed to… I don’t say brainwash because that is a rude word… but has managed to convince people, to persuade people that the Congress party is a Muslim party," she had said.

Asked if Rahul's temple visits were a bid to ensure that the BJP did not monopolise Hinduism, she had said, "There is a bit of that because we have been pushed into a corner. Perhaps rather than going to a temple quietly… maybe, a little more public focus on that."

The dichotomy that the Congress finds itself in has been a constant dilemma for the party -- the Shah Bano verdict, the Babri Masjid demolition under its watch and then PM Rajiv Gandhi's decision to allow opening of the locks of the Babri Masjid and performance of shilanyas at the spot, were all attempts to try and position itself as neither too "anti-Hindu" nor too "pro-Muslim".

With the Congress still struggling to find its sweet spot in this dilemma and the BJP in a far more powerful position than the 1980s or 1990s, the trouble for a weakened Congress remains where it was.