The Gandhi family has a long tried and tested political history of Muslim appeasement. Rahul Gandhi is also carrying forward the long tradition of Muslim appeasement of his family. From the very beginning, the tradition of Muslim appeasement by the Gandhi family starting from Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi to Sonia Gandhi, whatever has been the custom or tradition of Congress, Rahul Gandhi has followed it with full intensity and is moving forward.
Let us understand Rahul Gandhi’s Muslim appeasement through some of his statements and actions. In 2018, a report in Inquilab Urdu newspaper stated that during a meeting with Muslim intellectuals, Rahul Gandhi had said that Congress is a party of Muslims, then there was a lot of political uproar about it. After this statement, the Congress party came on the back foot. Apart from this, in 2007, Rahul Gandhi had said that if any Gandhi had been the Prime Minister of the country, then Babri Masjid would never have fallen. By Gandhi he did not mean Mahatma Gandhi but his own Gandhi family. In 2012, Rahul Gandhi had clearly said that the Congress and its Prime Minister Manmohan Singh wanted to give reservation to Muslims.
Further, when the Modi government made a law to free Muslim women from triple talaq as a major step of social reform, even then Rahul Gandhi opposed it to please the Muslim fundamentalists. In 2019, when Rahul Gandhi was the Congress President and elections were about to be held, he said in a minority conference of Congress that if his government is formed, that is, if the Congress government is formed, the triple talaq law will be abolished.
Before the Uttar Pradesh elections in 2022, on the advice of Rahul Gandhi, Congress had organized Ulema conferences in UP in which Muslims were being assured by going from street to street and efforts were also being made to tell them that Congress will never go against their interests.
Recently Rahul Gandhi had said that kings and Maharajas used to rob the poor but he never said anything about the atrocities of Nawabs, Nizams, Sultans and Emperors who have destroyed many temples, as is recorded in the history. On 6 May this year, former Congress leader Acharya Pramod Krishnam had said that Rahul Gandhi had a meeting with his close aides after the Ram Mandir verdict and in that meeting he had said that after the Congress government is formed, he will overturn the decision of the Supreme Court on the Ram Mandir. Rahul Gandhi had described the Ram Mandir Prana Pratishtha held in Ayodhya in January this year as a dance and song programme. On the one hand, while Rahul Gandhi plays the victim card on the violence like Sambhal by the Muslim side, he calls Hindus violent in the Parliament. Apart from this, in his US visit, Rahul Gandhi had called his ally party Muslim League in Kerala a secular, whereas history is a witness that the Muslim League of Kerala was born from the seeds of Jinnah’s Muslim League.
Priyanka Gandhi is also not behind in carrying forward the political legacy of Muslim appeasement. If we want to understand Priyanka Gandhi’s politics of Muslim appeasement, then for that we will have to take the help of the events happening in Gaza and Bangladesh and do a comparative study of Priyanka’s thinking on the Muslims of Gaza and the Hindus of Bangladesh. Priyanka Gandhi has made many tweets or posts raising her voice for the rights of Palestinian Muslims against the violence in Gaza. On the atrocities being committed on Hindus in Bangladesh and many other places, Priyanka Gandhi’s post is only to pay lip service. Priyanka and the Gandhi family’s love for Muslims is becoming their compulsion. In Wayanad, from where Priyanka Gandhi has become an MP, the Muslim vote is not only important but also in a decisive position.
Like Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka also wins the election in Wayanad with the support of Indian Union Muslim League. The Muslim population of Wayanad is influenced by the Indian Union Muslim League, which is the ally of the Congress in Kerala. Priyanka Gandhi won the election in Wayanad in alliance with the IUML. Talking about the population of Wayanad, the population of Muslims here is about one-third according to the last Census, which must have increased as of now.
Talking about Kerala, the population of Muslims is increasing rapidly here. It has reached 27 percent by 2011 and may increase even more in the latest population figures. The BJP has accused the Congress party of Muslim appeasement but this is not a new thing, since Independence or rather say that since the time of Pandit Nehru, the Congress has been accused of Muslim appeasement. We will talk about the UPA government whose Prime Minister was Manmohan Singh and then the UPA chairperson was Mrs. Sonia Gandhi. Between 2004 and 2014, the UPA government was accused of Muslim appeasement many times. These allegations were also confirmed by a committee formed under the chairmanship of former Defence Minister AK Antony, which we know as the Antony Committee. The Antony Committee was formed to review the Congress’s crushing defeat in 2014 and this committee had accepted that the continuous statements of some Congress leaders on Muslim reservation had angered the majority community the Hindus. The Antony Committee had also accepted that a major reason for the Congress’s defeat was the stigma of being a Muslim party.
The activities of the UPA government due to which the Congress was branded as pro-Muslim, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said not once but twice during his tenure that Muslims have the first right on the resources of the country. There is a long list of allegations of Muslim appeasement on the UPA government during Manmohan Singh’s tenure as Prime Minister. On 27 May 2012, in the meeting of the Planning Commission, it was proposed that 15 percent of the funds in all the central schemes should be allocated for the minorities. During Manmohan Singh’s government, the Sachar Committee and Justice Ranganath Misra Commission were formed to know and understand the condition of the Muslims. Justice Mishra Commission, along with giving 10 percent reservation to Muslims and 5 percent to other minorities, also recommended that Dalits who converted to Islam or Christianity should also get reservation. The commission had also said that in the 27% quota for OBCs, a sub-quota of 8.40 per cent should be made for Muslims. In the Sachar Committee report, it was suggested to count the number of Muslims working in the security forces. This has never happened in history.
In 2010, Rahul Gandhi had told the American ambassador Timothy Romer that the Hindus of the country are a bigger threat than the Muslim terrorists.
