Congress blatantly cedes patriotic space

The Congress party's long march towards becoming a far-Left NGO began on 4 June 2004. While tears and praise were still flowing over Sonia Gandhi's 'great sacrifice' of turning down prime ministership, she was busy creating the National Advisory Committee (NAC) to bypass a puppet Prime Minister and the Cabinet and rule India with a bunch of unelected activists.

Most of these activists shared core traits. The foremost being a deep loathing for Hinduness, the glue that holds this civilisation. They also swung the liberalisation bus, flagged off by Congress's own Prime Minister Narasimha Rao, sharply Left.

Shortly later, Sonia was opposing the civil nuclear deal with the US which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was keen to sign. It finally went through after Singh showed rare spine and stood his ground.

Then in August 2008, at Beijing's Great Hall of the People, Sonia presided over the signing of an extraordinary Memorandum of Understanding. The Indian National Congress unhesitatingly made a pact with the Communist Party of China (CPC), which runs a brute dictatorship.

The signatories were then Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi and CPC Minister Wang Jia Rui. Sonia Gandhi and a certain Xi Jinping, then China's Vice President, fondly watched over.

That long journey towards an anti-nationalistic, far-Left, anarchic ideal has culminated with Rahul Gandhi.

During the Doklam standoff, Rahul privately met Chinese envoy Luo Zhaohui and tried to shrug it off as a courtesy call.

He stood with terrorist Afzal Guru's backers at JNU. The Enforcement Directorate has said that hundreds of crores for the often-violent and communal anti-Citizen Amendment Act protests were routed through a senior Congress leader.

And now, when at least 20 Indian soldiers were killed on a blood-washed night at Ladakh's Galwan Valley, Rahul is viciously attacking the government instead of standing by it during a national crisis.

He is either uninformed or is lying. Indian and Chinese soldiers patrol the line of actual control without firearms because of agreements signed by his own Congress governments in 1993, 1996 and 2005.

One of the chief reasons for the Congress's political evanescence is that it has ceded patriotic space. Whether it is during Doklam, the surgical strike after the Uri terror attack, or the Balakot air raids to avenge Pulwama, the Congress has repeatedly violated an unwritten code in democracy. It has mocked and questioned the armed forces and attacked the government when it should have stood united on matters of sovereignty. People now ask whether India's sovereignty matters at all to Sonia and Rahul Gandhi. Or, having lost all hope of returning to power, is Congress reducing itself to being an Antifa, a far-Left outfit which works towards violent chaos, has shadowy backers, and seeks to destabilise democracies because people won't vote it to power. This conflict with China could be the inflation point from which we see a Congress-less Opposition forming. None of the other parties has violated democracy's unwritten code. They may fiercely oppose Narendra Modi but are mature enough to stand by the government and the nation at this hour. Leader after leader, from RJD's Tejaswi Yadav to Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, has stood with the government.No one has been more abrasive with Modi than West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. But even she has made it clear that she stands with the Modi government on Chinese aggression. "There are two sides to this. There is war, and there is negotiation through diplomatic channels. What channel will be useful, let the Centre decide," she said.

"This is our motherland. We want progress for our nation. We do not want anybody to hurt our nation, attack our nation. If somebody does so, we will not sit quietly. If there is external aggression." She has also agreed to attend the all-party meeting convened by the Prime Minister on the China issue.

Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav has asked for a strong strategic and economic reply to China. "All contracts awarded to Chinese companies should be suspended with immediate effect and there should be a restraint on imports from China," he said. Even Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut has asked for a strong response to China's actions and said the people of India stood with the prime minister.

While the rest of the Opposition shows no crisis of confidence in democracy, Congress' new Naxal-like avatar can be a liability for potential allies. The Shiv Sena is already accruing Congress baggage in Maharashtra. Many top Congress leaders and spokespersons have either left or are on their way out.

Once the vast middle ground of Indian politics, Congress is making itself an outlier, and also perhaps politically untouchable in the future.

(This article was first published on www.firstpost.com. Reprinted with their permission)