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Rahul Gandhi has visited 11 Hindu temples in Gujarat in the last 50 days, but one the elections are over, the Congress party will return to its old agenda.

As per one report, Rahul Gandhi has visited eleven Hindu temples in Gujarat in the last 50 days. This number is likely to have exceeded the total number of temple visits that Rahul, mother Sonia and father Rajiv Gandhi must have undertaken in their entire lives.

Most religious people who have faith in the supreme divine power pray every day, though they may not visit the temple daily. Then there is the other kind – those who remember God only when they are in deep trouble. Rahul Gandhi belongs to second category. Otherwise how can one explain that his sudden urge to visit five temples in a single day? This pilgrimage drama might be a good photo-op for him, but nobody is fooled. Everyone sees it as nothing more than a political stunt.

Just before 2002 Gujarat assembly elections, there was a terrorist attack on the famous Akshardham temple in Gandhinagar. Sonia Gandhi, the president and star campaigner for the Indian National Congress, didn’t even bother to visit the temple. During the UPA regime, former Home minister P. Chidambaram invented a new vocabulary, featuring words like “Hindu terrorism” and “saffron terrorism”. Continuing this tradition, recently in Rajkot, he even gave a novel meaning to ‘azadi’ in Kashmir (by equating it with autonomy), thereby indirectly legitimising the “Bharat ki barbaadi” slogans raised at Delhi’s JNU last year.

As Rahul makes the rounds of temples, senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal is representing the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) in the Supreme Court against building the Ram temple in Ayodhya. Again, it was Sibal who represented the AIMPLB to defend the dreadful practice of triple talaq amongst Muslims (It is noteworthy that Congress never opposed such a discriminatory practice against women.) Sibal is also defending Teesta Setelvad in various courts against her arrest.

Not only at individual level, but also at the institutional level, the Congress’s actions are no different. During the UPA era, the ‘super government’ called the National Advisory Council (NAC), under the chairpersonship of Sonia Gandhi, drafted the infamous communal violence Bill, which presumed that the majority community (read: ‘Hindu’) is always responsible for communal riots. It’s only after the tremendous backlash against this Bill that it was dropped.

The UPA government, during the Ram Setu issue, filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court that Ram was not a historical figure but a mythical one. Just a few months ago, Congress leaders in Kerala openly slaughtered a cow, and released its video on social media with pride.

These are not some random events, but part of a well thought-out strategy. All this is done not just for gaining minority votes. The term “minority appeasement” only partially explains this strategy. The other part of this strategy is to demonise anything and everything that can remotely be connected with ‘Hindu’. It is an allergy towards Hindu sentiments.

How can one otherwise explain celebrating Tipu Sultan’s birth anniversary in Karnataka? This is the thought process that prevents the Congress from being seen as sympathetic to the Hindu cause.

Now, in a complete reversal, Rahul Gandhi’s campaign managers have ensured that he does not even visit a single Muslim or Christian shrine. He did not take any selfie or photograph with skull-cap wearing Muslims (forget about wearing one himself). He has not uttered a single pro-minority word in his speeches, let alone talk about post-Godhra riots, or “Maut ka Saudagar”, or an equivalent jibe.

People are not so naïve that they do not see through the real purpose of his religious tourism. Everyone knows that it will end at sunset on 14 December, when voting for the second and final phase of Gujarat elections gets over.

The Congress party will go back to its original agenda inspired by Left-liberals, strategised and executed by Rahul, Chidambaram, and Sibal. No one in Gujarat has any doubt about this.

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