This same Syed Shahbuddin, in an astonishing space of just ten years, became one of the most powerful and regressive voices on the Muslim side during the Ayodhya debate in the 1990s. Together with the Shahi Imam of Delhi’s Jama Masjid and similar fundamentalist Imams and Mullahs, these worthies bent an already-craven Congress party to their will and whim. Indeed, the phrase “Muslim veto” was used by our Congress-hired Lutyens activists, political intellectuals, academic mercenaries, and think-tank malcontents even as late as 2014. And so, no matter how hard it tries today, this is one virtue-turned-taint the Congress can never wash off. Perhaps nobody read it the riot act that Shakespeare so wonderfully authored in the character of Lady Macbeth.