The Yuva Hunkar Rally organised by newly elected Gujrat MLA Jignesh Mewani was, above all, a demonstration of bankruptcy.

Political upstart Kanahiya Kumar gave a tired, cynical rendition of Gandhian civil protest in a cliché-ridden speech that seemed like it had been cribbed from scraps found in Arvind Kejriwal’s political waste. Shehla Rashid, who never stands up for free speech, freedom of the arts and artists, gay and transgender rights, or women’s rights in her home province of Kashmir, put on a shrill act of liberal activism. Jignesh Mewani capped off the farce by declaring that India as a nation has never been in such deep trouble and crisis as now, very conveniently forgetting about Indira Gandhi’s years of tyranny when she imposed Emergency. And for his coup de grace, Mewani, claiming to be fighting for secularism, held up copies of the Manusmriti and the Indian Constitution, and demanded that Prime Minister Modi declare his choice between the two, followed by slogans “Down with Manuwad.”

Would Mewani ask Shehla Rashid and Umar Khalid to choose between the Quran and the Secular Constitution of India? Or if they would work for the abolition of Muslim Family Law in the spirit of secularism and equal rights for all citizens without regard to their religious texts, be they the Manusmriti or the Quran? This charade of non-communal humanism laughably turned into a demonstration of the ideological dishonesty of the Left which has given birth to epithets like “sickular” and “pseudo-secular.”

What are we to make of these activists? Its been alleged that Jignesh Mewani is working for the Indian National Congress. Whatever the truth of that maybe, there is little doubt that they are playing the INC’s identity politics, updated for the 21st century. The INC has long waved the flag of secularism while practicing and perpetuating the politics of communal division, keeping the country’s politics aligned along identity based vote banks, particularly minorities. A Dalit-Muslim combine, as peddled by Jignesh Mewani and Shehla Rashid, is straight out of the INC’s playbook.

Anybody who has dispensed with this perverted political construct of impoverished and oppressed minorities realizes that the root problem is poverty, not caste or religion, and that the poor are in a collective majority in India. Social justice and uplift of the poor depends on the growth of the nation’s economy, regardless of their caste or religion. Growing commercial enterprises do not care whether their employees are Muslim or Brahmin or Dalit. The solution to India’s social ills is robust economic growth for decades combined with education opportunities for everyone so that they may participate in the growing economy.

For nearly half a century after independence, the INC, in cahoots with the communists, strangled India’s economy, and ensured that everyone stayed where they were. Farmers, muslims, dalits, the middle class, everyone stayed where they were as India suffered decade after decade of stasis, deprivation, and stagnation. With the communist inspired central planning regime, the INC run state distributed meager welfare to various identity groups, acting as their benefactor while at the same time ensuring that they stayed where they were and kept voting for the INC for the scraps it threw in their plates.

This political gravy train of the Left came off the rails with the economic liberalisation pushed through by Narasimha Rao starting in the early 1990s. For transforming the lives of a billion Indians, the INC and the Gandhis pushed him into oblivion. Even his funeral was not attended by INC big wigs. Anyway, thanks to Narasimha, India was profoundly transformed over the next 20 years. Where the children of the rural poor went hungry, unclothed and unschooled for generations, today shiny yellow school buses ply rural roads picking up healthy children in clean uniforms village to village, ferrying them to good schools, children who are bound for colleges and then into the economy, far from the misery and wretchedness endured by their grandparents and great grandparents. Where ever in India this transformation has occurred, Dalits have benefited as much as people of any other community.

Kanhaya Kumar talks of his mother who used to clean peoples homes. This story is common. The carpenter rebuilding the cabinets in my kitchen proudly told me that his son is studying commerce in college. The lady that I have seen coming to clean the homes of the neighborhood for the last 20 years today arrives on a Honda Activa that her college graduated daughter bought for her. Why did Kanhaya’s mother not go to JNU? Why will Kanhaya not acknowledge the profound and awesome transformation that India has seen between his mother’s generation and his own? Why will he not become part of the politics that has created that transformation, instead of spitting venom as if he still represented the politics of 1934?

India remains a poor country, the transformation has not been uniform across all states, uncounted millions still live in abject poverty, raising their children on construction sites and garbage dumps, scavenging in excrement filled sewers for a living. There is still much work to be done. But journey that India has taken in the last 25 years, the transformation in prosperity, opportunity, dignity and justice that has come to so many millions has shown conclusively that the distance that yet remains to be covered demands, above all, massive unrelenting economic growth, and continuing investment in education, food security and healthcare to create pathways for citizens to participate in economic growth.

Jignesh Mewani et al in their self-righteous outrage are, perhaps deliberately, quite oblivious to all this. There is nothing in their polemic except shrill whining about Narendra Modi, communalism and oppression. They show no signs of recognising the transformation and hope that has come to so many of India’s poor, who now want politicians to deliver tangible results, like roads, schools, and an economy flush with opportunities for growing prosperity, and not hot air about oppression. Mewani demands that Narendra Modi create two crore jobs as promised, but does not even bother to look into how these jobs are to be created, where the money is to come from. All he has to offer is shallow, tattered rhetoric about socialism and social justice.

Nor do Mewani, Shehla Rashid, and Umar Khalid bother to face the reality that if Muslims remain poor and deprived, it is not because of deliberate denial by “evil” Hindus, but because Muslim politics is based fundamentally on preventing the political and social integration of Muslims into the wider socio-economic dynamic of India. Virtually every Muslim leader across the Republic is primarily concerned with keeping the Indian state and its opportunities at bay from his constituents, except for whatever deals he can make for himself, trading his support to the parties of the Left for their ensuring non-interference in his space. The supposedly liberal secular Muslim social justice warriors like Shehla Rashid and Umar Khalid don’t for a minute bother to look to reform the politics that plague the Muslim population of India and keep it miserable. Their passions are only to lash out at the Hindu right in the name of secularism and tolerance.

While Shehla Rashid tried to blame the Delhi Police for the miserably low turnout of the Yuva Hunkar rally, it was actually telling of just how out of touch she and her friends are. Making a noise on the university campuses and the streets of Delhi makes for good television, but that’s all it is. These people have no vision, no ideas, and no touch with the realities of the poor. All they have is political ambition built on their own prejudices, and delusions about their relevance to 21st century India.