Being the Other: The Muslim in India

by Saeed Naqvi

The 1991 elections brought Rao to power. But the result carried in it ingredients which disturbed him. Except for a handful, all Brahmin candidates from the Congress (and some other parties) were rejected by the electorate. As an overreaction, Rao planted Brahmins all around him as advisers. Traditionally, the vice president was invited to become chairman of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR). On this occasion, Rao blocked K.R. Narayanan, a Dalit vice president, from the chairmanship of the ICCR. Vasant Sathe, who had been defeated in Maharashtra, was accommodated in the slot instead. In 1993, a year after the Babri Masjid demolition, when Rao decided to have an elected Congress Working Committee, the results shocked him. Arjun Singh, who was fiercely opposed to Rao, led the pack. Apart from his political secretary, Jitendra Prasad, the top six candidates were non-Brahmins. On a flimsy pretext, Rao had the results annulled. Rao was going through a phase when his interests as a Brahmin superseded his interests as a Congressman. It can be said without fear of being contradicted that if Rao were given the power to choose between Arjun Singh and Atal Bihari Vajpayee as prime minister, he would have, without any hesitation, cast his vote for Vajpayee. He was politically the most ‘Hindu’ of all Congress prime ministers. Kamaluddin Ahmed, a Congress MP from Warangal in Telangana, who had observed Rao closely, said to me: ‘His sharp anti-Muslim edges are derived from...