Is Rahul Gandhi trying to patch Congress with Hindus?

Thirty years ago on April 23, 1985, the Supreme Court granted alimony to a 62-year-old Muslim woman and mother of five, Shah Bano. The judgement had the potential to alter the course of the wild river called Indian history.

In exactly a year, then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi corrected the corrected course. Buoyed by a brute majority in both houses of Parliament, swept by the tide of radical Islamic protests against what they called an anti-Sharia verdict, and pulled by the lure of Muslim votes, Rajiv got the judgment reversed.

Shah Bano was the Babri Masjid on the Hindu mind. It angered the majority more than Nehru's insistence on a Uniform Civil Code or his internationalising Kashmir. And while it marginalised liberal and progressive Muslim voices and eroded the possibility of reforming Muslim personal law, from a feeling of betrayal sprung the long and troubled relationship between Hindus and the Congress.

It also paved the way for the rise of the BJP.

Rahul Gandhi's high-visibility, photo-op-ridden trek to Kedarnath could be one of the party's first attempts to stem the growing distrust between Hindu voters and the party. Party insiders says that between November and February, Rahul had met almost daily eight to ten people - ranging from MPs to workers to party outsiders - to figure out what had gone so terribly wrong for the party to get routed in election after election.

There was near-unanimity in what they told him: one of the main reasons for Congress' decline was that it was seen as an excessively pro-minority and anti-Hindu party. The AK Antony committee going into reasons for the party's Lok Sabha debacle stressed in its report the need to urgently change this perception.

One of the first things the party did after the Lok Sabha loss was to start a pension for Hindu priests in Uttarakhand, not very different from the controversial imam bhata which Mamata Banerjee started in West Bengal.

The Congress must be careful about how it goes about rebuilding the relationship with the nation's majority community. It instinctively veers towards Nehru-Indira-era sops and photo ops. Neither may help.

One of most important moves would be in not what it does but what it doesn't. Only the other day, Digvijaya Singh was addressing separatist Masarat Alam as "Masaratji", reminiscent of his infamous "Osamaji". People know a politician like Digvijaya does not say even a word without design.

Pandering to extremists and criminals do not impress India's Muslims anymore and it reinforces the disgust Hindus feel.

For more than century, the Congress occupied the central space in Indian polity. Even while leaders like Ambedkar, Kamraj or Azad worked for the most marginalised and the minorites, the party never ceded the middle ground or alienated the majority with its discourse.

Reclaiming that ground will be extremely difficult, especially with a formidable BJP under Narendra Modi slowing inching from the right to the political centre.

It will need Rahul to do a lot more than just cameo for the cameras. The embittered relationship between the Congress and Hindus will need a strong, sustained engagement, not heavy flirting.