Congress didn't appease Muslims. Hindus stand to gain nothing from BJP
India is definitely not Syria. Nor is it Iraq, Sudan or Afghanistan.
Regardless of who rules federally, the Indian state is overwhelmingly powerful.
Given its size, diversity, corruption and levels of poverty, the country has successfully overcome - or contained - many homegrown insurgencies.
It's a fact that India, as a democracy, is home to a record number of rebel groups, most of them classified as outlawed.
From militants in the northeast, to the Maoists in the "Red Corridor" to Islamists up in Kashmir, armed guerrillas continue to pose a momentous challenge to internal security.
But none has been able to disintegrate the country in any shape or form.
Once deemed the deadliest, Sikh and Tamil militancy were smashed to a pulp under the Congress rule.
Who else could be more decisive - or arbitrary - than the then prime minister Indira Gandhi?
She became the first Indian leader to defy global powers when she led New Delhi into the atomic age.
My birth in 1974 coincides with the birth of a nuclear India.
Three years before, Indira Gandhi established New Delhi's dominance on the Asian subcontinent when East Pakistan became an independent Bangladesh after an 11-month war.
Chronic inequalities, shortages, population explosion, violent religious unrest, political and corporate graft, caste strife, militancy and so forth - you name an affliction and it can be traced to the Congress administration, Gandhi or non-Gandhi.
Obviously, the party has to accept the blame because it governed India for most of the period after 1947.
"Appeasement" was a myth - yes, a myth - which circulated during the UPA's two terms.
In 2006, a study called the Sachar report showed Muslims stuck at the bottom of almost every economic or social development index.
The survey, hugely advertised by the Gandhis and the Manmohan Singh government, laid a heavy emphasis on the community's dismally-low participation in formal employment, education, bureaucracy and power structure.
I was a political correspondent on a wire service when I covered - and reported - one of then prime minister Manmohan Singh's most controversial addresses.
"We will have to devise innovative plans to ensure that minorities, particularly the Muslim minority, are empowered to share equitably the fruits of development.
"These must have the first claim on resources," Singh told a meeting of the National Development Council back then.
The governing Congress, knowingly or unknowingly, gave a handle to the BJP and like-minded groups to whip up Hindu nationalist sentiments.
The word "appeasement" gained unprecedented currency.
And the Gandhis, who had a committed vote-bloc among the country's Muslim population, never really back-tracked.
They won a second tenure in 2009.
But did the two UPAs appease Muslims?
They didn't.
From the release of the Sachar findings to barely two years before the Congress party lost national power, six years was not too short a period for a palpable change.
In 2012, estimates of the then Planning Commission revealed Muslims, both urban and rural, had the highest poverty ratio of 33.9 per cent, followed by Christians (12.9 per cent) and Sikhs (11.9 per cent).
If they were appeased, as alleged by the BJP and covertly acknowledged by the Congress, Muslims should have been better off.
But they weren't and aren't.
The Indian state appeases none.
Political leaders though tend to deliver empty psychological boosts to majority and minority communities alike.
Their booster shots are, almost every time, wrapped in symbolism.
But every symbolism has its shelf life.
Sachar paid dividends to the Congress till the 2009 elections.
Before, Singh's anointment as PM ended the Sikh-Gandhi hostility.
The Ram temple movement eventually brought the BJP to power.
The Mandal commission consolidated the Dalits.
But no single community, upper-caste Hindus included, benefited wholesomely from any stroke of symbolism, ever.
If they had, an Udta Punjab would not have flourished under an Akali government in the state and a Sikh prime minister at the Centre.
Muslims would have been the most progressive minority community, starting 2006.
Dalits and backward tribes would have uplifted by now, following decades of "affirmative action", more so the SCs of Uttar Pradesh when ruled by Mayawati.
The Indian state has allowed no anti-establishment movement to succeed either.
Khalistan gone. LTTE gone. Naxals restricted. Islamist terror fairly contained. Northeast unrest restricted.
No legitimate civil agitation survives long enough any more.
Once a hallmark of industrial disputes, trade-union protests fizzle out in a matter of days these days.
Urban India hit the streets with candles, faced water cannons at the Raisina Hill over the brutal Nirbhaya gang rape.
But not after that, despite several stories of similarly atrocious assaults making headlines now and then.
It's hard to believe Anna Hazare will be able to galvanise India back into action over suspected corruption ever.
Since 2015, the sacred cow has emerged as a new symbol of nationalistic consolidation.
Unfortunately, this consolidation appears to be directed more against the Muslims than towards improving the condition of the revered animal.
Islamist terror has never been able to infiltrate Indian Muslims as much as it did in other parts of the world.
Yet, the community, sadly, has turned out to be a vote ATM for the authors of the cow symbolism.
Anti-Muslim bashing, especially when ISIS' videos have outraged the world, guarantees unification of a multipolar majority.
The symbolism around the cow is fairly fresh. It's here to stay but not forever.
It too will vanish into thin air like the Sachar report, but not before it backfires. After all, kitchens are not run on symbols.