ET View: Why Salman Khurshid's statement does not offer a blinding new insight

Salman Khurshid does not quite offer a blinding new insight when he says the Congress has blood on its hands, responding to a question on the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 and the post-Babri masjid demolition riots that were severe in Mumbai and could not be prevented by a Congress government in Maharashtra. Khurshid is a lightweight within the party and cannot really own up to serious offences on the party’s behalf. But, on this occasion, he did not need to: Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh had apologised to the people for the anti-Sikh riots more than once. Rahul Gandhi endorsed that apology later.

The Congress replaced the chief minister of Maharashtra, after the incumbent failed to stop the riots. But it did not take action on the findings of the Justice Srikrishna Commission of Inquiry into the riots. The Maharashtra police have a terrible record of picking up young Muslim men and putting them away in jail as accused in terror cases, of which they are invariably acquitted years later. This, too, happened on Congress watch.

Honest Congressmen would appeal for the support of religious minorities not on the basis of a shining record of defending their democratic rights but as opponents of a religious basis for Indian nationalism, and the most viable leader of resistance to such a shift.