Digvijay Singh is a man who likes to take the battle to the enemy camp, sometimes even to his own one. Sometimes he makes startling statements, as in the past about his own colleague’s handling of the Maoist problem, but most consistently about saffron terror. Ever since Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev’s entry into the public imagination, he has been calling them an RSS creation and also personally attacking the father-son duo of Shanti and Prashant Bhushan.
Now that the Anna brigade has taken to a more direct role in politics by opposing the Congress candidate in a by-election, Digvijay has taken to writing letters as well as releasing some: those written by the RSS to its cadre asking them to mobilise support for the Baba Ramdev movement and one from its general secretary Sanjay Joshi to Anna extending full support to the movement. There is nothing particularly startling about the point Digvijay has made. But he’s been hammering the point home in his typical style that Anna and gang are working to an RSS plan.
RSS letter circulated as evidence of Team Anna’s complicity
What is also typical is the response within the Congress. Janardhan Dwivedi, also a general secretary, has stated that “after the PM’s communication to Anna I don’t think it was required to send any communication to him”. The interpretation here is that there is a thinking in the party that Digvijay has again taken the battle too far and it could be counter-productive to keep targeting Anna. But the reality is that for beat reporters this too is a familiar script. Digvijay sets a certain political agenda, the Congress goes through the motions of distancing itself from it. It’s a deliberate ambiguity, one that comes from the impulse to both take up political challenges and be cautious at the same time. Splitting hair over whether Digvijay has been rapped on the knuckles or not leaves one no wiser. More to the fact is that Diggy raja will have his outbursts again. And again.
