- October 20, 2026
Opinion | Saving Innocent Israelis Not Appreciated
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Captain Smit Machchhar is a world hero today, drawing tributes and acclaim from many countries, including some Islamic nations.
Smit Machchhar was stabbed by his Omani co-pilot in the cockpit of the Dubai-Tel Aviv Flydubai flight on Wednesday. (Reuters photo)
BJP spokespersons have repeatedly pointed out that Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra have not praised the heroism of Captain Smit Machchhar. The Indian pilot who saved 174 lives deserved highest commendation. But appreciating his bravery was fraught with the risk of displeasing those who did not want innocent Israelis to be saved.
To be fair, the Congress President, Mallikarjun Kharge and, AICC General Secretary, Jairam Ramesh, did utter some suppressed words, acknowledging the good deed of Captain Machchhar. But their compliments were quite muted compared to the passionate and loving admiration heaped upon Captain Machchhar by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a one-to-one online interaction with the brave soul. Modi’s energy was matched only by the happy gracefulness of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Bibi applauded Captain Machchhar again and again, on his own behalf, and on behalf of the Israeli people.
Captain Machchhar is a world hero today, drawing tributes and acclaim from many countries, including some Islamic nations. He has been chosen to receive the highest civilian award in Israel.
Nevertheless, Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra continued to maintain silence, inviting unsavoury interpretations that they are feeling hesitant to glorify Captain Smit Machchhar, and to condemn the terrorist attack by the Omani co-pilot, Hamam al-Hammami.
Priyanka’s self-proclaimed soft corner for Palestine is known. So is Asaduddin Owaisi’s. The AIMIM Chief had come in for criticism when he said “Jai Philestine” after his swearing in as a member of Indian Parliament. It is notable that Owaisi did praise Smit Machchhar. But as a rule, Indian Muslim leaders refrained.
Terrorist Hamam al-Hammami’s foiled plan to crash the Fly Dubai plane into Ben Gurion airport in Israel got reduced to the issue of Israel vs Islamic terrorists. This may not seem to be a matter of direct concern for the first family of Congress. But it is rumoured that their apprehension is that, if they praise Captain Smit Machchhar, they might lose Muslim votes in India.
The Congress Party was not always like that. In fact, it was quite the reverse. Immediately after independence, the President, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, and the Deputy Prime Minister, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, insisted that Somnath Temple must be reconstructed. Jawaharlal Nehru refused. But the presence of Hindu stalwarts at the top level in the Congress generated such irresistible force that the immovable Jawaharlal Nehru gave in. The consecration ceremony of Somnath Temple on the 11th of May, 1951 was attended by India’s first President, Dr. Rajendra Prasad.
The Independence movement had created a powerful Hindu leadership within the Congress. Men like Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Madan Mohan Malaviya, Lala Lajpat Rai, Bipin Chandra Pal, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, N. V. Gadgil, C. Vijayaraghavachariar ….. the list is long.
At Independence, the Congress was considered a “Hindu party”. The first election symbol of the Congress was a pair of bullocks with a yoke. After the 1969 split, the Congress led by Indira Gandhi chose the election symbol of cow and calf. There was nothing un-Hindu about mainstream Congress. Several Congress leaders wore the tilak on their forehead. But then, Maulanas within the party, clad in traditional Islamic attire, were also asserting their might. The friction between the Hindu stream and the Muslim stream had gone on for decades. (This friction is now 1314 years old).
A big blot had happened in 1923. Until then, for 27 years, all the six stanzas of Vande Matram were respectfully recited during every ‘varshik adhiveshan’ of the Congress. When Congress held its regular annual session at Kakinada in 1923, under the presidentship of Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar, the Maulana objected to the singing of Vande Matram. He claimed that the song hurt his religious sensibilities. The Congress did not succumb immediately. The four-day regular session had begun on the 28th of December, 1923. From the 1st of January, 1924, the party began to totter on this issue.
Earlier, in September, 1923, a special session of the Congress presided over by a 35-year-old Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, had seen full rendition of Vande Matram without any formal objection from the Muslims. Though hotheads in the community never felt comfortable with the national song.
On October 15, 1937, Mohd. Ali Jinnah, while presiding over the Muslim League’s annual session in Lucknow, openly attacked Vande Matram. Jinnah was earlier a prominent face of the Congress from 1906 to 1920.
In his provocative Lucknow speech, Jinnah said “Hindi is to be the national language of all India, and the Bande Matram is to be the national song, and is to be forced upon all.” He made a broader charge in that speech, that “the majority community have clearly shown their hand: that Hindustan is for the Hindus”. (Source: NDTV).
Jawaharlal Nehru was then the president of the Congress. Nehru gave in to Jinnah’s pressure. A fortnight after Jinnah’s speech, a parallel session of the AICC and CWC in Calcutta decided to reduce Vande Matram to the first two stanzas.
The partition of Vande Matram led to widespread demoralization within and outside the Congress. A demoralized people were then subjected to the demand for partition of India. The massacre of Hindus on direct action day (16th August, 1946) was an example of what India will witness, on a nationwide scale, if the country did not give in to the blackmail of the Muslim League.
While Congress still remained a proud Hindu party, its corrosion from within began to happen at an unnerving speed. Self-proclaimed atheist Jawaharlal Nehru tilted the balance against the Hindus by appointing Maulana Abul Kalam Azad as his first education minister. A nuclear chain reaction began. The Maulana ensured that the history books written by leftists whitewashed the crimes and sins of the Muslim invaders and rulers.
Together Nehru, Maulana, and the leftist historians perverted the self-image of Indians. Roads were named after bigots like Babar and Aurangzeb, who had committed the worst of atrocities against the indigenous Hindu society, including genocide, mass rapes, widespread loot, and systematic destruction of temples.
Notwithstanding this degeneration, the Congress had neither become anti-Hindu, nor pro-Muslim. But the pre-existing tension between the two communities required tricky dribbling. Rajiv Gandhi was a novice. He tried to appease both. He was too politically immature to realise the gravity of this attempt. Rajiv Gandhi rode to power in the immediate aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984. He got more seats in Lok Sabha than anyone else so far. The number was a staggering 414. If Rajiv Gandhi had consolidated his Hindu vote bank, which had primarily brought him to power, he would have become invincible. But, just two years into his tenure, he began to face pressures from both Hindus and Muslims.
In 1986, he committed two acts which he thought as smart moves. Both the acts turned out to be political fiascos for him. The Supreme Court had awarded a small monthly maintenance allowance of 179 rupees and 20 paise to an old Muslim divorcee, Shah Bano. This was not acceptable to the Muslim leadership. Some top Mullas gathered at the Boat Club, and threated the most dire consequences upon those sitting in Parliament.
Meanwhile, Rajiv Gandhi had asked his minister, Arif Mohd. Khan, to attack the Muslim fundamentalists. “Attack, attack, attack”, said Rajiv. Arif Mohd. Khan had attacked the Muslim fundamentalists on the floor of Parliament, in his capacity as a minister. Then, suddenly, Rajiv Gandhi chickened out and refused to meet Arif Mohd. Khan. The minister resigned.
This journalist reliably learnt that Rajiv Gandhi was threated by someone who said that Gandhi ji was killed by a Hindu fundamentalist; Indira Gandhi was killed by a Sikh fundamentalist; and if you don’t listen to them, you will be killed by a Muslim fundamentalist. Rajiv Gandhi buckled. He annulled the Supreme Court verdict by an Act of Parliament, dated May 19, 1986.
In the meantime, on the 1st of February that year, under pressure from Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s Ram Janmbhoomi movement, Rajiv Gandhi got his U.P. Chief Minister, Veer Bahadur Singh, to get the locks of Ram Mandir opened. From then onwards, Hindu pilgrims could enter the sanctum sanctorum of the temple to offer their prayers.
Rajiv Gandhi was politically naïve enough to believe that he had assuaged the feelings of both, the Muslims and the Hindus, and, by doing so, salvaged their votes.
The act of riding two boats continued into the election year, 1989. Elections were due at the end of November that year. Vishwa Hindu Parishad had declared that it will perform ‘shilanyaas’ of Shri Ram Janmbhoomi Mandir on the 9th of November. Weeks before the deadline, Union Home Minister, Buta Singh twice tipped off someone in the press, that the V.H.P. has decided to change its plan. Both the times V.H.P. held a press conference clarifying that it will neither change the date, nor the spot, nor the time. At each press conference, the attendance grew larger and larger. The issue got transformed from quiet state to big bang.
The day before the ‘shilanyaas’, U.P. Chief Minister, N. D. Tiwari, and Union Home Minister, Buta Singh, sat with some of the top brass of the V.H.P., including Mahant Avaidyanath, and S. C. Dikshit. Buta Singh said that ‘shilanyaas’ cannot be permitted, because the spot on which it is proposed is “disputed”. Dikshit, who had been D.G.P. of U.P. earlier, said “We are going to do it anyway. So, if we are doing something illegal, you arrest us”. Within seconds, Buta Singh looked down at the same map and said that ‘shilanyaas’ will be permitted because the spot is “not disputed”. The next day, ‘shilanyaas’ happened peacefully. Rajiv Gandhi thought that, by permitting ‘shilanyaas’, he had earned the Hindu votes. Actually, that day, he lost the Muslim votes. Muslim leadership argued that his grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, had locked up the shrine in 1949, and the ‘namaaz’ which was going on till then, was refused permission. Muslim leaders argued that Rajiv Gandhi had opened the locks of the temple. And, one day, the same Rajiv will build the temple. So, he should be voted out of power. Two days after the ‘shilanyaas’, Vishwa Hindu Parishad gathered about 5,000 saffron-clad sadhus, and proceeded towards the temple, with the declared intention to build the Shri Ram Janmbhoomi Mandir. Rajiv Gandhi got his Chief Minister, N. D. Tiwari, to order the district magistrate of Faizabad, to prevent the sadhus from reaching the temple. Naturally, this did not please the Hindus.
Rajiv Gandhi had calculated that by permitting the ‘shilanyaas’ he will get the Hindu votes. And by stopping the construction of the temple, he will get the Muslim votes. But the opposite happened. Because of ‘shilanyaas’, he lost the Muslim votes. And by stopping the construction of the temple, he lost the Hindu votes.
The next month on the 2nd of December, 1989, Vishwanath Pratap Singh was sworn in as the Prime Minister of India. He was backed by the B.J.P., which had grown from two Lok Sabha seats in the previous election, to 89 seats in the ‘89 election.
Rajiv Gandhi’s mid-election assassination on the 21st of May, 1991, and the ascendance of P. V. Narasimha Rao to the top job the next month and, eventually, Sonia Gandhi assuming the reins of the party, in April 1998, had a profound effect on the character of the Congress.
Congress leader, Jitendra Prasada, invited this journalist for a cup of tea one day. He poured his heart out. He said “Congress Party se sab se badi galti ye hui ki hum B.J.P. se ladte-ladte Hindu dharm se ladne lag gaye”(The biggest mistake of the Congress is that our fight against the B.J.P. turned into a fight against Hindu dharm).
Later, in the year 2000, Jitendra Prasada challenged Sonia Gandhi for the Congress President’s post. As was expected, Sonia Gandhi won hands down.
Eventually, Jitendra Prasada’s son, Jitin Prasada, left the Congress on the 9th of June, 2021, and joined the B.J.P.. Today he is a Union Minister.
Sonia Gandhi’s reign, and its characteristic effect on the Congress, is a long story, and deserves to be dealt with separately.
However, the first family of the Congress deliberately keeping mum on the heroic act of Captain Smit Machchhar is testimony to where the party has reached in the present times.
Manoj Raghuvanshi has been practising journalism for over 48 years. He is also a professor of journalism. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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Ask News18Captain Smit Machchhar has been chosen to receive Israel’s highest civilian award following his courageous efforts to save 174 lives onboard a flydubai flight. Additionally, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) demanded that he be honoured with India’s highest peacetime gallantry award, the Ashok Chakra.
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Manoj Raghuvanshi has been practicing journalism for over 48 years. He is also a professor of journalism.
October 20, 2026, 05:02 IST
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