Rahul Gandhi at a mosque in Deoband on Monday during his campaign in Uttar Pradesh. (PTI)

Deoband, March 19: When Rahul Gandhi ended his speech before a packed crowd in this west Uttar Pradesh town with the words “I am Indira Gandhi’s grandson”, the association was more than just emotive.

It was a politically loaded statement.

A dot on the heartland’s map, Deoband has carved a niche in history by virtue of housing the Dar-ul Uloom, an Islamic seminary, which has the status of a university for Muslims of the subcontinent and beyond.

The red-brick seminary nurtured the Jamait Ulema-i-Hind that facilitated Gandhiji’s political engagement with the Khilafat movement and emerged as a counter to the “modern and liberal” Aligarh Muslim University, which was perceived as more congenial to the interests of the British, rightly or wrongly.

The Dar-ul Uloom was the “nationalist” counterpoint to the more expansive vision of the AMU. Over time, the Jamait became an arm of the Congress, though after Gandhi and Maulana Azad, Indira Gandhi was the only Congress leader to visit the seminary — as chief guest for the centenary celebrations in 1980.

Once the RSS and the BJP whipped up a campaign alleging that the seminary was a hotbed for the activities of the Students’ Islamic Movement of India, no politician dared visit the school. Certainly no one from the Congress for fear of being branded “anti-national”.

So Rahul’s three-hour visit is being seen as a significant confidence-building measure by the Muslims of Deoband. A student of Islamic jurisprudence summed up the response, saying: “We mostly vote for the Samajwadi Party. But Rahul’s visit has set off some churning which may not impact these elections but will have an effect on those to come.”

Rahul’s foray into the heart of Islamic theology nearly didn’t happen because of local politics. Mehmood Madani, the general secretary of the Jamait, is a Rajya Sabha MP of the Rashtriya Lok Dal, which tried to tie up with the Congress but failed. Rashid Alvi, a Congress MP from west Uttar Pradesh, reportedly advised Rahul against coming to Deoband for fear that Madani might instigate protests.

But state Congress chief Salman Khursheed thought otherwise.

Sources close to Khursheed said he felt that if Rahul passed through Deoband without entering the seminary, the Congress had no hope of winning back Muslim support in this region. It was decided that rather than morph the event into a political one, it should be like a social call in which Rahul would interact with the faculty and the students.

The young MP followed the brief to the last detail.

He had tea with Maulana Anjar Shah Kashmiri, the rector at the seminary’s mehmaan khana (guest quarters) and walked through the gallis of the campus, chatting with the students.

In his public speech, Rahul did not mention Ayodhya or any Muslim-specific issue. Not even after his freewheeling chat with journalists this afternoon. If he brought up religion, the reference was oblique. “In a sense,” he said. “I am blind. I don’t see caste or religion.”

Pointing to persons in the audience, he said: “I only see every individual here as an individual. They are all Hindustanis. Who is a Muslim, who is a Brahmin, who is a Thakur? I don’t see any of this, I am blind.”

“To me,” he added, “all Indians are Indians. But if I see one Indian inflicting injustice on another, I will fight for the one who’s being wronged.”

It was Maulana Kashmiri who spoke on politics. He described the Congress as the only “protector of secularism” and wondered why Mulayam Singh Yadav accused the party and Sonia Gandhi of wanting to kill him. “The advertisement of threat means only one thing. The person concerned is getting no attention and wants to attract it in this way,” he said.