Flunking the temple test

Could the Congress not have joined the Ram temple celebrations while also criticising Modi, BJP, RSS?

An apparition has stalked the Congress party for nearly four decades, in the process diminishing it from 414 seats in the Lok Sabha to 52, an improvement over 44 in 2014. The construction of the Ram temple provided the party a Ram-given opportunity to shake it off. The Congress leadership blew it. The apparition is the party’s ideological confusion about how it defines secularism today.

Obvious questions arise following its refusal to attend the consecration ceremony of the temple. One, does its unchanging post-1996 ideology harmonise with the needs of its current electoral politics? How does it reconcile the contradiction