Anna Hazare has announced that he will continue with his maun vrat, vow of silence, citing health reasons for his decision. The veteran Gandhian has said that silence helps him recover from swelling in his feet.

No, Digvijay Singh hasn’t issued a comment on Anna’s statement yet. But he will. He always does. Nobody knows what his real job is, but this one he performs with missionary zeal. In fact, Team Anna has been thankless in not acknowledging his due credit in adding his naughty bits to spice up their otherwise serious campaign (against corruption).

But shouldn’t Digvijay also learn from Anna’s elderly wisdom? If a vow of silence can cure Anna’s foot, it can certainly cure the Congress general secretary’s foot-in-the-mouth. He won’t listen though; he never does. He speaks — mindlessly, but not aimlessly.

Digvijay has nothing against Team Anna, except the fact that he isn’t very comfortable with the idea of a crusade against corruption. His past has not been all that neat. However, all that is past and not much of a bother. He has unleashed his acerbity against Team Anna because he smells an RSS conspiracy in all this. What red is to a bull, saffron is to him.

He had almost linked Mumbai terror attacks to one from RSS hatcheries when he said that Mumbai ATS chief Hemant Karkare had called him hours before he was killed, talking to him about threats to his (Karkare’s) life from Hindu extremist groups; but those Wikileaks cables delinked it all and sent him crashing down several leagues. Around the same time when Digvijay was enthusiastically giving interviews about Karkare’s call to him, US Wikileaks cables quoted cables sent by the US Ambassador about Congress party “playing religious politics” and “crass political opportunism” in plating doubts regarding Karkare's murder by Pakistani terrorists. Now, when a closure stares Wikileaks in the face, Diggi puts up a stern face — but the sadist in him is cachinnating.

Later, in his address to the Congress plenary session, Diggi spoke so much about the RSS that the Congressmen were confused whose session was it anyway. Speaking in the session, he equated the RSS to the Nazis and Israel later took grave offence to his comment.

Osama bin Laden’s killing, however, was what got Digvijay’s goat. He referred to the slain terrorist as ‘Osamaji’ and rebuked US for ill-treatment of his body. Even his seniors in the Congress had to criticise him for his comment. And his adversaries wondered why he couldn’t smell RSS hand in the entire episode.  

Team Anna must know by now that Digvijay isn’t their enemy. He is his own enemy. If he had thought about his own party even half the time that he thinks about the RSS, his state (Madhya Pradesh) would not have been ruled by the BJP. But then, all looks saffron to a jaundiced eye. Does it really?