Azad exit from Congress shows that Gandhis have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing

Senior leader Ghulam Nabi Azad’s exit from the Congress is not just a big blow to the grand old party but also an indication of a deeper malaise: the Gandhi family-dominated leadership is unable, unwilling, or both to chart out a revival plan. His lamentation in his five-page resignation letter to Congress president Sonia Gandhi that the situation in the party has reached a point of “no return,” should not be seen as the fulmination of a frustrated leader but as a statement of fact. After all, his association with the GOP is about half-a-century old. And it has been a fruitful association from his perspective: he has been Union minister, Jammu & Kashmir chief minister, and leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha. For some time, he has been unhappy with the manner in which the party has been run; he has also been a member of the so-called G-23, senior Congress leaders who want reforms in the party leadership. The party ‘high command’ has been unable to address the issues raised by Azad and other G-23 luminaries. Hence his exit. But this is not unprecedented; a number of important Congress leaders have quit the party in recent years, around half a dozen just in 2022.

Kapil Sibal, also a former Union minister when the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance was in office, left the Congress in May this year. Former Punjab Congress chief Sunil Jakhar not only quit the party but also joined its arch-rival the Bharatiya Janata Party. Former Union ministers Ashwani Kumar and RPN Singh also left the party, as did Hardik Patel, the Gujarat Congress working president. All of them left this year. Other senior Congress leaders who earlier quit the party include former Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh and former Union ministers Jitin Prasada and Jyotiraditya Scindia. And of course there is Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, who is now with the BJP. The thread running through the grievances of all these Congress leaders was their exasperation with the Gandhis. In fact, the Gandhis have started resembling the Bourbons of yore. It was said about the Bourbons, the ruling dynasty at the time of the French Revolution (1789), that they had learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. For, after the fall of Napoleon and their restoration, they continued with their old ways, the ways that had led to the Revolution in the first place. Sonia Gandhi is ailing; Priyanka has proved to be a dud missile. As for Rahul Gandhi, other than providing catchy quotes to the media, he doesn’t offer anything substantive for Congress revival in terms of the party’s positioning, policy paradigm, workable programmes, and organisational rejig. Worse, he has surrounded himself with a deracinated coterie, many of them being Leftists trying to inject their own quixotic agenda in the GOP. It seems that the Gandhis are determined to make Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s dream of Congress-mukt Bharat a reality.