The Congress has always been a party with the Nehru-Gandhi family as its sole pivot as well as pilot. The electoral tsunami of May 2014 has, for the first time, forced its rank and file to re-think on the desirability
Urban Development and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Venkaiah Naidu was, perhaps, more concerned with his obligation to be courteous to other members of the House and to other political parties that adorned its bench when he apologised to Ms Sonia Gandhi and leaders of other political parties for his snide remarks earlier against them.
The incident, however, is a warning that all political parties must take a call over the generational change that has set in on the political horizon of the country, ever since what has been referred to by analysts as ‘the Modi Tsunami’ created a crisis across the country’s every single political entity.
Take, for example, the Indian National Congress, the largest political party ever since independence, when it rejected Mahatma Gandhi advise to disband what was a national mainstream movement for snatching freedom from colonial powers and decided to be a political party to lead post-independent India.
The decision of the Congress to chalk out a middle-of-the-road path for the country, held together most of the shining nationalist leaders together within this conglomeration. However, it is well known that top leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Rajendra Prasad, C Rajagopalachari, etc had strong differences among themselves on several key policy issues.
As Nehru’s dominance in the party grew (Sardar Patel passed away two years after the Mahatma) and he moved towards Soviet styled state-ownership and monopoly over national resources and sinews of power, the rest of the crowd broke off one by one. This historic process was perhaps inevitable and was helped by Nehru’s tremendous mass appeal that no one could equal.
The early death of lal Bahadur Shastri in office as the Prime Minister and Nehru’s successor obliterated the last chance of the Congress building itself as a party that could throw up a bunch of national level leaders.
The very last nail to the Congress emerging as a playfield for several captains to emerge as national leaders was driven when Indira Gandhi won the internal battle for leadership against the collective (the Syndicate as it was called) that had captured the party centre.
Since 1971, the Congress became what the Assam leader Dev Kant Barooah said of it during Emergency: “Indira is India, India is Indira.” It was a party, with the Nehru-Gandhi family as its sole pivot as well as pilot. The electoral tsunami of May 2014 has for the first time, forced its rank and file to re-think on the desirability as well as effectiveness of existing as the extension of a single family.
Mr Naidu may have erred in couching his reaction to the dissensions within a rival party in terms that the leader of the party took it as an insult that would be unacceptable within the sombre confines of Parliament. But the existence of a storm within both the Akbar Road party office and 10, Janpath, the pivot of the party, cannot be denied.
The Congress itself has been a witness to this churn. Senior Congress leader Kamal Nath has himself (he won in 1977 when the entire Congress was wiped out from north India and has won again this time. He is one among the three from the party in Madhya Pradesh) given an expression to it. The record of his statement does not give any room for doubt.
About the party vice president Rahul Gandhi’s sudden decision to absent himself from the Budget Session of Parliament and complete secrecy of where he is when the main Opposition party has to face a determined ruling NDA, Mr Nath said: “When I go to Sonia with a problem, she says please go to Rahul. When I go to Rahul, he says the Congress president will resolve the issue.”
In this context of confusion within the Congress, Mr Nath as well as Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh are demanding that Mr Gandhi be made the party president. On this issue, Ms Gandhi is as elusive as ever, telling the media: “You will come to know when it happens.”
Another Congress leader, Jairam Ramesh, said that in Hyderabad, he saw his partymen questioning Mr Gandhi’s leadership and capability and demanding Ms Priyanka Vadra to substitute him. Such a demand has risen across the rank and file of the party.
No wonder, there are speculations in the media that Mr Gandhi’s act of sudden sabbatical and resultant leadership vacuum created by the key vice president and heir apparent absenting could be due to a mother-son rift or his response to the erosion of faith in the rank and file after the electoral debacle.
Both the Congress and the public have the right to know where Mr Gandhi is, since he is is already anointed as the heir apparent of the party. What does the mystery of his sudden withdrawal and disappearance from public meanIJ Congressmen are merrily contradicting themselves — party spokesman Rajeev Gowda claims that the party’s rank and file “is happy about the cohesive manner in which the two top leaders are functioning.”
But Mr Nath and others are openly saying otherwise. If the truth is neither here nor there, it only exhibits confusion within. Not only is this confusion weakening the party at a time of loss of face, it is also making the public wonder whether it marks the beginning of the end of any relevance for this 125-year old party in changing India.
The one family as the pivot of the political process was thrown up immediately after the Congress remade itself in that image since 1970s. In Kashmir, it was the third generation in the Sheikh Abdullah family that was in power till recently. In Uttar Pradesh, the Samajwadi Party, now the ruling party, is costing the State dear, as its second generation distributes largesse among the youth and vulnerable sections.
The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu and the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra are other examples. The DMK is facing a split between the two sons of party patriarch M Karunanidhi. The question before the Congress is: Why it is not able to utilise this goodwill for its re-emergence to its benefitIJ The answer lies precisely in the family as the uniting force, not an ideology.
Even now, when Mr Gandhi’s leadership capability is under question and he himself has disappeared from the scene in a mysterious way, the only other name that Congressmen are projecting is again from the same family.
If the party workers do not realise how they are shutting talent from emerging from such a vast country to lead it, there is a possibility that the second-most important party that will challenge the BJP in 2019, will be some formation other than the Congress.