History shows that Congress has often sidelined nationalist voices within the party. The treatment given to Sri Aurobindo, BC Pal, Netaji Bose and Tilak reflects the prejudice
In the States of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Mizoram, and in Delhi, the election process is in full swing. New Governments will be in place after December 8. The crucial general election, which will undoubtedly be of the presidential type between BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi and Congress’s undeclared prime ministerial candidate Rahul Gandhi, is also round the corner.
It is time for the political class to highlight the achievements and failures of the regimes in the poll-bound States and those of the Congress-led minority and minority-appeasing UPA Government at the Centre.
let us go back a bit. The Congress was founded in December 1885 by British imperialists with the help of 72 English-educated Indians. Most Indians who came forward to join the party believed in the British sense of (in)justice and wanted london to rule India.
Retired British civil servant AO Hume, who successfully took the initiative, had convinced the Governor-General and Viceroy of India and the Secretary of State for India that the formation of a political party here was needed to avert the impending disaster. In fact, he had told them that India was about to witness a revolt against london which would be far more dangerous than the first war of independence the British had witnessed in India in 1857.
It may appear preposterous, but it is a fact that as late as 1905 and 1906, many top-ranking Congress leaders used to say, and say it openly and brazenly, that if london really wished to end unrest in India or neutralise the influence of freedom fighters, it had no other option but to accommodate the “educated” Indians in the British scheme of things.
Just look at the proceedings of the 1906 Indian Budget debate and you will find top Congress leaders urging the Governor-General of India to “conciliate the educated classes to end the disorder in India”. In his Budget speech in March 1906, Gopal Krishna Gokhale said: “There is but one way in which this conciliation can be secured and that is by associating these classes more and more with the Government of their own country”.
Earlier in December 1905, Gokhale, the political guru of Mahatma Gandhi and president of the Benaras Session of the Indian National Congress, had, inter alia, said, “For better, for worse, our destinies are now linked with those of England and the Congress freely recognises that whatever advance we (read Congress leaders) seek must be within the Empire”.
Remember, this was not only the part of his presidential address but this statement was delivered at a time when temper were running high across the country in the wake of the communal partition of Bengal in 1905. The Swadeshi Movement in partitioned Bengal was also in full swing.
Not that there were no outstanding nationalists in the Congress. There were leaders such as Sri Aurobindo Ghose, Bipin Chandra Pal and Bal Gangadhar Tilak. They wanted to give an Indian orientation to the Congress but couldn’t because those who controlled it rendered them ineffective in the party. The circumstances under which Subhas Chandra Bose had to leave the Congress in 1939 after winning the presidential election hands down at Tripuri, and form the Forward Block are well-known.
The chief factor in the Congress was london, which not only ruthlessly employed its policy of divide-and-rule to consolidate the British Empire in India but also indoctrinated many Congress leaders who were more than willing to play games for the sake of personal power and profit. The Congress and the power-hungry, unscrupulous, casteist and communalist politicians who came out of it after 1947 continue to play the same devious game.
Mr Modi makes a valid point when he says that if India is to survive as one nation, regenerate its socio-economic and political life and attain a status in the comity of the self-respecting countries, there is no alternative but for the people to liberate the country from the ‘termite’ that is the Congress.
The upshot of his argument is that the Congress is not really a party of India; he appears to be absolutely correct. It is the sacred duty of each and every Indian to see through the ulterior game-plan of secular fundamentalist outfits and work with single-minded devotion for a Congress-free India. The Congress is not an elixir of life as far as the Indian nation is concerned. Indeed, it has become a poison.
(The writer is Chair Professor, Maharaja Gulab Singh Chair, University of Jammu)