Men, Matters & Memories
M L Kotru
Don’t know why but am reminded of the old Mukesh song “jaane kahaan gaye woh din” every time I think of the Congress Party. Yes, the party of the freedom movement with icons of the Mahatma Ghandhi-led struggle, names such as Nehru, Patel, Azad, Subash, all but forgotten. The grand old party, as some still insist on calling it, has lost all its grandeur.
All you see instead is a rump, a cluster of clueless politicians, looking into the mirror only to see themselves as lifeless caricatures , hoping against hope for the miracle to happen: the long comatose party somehow, if only for their sake, swinging back to life or at the very least showing signs of revival. They have seen the Indira magic outlive its utility, facing one electoral disaster after another. The diehard optimists, usually the older generation, see themselves adrift, headed nowhere in particular. The younger lot, if there is any, apart from Rahul Gandhi’s puppy brigade, finds itself in disarray with no one to look up to.
Rahul, the reticent regent, has turned out to be the biggest disappointment, unwilling to lead and even more unwilling to own responsibility for the party’s collapse. The whiz kid, if he at all was one, seems lost, a babe in the wood, unable to get out of the maze he has got himself and his party into. His reluctance to own responsibility for the party’s decline is truly amazing and his incommunicativeness bordering on the bizarre.
Unusual for Indira Gandhi’s grandson, unable to establish any kind of rapport with the people he was expected to lead. Whether the family retainers like it or not, he has been a political let down, even for his mother Sonia. His admirers never tire of singing paeans to the great revival he had wrought in the Youth Congress.
Which youth? Which miracle? The Youth Congress was never revived, it hasn’t even been there, except for the period Indira’s younger son, Sanjay used it as his goon army. Rahul is credited with having democratized the youth wing of the party. Which youth wing and where exactly does one find the commodity called the Youth Congress except for the postal address and the premises which was grabbed in its name.
Rahul has shown these past three years that he is no democrat either. The party whose leadership he shares with his mother simply doesn’t know the meaning of democratic functioning, let alone collective leadership. With the Gandhis, Indira down, it has always been the diktat from the high command, the other name for the Gandhis.
With Sonia’s health on the wane, Rahul was expected to takeover – and with a bang. All one has seen of him DO is exactly what the doctor had not ordered for the resuscitation of the party – taking everyone on board, reinvigorating the State units, building up new committed cadres, not cronies, backroom boys whose only contribution, as Rahul’s brain-trust, has been to say “yes, master”, all ji hazooris, who had hoped to benefit from their proximity to Rahul and thereby to Sonia.
Whether it was the rout in the UP Assembly elections at the hands of Mulayam Singh Yadav or the subsequent parliamentary debacle, or, the most recent elections in Haryana and Maharashtra, Rahul and his troupe have come out a cropper. Not one word of regret, except the few, literally extracted from him; no contrition. ,
I don’t know what drives this future (non-existent) hope of the Congress Party. As an organization man he has failed to prove his credentials; as a public speaker he is pathetic. Articulation of issues, giving these a context and offering solutions thereto, is alien to his nature.
He is very much his own man, according to party seniors like Digvijay Singh or that other party “visionary”, the frail, aged Motilal Vohra. What good that does to the party none bothers to explain. On the contrary even minor contrary noises are crushed with the usual Gandhi family ferocity, the retainers unleashed, as so many hunting dogs to wipe out any challenge.
When some party men in Kerala began to ask questions or when Shashi Tharoor expressed appreciation of something Modi had said or done the hounds were instantly let loose. When G. K. Moopanar’s son, G.K.Vasan left the party the other day he was immediately dismissed as a non-entity forgetting that his father had been the party’s sole flag bearer in Tamilnadu for years after K. Kamraj’s death, forgetting also that Vasan was among the few well-liked party faces in Tamilnadu.
Or, now when P. Chidambaram’s son says the State units can’t be run via diktats from Delhi or through observers sent by Delhi both father and son have become prime suspects. Karti, Chidambaram’ son, lost in the recent parliamentary poll and his father, lest you forget, served in successive Congress governments in Delhi as a senior Minister.
The Gandhis as a political family have been vindictive in the extreme. In fact Indira Gandhi was not particularly known for forgiving or forgetting animosities. Thus it can be said the clan is not as a rule given to any kind of scrutiny. Which in effect means that even the minor Gandhis continue to believe in the family’s infallibility.
And hence the refusal to do some soul searching or even basic stock-taking after the recent political debacles. The family izzat obviously does not permit of serious introspection, not to mention self criticism. It obviously doesn’t matter to the Gandhis that Mulayam Singh, the UP leader, did not consider it necessary to ask the Congress Party to join the seemingly impressive get-together of all non-BJP party leaders last month.
This swagger may have gone out of the Gandhis and their cronies but trust them not to read the writing on the wall. It becomes apparent the way they are preparing for the next round of elections in Kashmir and Jharkhand.
In Kashmir the party president, Mr. Saifuddin Soz, a political light weight in any case, and the slightly better known Ghulam Nabi Azad chose not to contest. Curiously, Azad had made himself available for the State Assembly when the prospect of a shared Chief Ministership with Mufti Mohammad Sayeed of the PDP was on the cards. He even won for the first time an election to the State Assembly then. He stayed on to share the six-year term with the Mufti. This time when the chips were loaded against his party he has chosen to hang on to his Rajya Sabha seat, before his term ends in February. A quirk in the parliamentary game has made him the leader of the opposition in that House, a position denied his party in the Lok Sabha. Azad knows which side of his bread is buttered. Funny things are happening in Jharkhand as well, the political tie-up there in tatters.
India today is a new country powered by Modi’s politics of hope and should he fail to measure up to popular expectations, the old divisions of class, caste and religion could again come centre- stage. The Congress had over the years built a constituency of middle classes, Dalits and minorities. This may well be the area of influence of the proposed formation of those present at Mulayam Singh Yadav’s non-BJP parties meeting, a Janata-like move minus Jaya Prakash Narayan. This overlap between the Congress and the new Janata-like initiative could well spell the doom of the congress should its stand-alone posture continue. For starters the Mulayam initiative to be real should see the constituents getting together in the upcoming Parliament session.
Their numbers, together or not, will not come to much – about a score or so. The Congress with its 44 would continue to be the main opposition and a rudderless 44 it has been. Rahul Gandhi’s is an uninspiring personal. Not the man, to my mind, to turn a disastrous defeat into a battle to regain political pre-eminence. He just is not the man to take on Narendra Modi and his bhagwas now in full cry. Rahul can only gnash his teeth, keeping rolling up those sleeves for the fight he will never undertake.
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