Men, Matters & Memories
M L Kotru
The long moribund Congress Party, the party of the freedom movement, handmaiden of usurpers, who took it over in the 60s and called it the Congress (Indira), appears finally to be ready for the last rites to be performed. Don’t tell me that the party’s doom has been predicted many times in the past and it had shown a remarkable capacity to bounce back. All that sadly belongs to the past.
Resuscitation is ruled out given that there is no one around to lead the operation. Indira Gandhi, the one who split the party at a tearful rally in the decade of the 60s at New Delhi’s Mavalankar Hall was an altogether different ball player. She manipulated the situation so deftly that party stalwarts, much older than her, were left nowhere to turn to. She, as they say, was a different kettle fish. Those from the family who followed her, Rajiv, Sonia and now Rahul, simply didn’t have it.
Indira could and indeed did survive the ignominy of the Emergency and bounced back to power after the Janata motley that followed her, was gone. She had the capacity of transforming the goongi gudiya of Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia’s description to Durga of Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s and the “only man in the Cabinet” for eminent Editor Frank Moraes. She had indeed shown herself as the Iron Lady of India, in the mould of Margaret Thatcher. She ruled supreme as the Prime Minister.
In the post-emergency months of Janata rule, she had again shown rare capacity to pull her party up by the shoe strings. Rajiv and then Sonia and now Rahul, share the Indira genes but obviously without her skills. If they have politically survived all these post-Indira years it is because there were no challengers. The only intruder who sneaked in, despite the family’s efforts to stop him, P.V. Narasimha Rao, an old party hand, who ruled for five years as Prime Minister, lacking numbers but a sharp tactician who left the Gandhis wondering what had hit them – Rao at the head of a Congress Government, and that too for a full five year term. Another intruder, Sita Ram Kesri who had manoeuvred his way into party president’s shoes, was disgraced before being shown the door.
Never mind the party’s present status as a moribund entity awaiting burial, the Congress was indeed hoping to pull off a surprise in this year’s general election. The reality actually saw it decimated beyond recognition. Yes, it does not have the numbers even to have its man or woman recognized as the leader of the opposition. And typically it has a little known Karnataka leader as the parliamentary group leader in the House of the People.
But never accuse the Congress Party of drawing lessons or to mend its ways. The Gandhi heir apparent, the reluctant prince, Rahul, would not accept leadership of the tiny group of 44 MPs. May be he would have considered leadership of the parliamentary party had it retained some 180 or 200 MPs although that too would have meant a defeat for his party. For Narendra Modi had taken his BJP to an absolute majority with 288 seats. Rahul might perhaps consider being elected the party leader and also gained the status of the Leader of the Opposition, a position equivalent to the rank of a Cabinet Minister. So, the Baba has gone into a deep sulk, playing snakes and ladders with his so-called whiz kids, planning the downfall of his opponents rather than finding a way to revive the moribund party of which he is the virtual lord and master. The Party is floundering meanwhile.
Maharashtra, which goes to the polls in the next few months, the Party Chief Minister has turned out to be a political lightweight even when no one questions his honesty. The coalition partners, Sharad Pawar’s NCP,is breathing down his neck – in fact, doing its worst to ensure a Congress debacle. In Assam the Congress legislature party has been seeking Chief Minister Gogoi’s head but no one in the top leadership has the time to sort out the differences between the CM and the legislators. In Jammu and Kashmir the ruling National Conference has called off its alliance with the Congress amidst much controversy, with mindless Congress leaders unaware of the looming doom.
No tears need be shed for this last development because it does open the doors for the other State party, the People’s Democratic Party, any time a better option, with a larger support base in the State. Its loss in Haryana in the coming polls is a clear possibility, seen by all bar the Congress Party bosses, who seem intent on playing their petty games. The Gandhis continue to play favourites.
As in the case of formation of the separate State of Telengana, where senior Congress leaders (virtual no brainers, they were) kept strutting like peacocks, making promises only to forget the. In the event when the UPA government led by the party finally conceded the formation of the new State the upshot was it lost in both Telengana and the residuary Andhra States in the parliamentary poll. I don’t know what exactly is ailing the Congress Party except that Gandhis who have led it for nearly five decades after Indira forced the split, and now seem to be totally out of depth .Rahul Gandhi, the party vice-president, is surely not the man to revive its fortunes. He must have many qualities as a well educated, well traveled young men but he surely is unfit to head the Congress party as it stands today, in tatters with not a chance of early revival. He simply doesn’t have it in him. He must have many other qualities but surely not one that inspires confidence.
Tragically, the party is not overflowing with talent. Ghulam Nabi Azads, Kamal Naths, Antonys, Ahmed Patels, Ambika Sonis nor the whiz kids surrounding Rahul do not make for a fighting team. Like their predecessors who have served the family, Indira down, they have mostly been courtiers and yes men. And Rahul’s latest firman early this week was that whatever is ailing his party is an internal matter, internal of course to the Gandhi parivar.
To conclude I am tempted to quote a paragraph from the speech delivered last week by the very erudite Gopal Krishna Gandhi the Mahatma’s grandson, which presented quite dispassionately his view of what really is devouring the Congress party. Gandhi said Congress’s decimation has not dealt it a death blow. But the Congress can only come back if it calls into question its position on a few things. “The most important of this has to be an ego-less annihilation of its ego and an equal reposing of trust and faith in the larger entities of the nation in the peoplehood of India,” he said.
And crucial to the ego-less annihilation of its ego, (the supremacy of the Gandhis), he said, is that the Congress “should be able to appear before the people of India not as pristine principle but as an instrument of the people’s will”. In the same speech Gandhi said if the name and legacy of Vallabhai Patel had been expropriated (by the BJP) it was because from his own home-the Congress – he had been virtually externed. “This is a fact of history and we must not disown it. The misuse of Patel legacy comes from the disuse of it by the Congress”. The Congress today, he said, is historically challenged and “its amnesia has become the BJP’s gift to recall”.
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