By Chiranjib Haldar
When introspection leads to change, it has to be dramatic and not incremental to overhaul a mammoth organisation. The recent Congress brainstorming session at Udaipur and Rahul Gandhi’s castigation of the ruling dispensation at the ‘Idea of India’ summit in London threw up more questions than answers. The decision to augment a national unification march to counter the BJP’s narrative is a lofty idea. Can the Congress party already at its nadir for many years reinvent or reorient or rejig itself as a section of the moribund leadership suggested after the Udaipur huddle? If a political party seeks solace in the fact that it has already sunk to abysmal depths both electorally and organisationally and there is no trough ahead, the only way forward seems rejuvenation.
During the party’s long march from the Panchmarhi enclave back in 1998 to the current Udaipur huddle, the social fabric of the nation has somewhere gone for a toss. An elocution speech to the Indian diaspora on the misdeeds of those in power or their institutional usurping cuts ice with a television audience. When the nation is enmeshed in a religious vortex on almost a daily basis, with an excavation here or a discovery there in the precincts of hallowed places of worship, imputing only institutions as arbiters of the ‘deep state’ may be prejudicial. No matter how much conviction and courage were there in Rahul Gandhi’s twin addresses at the ‘Idea of India’ summit or at Cambridge, the reading on the wall is apparent. Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi’s prime-ministerial stints were spent in imprinting the idea of a secular nation which fought umpteen challenges from forces of feudal, cultural and religious chauvinism. Rajiv Gandhi too avowed the nation as an ideological construct and the Congress felt that the only challenge India faced was erased during their successive UPA tenures.
One needs to be cautiously optimistic to nurture such a roadmap when the writing on the wall seems otherwise for Congress soothsayers. Instead of metamorphosing the party with crucial assembly polls coming up, what we are witnessing is a sorry state of affairs in the grand dame of Indian polity. The exit of Kapil Sibal or Hardik Patel who was being showcased in Gujarat or Balram Jakhar’s volte-face or annulling off any strategic tie-up with Prashant Kishor are recent examples of setbacks to the party. A political party which once symbolised our composite ethos cannot bring ideological supremacy or invincibility or indispensability on twitter handles or social media as proof of its acceptability.
How effective can a solo pan-national opposition party counter the might of the BJP when so many regional satraps are aspiring and hobnobbing to play the same role? The moot point being and rightly so, the Gandhis cannot leave the opposition space to other partners and play second fiddle. But an alternate rung of leaders can be projected to an electorate who are being dished out dollops of sectarianism ad nauseum. Decades ago, the ubiquitous Ambassador and Fiat cars were a duopoly of sorts in the limited auto sector. Both these vehicles symbolised state power in the Nehruvian socialist days akin to the grand old party. Now, with the exception of Sharad Pawar’s NCP and Hemant Soren’s Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, Congress is not even seen as a trustworthy alliance partner. The Congress patriarchs have to accept the enormity of the challenge and the diagnosis as reality. Only then can it shed off barbs such as being an outfit of sycophants and carpetbaggers.
When Rahul Gandhi asserts that the Congress party is fighting steadfast to regain the idea of India and BJP is choking the same, he is stating the obvious. But Congress can never afford to withdraw from the ideological slugfest on which the party’s foundations were hoisted. Whenever the Congress is in crisis, emanating the idea of India has been a penchant for Congress presidents and leaders. Rewind to 1998 when Sonia Gandhi took over as President of a waning Congress party she opined to the All India Congress Committee, ‘We are in danger of losing our central place in the polity of our country as the natural party of governance.’ To many observers, this lament may have become stale.
A common refrain still prevalent in Congress circles is that only the Congress represents the nationalist, secular, multicultural, inclusive idea of India and that space could not be snatched away albeit by any coalition leave alone regional satraps. Rahul Gandhi’s diatribes at the BJP move in a clear loop like shots on news channels. He raises critical issues like federalism, widespread unemployment, inequality, crony capitalism and unfulfilled development promises. He also talks about how the Congress’ idea of the nation is being throttled by atavistic forces. Congress supporters and liberal secularists may be going gaga over his interactions with the Indian diaspora but whether it revitalises the party at grassroot level is anybody’s guess.
Politics unlike debating societies or open fora, is not only about oratory and rhetoric or even stating the truth in tandem. In today’s India where Rahul Gandhi is taking on a leader whose chutzpah is his ability to strike an emotional connect with masses. In such a scenario when voters are swayed by emotions, trying to be a statistical enumerator highlighting GDP, growth and human development data is not enough. Congress might be harping on facts but will that sufficiently counter the economic pitching of the BJP? There is no standard template for tackling verbal jugglery though erasing fake news with a fact check has yielded results.
After the party’s Lok Sabha debacle in 2019, Rahul Gandhi had stated ‘It is a habit in India that the powerful cling to power, no one sacrifices power. But we will not defeat our opponents without sacrificing the desire for power and fighting a deeper ideological battle.’ That was his predicament. The Congress party still believes that it is the only durable, enduring brand and people would embrace it again once they see through the fallacies of the current dispensation. Congress loyalists cutting across factions are unanimous that the party needs to resolve its existential, ideological, organisational crisis first.
Ultimately to survive in politics, a party needs to be in power and win the hustings. India has undergone a metamorphosis in the sense that it is far more technologically advanced than it was in the halcyon socialist days where power emanated from select quarters. It is a social media literate nation now where dissemination, public opinion and expectations galore cannot be brushed aside with ideology and past credentials. A political party cannot remain frozen in a time warp and insulated from change with a bloated middle. We often hear from critics that the Congress party thinktank is encircled by a caucus and may not be advising the hierarchy in earnest. Truth is, many esteemed members of the G-23 were actually members of the Congress Working Committee and never asked for inner party democracy or organisational elections when they were at the helm of affairs.
The leadership has to identify potential winners because ultimately it is electoral victories more than ideological prowess that can regain its glory. There seems to be a tug-of-war in the Congress. Status quoists within the party who shun any kind of experimentation pitched against those in favour of change. The Congress party not undergoing radical transformation in tune with the times is indeed a momentous denouement for Indian democracy. If any Indian political party needs to alter its ethos and go in for a paradigm shift, it is the Congress. The party still remains complacent despite terrible setbacks and political humiliation. The existential crisis within the party that panellists always debate about in primetime television shows seems real. Being nostalgic about governing the nation for 54 of its 75 years since independence and misconstruing a national footprint for popularity or still having leaders of opposition in many states is merely delusional. It seems to be embedded in the psyche of the party.
(The writer is a commentator on politics and society.)