The Present Of The Congress Is The Future Of The BJP !

 BY R.K.MISRA

Comparisons may confuse  but the past  and the present fuse to provide enough insight  to foresee the inevitable.

Faced with a clarion call for a Congress- free India as the grand old party brainstorms to  re-invent itself , parallels emerge pointing to the irony of  how powerful leaders have ended up pulverizing their own organisations.

Inherent in the rise of Prime Minister  Indira Gandhi were the  seeds of Congress decline. “Indira is India”  went a common refrain of the time, first voiced by then party President D.K.Baroah. In time, her power dominated every facet of governance as well as the   party  dwarfing all others to merely the roles assigned by her. The BJP is headed the same way as Prime Minister Narendra Modi eclipses his mentoring edifice. Today his is the name that lords over a homogenous whole, party and government included. The decline of the Congress took a long time surfacing after Mrs. Gandhi’s departure. The fate of the  BJP post-Modi is set to take a similar route. It is in the nature of the banyan tree that nothing grows under it.

Once upon a time, Congress chief ministers would vanish without a word, now BJP chief ministers are here today, gone tomorrow. Biplab Deb, became the latest BJP chief ministerial head to roll into history in the north-eastern state of Tripura on May 14,2022. Until September last year, four BJP chief ministers had been sent packing in six months in three states-Uttarakhand, Karnataka and Gujarat.

If India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was essentially a statesman and a democrat with strong secular credentials and a zest for promoting science and technology , his daughter Indira Gandhi metamorphosed fast from a ‘gungi gudiya’(dumb doll) into a strong, aggressive hard boiled politician who could captivate and cut down with equal ease. She was as much at ease in the dust and grime of the Indian countryside as holding her own at international forums.

“Woh kehte hain Indira hatao, main kehti hoon garibi hatao”(They say remove Indira, I say remove poverty).’They’ included the Jan Sangh then. Sounds familiar? Years later Modi was heard  saying “who kehte hain Modi hatao, main kehta hoon corruption hatao”( they say remove Modi, I say remove  corruption).’They’ now meant the Congress. Similarities abound. Indira Gandhi’s doughtiness and propensity for playing on the front foot  formed the basic template of Modi’s politics which, however, deviated sharply thereafter into the rough and tumble of no- holds-barred freestyle kickboxing.

Nehru was PM for 17 years  and his Congress had powerful  state leaders like Pratap Singh Kairon in Punjab, Mohanlal Sukhadia in Rajasthan, Dwarka Prasad Mishra in Madhya Bharat, Shri Krishna Sinha in Bihar, Gobind Vallabh Pant and Sampoornanand in UP, K.Kamraj in Madras state, K.C. Reddy, K hanumanthaiah and S,Nijalingappa in Karnataka, to name a few, with respect guiding relationships. In Indira Gandhi’s case, she went slam-bang into the old guard of her father’s era and bludgeoned her way to the top , including splitting the Congress. K.Kamaraj, author of the Kamaraj plan played a key role  both in installing Lal Bahadur Shastri as Prime Minister in 1964 and Indira Gandhi in 1966, both  at the cost of veteran Morarji Desai. This firmed her politics.

Mrs. Gandhi was one of the most powerful of prime ministers in the history of India, who was famously described by BJP leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee as “Durga’ after she split Pakistan to carve out Bangladesh in 1971 in the teeth of US President’s Richard Nixon’s threat of sending in the seventh fleet and leveraged the friendship treaty with USSR to call the bluff. Sikkim also became an integral part of the Indian Union during her tenure though the promulgation of Emergency in 1975 blotted her copy book subsequently.

However, it was during her 15 year helmsmanship that the PMO became all-powerful and the party was reduced to an add-on to Indira. All power flowed down from her whether it was the government, party or constitutional appointments. All state chief ministers, even ministers and other key appointments were at the ‘will’ and ‘pleasure’ of the prime minister. Her assassination in October 1984  began the slide which was relatively pronounced in the  party’s organizational structure.

In fact, the Congress return to power after defeating the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led ‘India shining’ NDA in 2004 and the two terms thereafter lulled the Congress-led UPA into a false  sense of complacency  while  the RSS  was busy cobbling together a new narrative which was being tested in its political laboratory in Gujarat by  strategist chief minister Narendra Modi. The recipe involved a potent blend  of heightened religiosity, communal cleaving, corporate indulgence, grandiose schemes, global lobbyists and tech-savvy social media management  besides the backroom planning of Prashant Kishore’s Citizens For Accountable Governance(CAG) which was put to work well ahead of the 2014 general elections. This was topped with Modi’s masterful oratory and skilled self-marketing.

 The Congress stood hopelessly outclassed unable to fathom its ruthless rival. It was more like a Hippo competing with a Hummer.

However, after eight years in power, the Narendra Modi-led BJP is today suffering from all the infirmities which have brought the Congress to its present state. The Jan Sangh and its current avatar, BJP prided themselves on being a cadre-based party where decision-making flowed from the bottom to the top. The pyramid stands inverted, and today power flows from a single source down to the bottom.

In a tearing hurry for a ‘Congress-mukt’ Bharat, the ruling party at the Centre is a bloated ‘Congress-yukt’ BJP. Manik Saha , the replacement for Deb in Tripura , is the fourth leader of Congress lineage in the North- East to become BJP chief minister in the region. That he was elected to the Rajya Sabha just  two months ago  also confirms that there is no method in the measure, just a summary step  to neutralise anti-incumbency as Tripura goes to polls next year.

The Congress realizes , much to its chagrin now , and the BJP will in times to come : for all the jostling  crowds up the BJP power stairs, it will take just a few tumbles for a stampede in the reverse direction. Idol worship may be a part of the popular Indian genetic make-up  but  their ‘ immersion’ at the end of the fasting and feasting is as much an intrinsic part of the same casting away ritual ! 

 Hardly any of those who served as state party chiefs or chief ministers after Narendra Modi in Gujarat have  risen on the strength of their own standing. Vijay Rupani disappeared  along with his cabinet, a day after he was praised for good work during the pandemic so did  many other BJP  CMs countrywide . C.R.Patil, the present Gujarat BJP chief wields more power  than  chief minister Bhupendra Patel,  but it is largely  proxy power, seconded to him due to his proximity to Modi . Ditto Amit Shah at the national level, powerful as he is. Modi remains the only name that  stirs beyond the party label. But  the  party under Modi resembles the Congress under Mrs. Gandhi- overshadowed and overawed. 

In the post-Modi era, the future of the BJP is  headed to what the Congress faces today with the irony that institutional decline is written into the  power matrix of the respective personas that  have wielded power like a sledgehammer.

(https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/here-today-gone-tomorrow-bjp-sacks-another-cm-1109658.html )