Congress : Between The Phoenix And The Flame !
18.2.25
BY R.K. MISRA
Passion
and politics take time, both building and spending. And wise is the one who
peppers the future with salt from the past. Courting dust, after all, is no
threat to the phoenix re-born from the ashes. But to do so, it must first burn.
The Indian National Congress has undergone
this process many a times since its formation by a group of 72 people on
December 28, 1885 in Bombay. Nine years later at its 11th convention
when the strength crossed 1500 delegates, there was great jubilation. Turned
into a mass movement by Mahatma Gandhi, it spearheaded the fight for Independence,
secured it and ruled the country up to 1977. Defeated by a Janata coalition, it
returned to power in 1980 and ruled until 1989 when it was once again defeated.
The party formed the government at the head of a United Progressive Alliance
(UPA) coalition in 1991 as well as in 2004 and 2009.The BJP came to power in
2014 and is into its third term in office. Lots has changed since then but the
historical imprint of the 140 year old Congress on the national landscape is
too vast to take apart in such a short span of time, the heave-ho effort
notwithstanding.
Three swallows do not a summer make. Yet for
now, messiahs of the media have pronounced their unequivocal verdict. The
Congress is headed back to critical care. The Lok Sabha election resurgence of
2024 was a one-time wonder. The Haryana and Delhi State Assembly elections have
proved it beyond doubt. The Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance
(I.N.D.I.A.), the 28-party Opposition grouping, is in shambles and Rahul
Gandhi’s leadership of both is a train bound to no-where. All in all, the
Opposition is a basket case and the Narendra Modi-led BJP the lord and master
of all that it surveys.
Contrast this to the tailored trumpet blowing
on US President Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cosy courtship,
unmindful of the growing stack of visible slights. The blaze of publicity
surrounding the long-awaited visit unshackles a repeat vision of ‘happy days
are here again’ as the US President is pre-empted with concessions while illegal
immigrants return to their homeland in chains. India slashes duty on American
bourbon whisky and Trump magnanimously offers it the F-35 fighter jet which
Elon Musk had once described as “obsolete in the age of drones”. Musk is now part
of the Trump administration.
The carrot may be a lot shorter than the
stick but tastes sweet while the whip stuns fearfully. Whether this accounts
for the media’s ardent amour for one, and latent animosity for the other is
best left to individual wisdom.
Doomsday prophecies, however, have been in
vogue for the Congress since the time of India’s first Prime Minister
Jawaharlal Nehru. It began with a concerned, ”who after Nehru?” to questioning
his governing abilities in the aftermath of the 1962 Chinese aggression. Lal
Bahadur Shastri who followed Nehru was initially laughed at for his unassuming
humility but left the world wrapped in national respect and a great deal taller
than his physical build. Mrs Indira Gandhi who succeeded him began her stint
with the ridicule of being a ‘gungi-gudiya’( dumb doll) and ended up making
mince-meat of the old guard within her own party while splitting Pakistan,
taking measure of the US Seventh fleet
and the strong- armed, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, in the
Richard Nixon Presidency.
The
Congress changed nomenclatures - Congress (I) - Congress(R)- as she ruthlessly
did away with the old guard to infuse young blood in the ranks. Many of the
veterans of today were political greenhorns of her time.
Rajiv Gandhi who succeeded his mother was
sought to be similarly targeted but the telecom revolution and the energizing
of the Panchayati Raj remain some of the many salient features of his rule. The
irony of Indian politics is that the son of a family which sacrificed two prime
ministers in the fight against terrorism and militancy faces charges of sedition besides numerous
defamation cases while those in the current power structure get away with much
more inciting and defamatory speeches and actions.
In actual fact, the decline of the Congress
was markedly, in its failure to evaluate the threat perception emerging from
Narendra Modi, particularly after he took over as chief minister of Gujarat. He
had clearly made known his plans in his first meeting with his party
legislators when he said “I am not here to play a five-day test match”.
From day one, he locked horns with the
Congress- ruled Centre taking the plea that it was targeting Gujarat and
defaming it, something that the opposition ruled states are shouting themselves
hoarse about today. The Congress committed the strategic blunder of playing on
a field set by the wily Gujarat politician. He would pick on sundry remarks
even conjure them up and then reply to it thus setting the narrative. He even
added historic parallels of how injustice was done to son-of-the soil,
Vallabhbhai Patel by Nehru and the family was just continuing the tradition. Never
a word on why late Indulal Yagnik ,the
man who led the Mahagujarat Movement and even challenged the might of Nehru for
a homeland for gujaratis was allowed to be forgotten after Gujarat came into being in 1960.It was
just not politically expedient.
Vested interests within the Congress also
colluded in not only writing off Yagnik but lot more including re-energizing of
the faltering Congress. A classic
example was Rahul Gandhi’s idea of the ‘Vikas Khoj’ yatra
by the Youth Congress in Gujarat in February 2014. It was a stupendous success
and a step in the right direction. The membership drive of the youth wing that
followed led to large scale cancellation of bogus membership and pumped youth
vigour into the party. However the old guard scuttled the youthful move which
is yet to pick up momentum.
In fact, one time BJP leader Shankersinh
Vaghela who had rebelled against the Keshubhai Patel government in 1995, split
the party, formed his own regional outfit to come to power in Gujarat with
Congress support had lots to say. Vaghela had subsequently joined the Congress
and gave examples of his mounting frustration as old congressmen made things
difficult for him.
The
‘Shakti-dal” which he had successfully created as an effective counterfoil to
the Bajrang Dal of the BJP had to be disbanded under pressure from the Congress old guard. The Sewa Dal, according
to him, was too docile and decrept a body to take on such a robust force.
Vaghela had demonstrated the ‘force’ of the Shakti Dal when he had contested the by-election from Radhanpur
in north Gujarat as he was required to be elected within six months of taking over as chief
minister. Modi was then the BJP candidate’s election-incharge.
Rahul Gandhi’s strategy of taking the
Congress back to its Gandhian roots as distinct from the BJP’s politics under
Narendra Modi is a step in the right direction. The voting populace now has a
clear choice between two distinct national political entities. Secondly the
decision to take the road less travelled has provided the people a chance to
see things for themselves first hand. The results of the Lok Sabha elections of
2024 which has the BJP government now on regional crutches is proof enough that
it is on the right path. What is needed is the ruthlessness of his grandmother
to get old guard spoilers out of the way and an energetic youth cadre to fill
the breach. Modi can be outwitted only through hard-nosed groundwork. The BJP
is fast imbibing the ills of the Congress of old, it is time to forge a new
futuristic Congress with natural baseline intelligence.
For now, Congress is a work in motion under a
capable Rahul Gandhi. Those in the BJP who mock him and the Congress would do
well to remember their own tattered state of the 1984 Lok Sabha elections when
they were reduced to a party of two seats. A.K.Patel from Mehsana in Gujarat
and C.Janga Reddy from Hanamkonda in Andhra Pradesh. The Congress, at its worst
still had 44 seats in the Lok Sabha in 2014.
Besides, BJP’s first stint in power at the
Centre under Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1996 lasted only 13 days, then 13 months
in 1998-1999 followed by a full term from 1999 to 2004 before being ousted by
the Congress and its allies. BJP is in its third term in power under Modi but
historically, it still has a lot of catching up to do.
As the old saying goes ‘Birth, re-birth, as the
waiting die. Old love, new love sprouts wings to fly’.
https://odishapostepaper.com/edition/5226/orissapost/page/9
https://epaper.lokmat.com/articlepage.php?articleid=LOKTIME_NPLT_20250218_6_3
https://mediamap.co.in/blog/CongressrisingfromtheasheslikePhoenix
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