Dear Mr Rahul Gandhi,
The year 2014 has been a miserable one for you by all accounts. The manner in which curtains were rung on the year also does not foretell any better. On the one hand you are faced with an adversary — or rather a clutch of them at that — led by a man who knows no better pursuit than his. On the other hand you are absent when it comes to manning or taking the pivotal position in your own side.
Before going further, let me clarify that I am not writing these words as an adviser or a sympathiser of your party. I write because of the innate belief that a buoyant nation must have not only a strong government and ruling party, but also a vibrant Opposition led by a person who believes that it is her or his job to be shadow Prime Minister. There was a time when the Bharatiya Janata Party leaders lost their sense of belief after the loss in 2004. Reversal of the BJP’s decline did not happen because of strategic reasons but because your party abandoned the belief of leading India once more.
Forget being a person expected to scrutinise each step of the Prime Minister, you have long forsaken the role you are mandated to perform. It is evident that the Congress Party which has bestowed on you a considerable political title solely because of your familial pedigree has little meaning for you. You may disagree with this proposition but this is what becomes evident by your decision to stay away from the low-intensity celebrations at party headquarters to mark the 130th Foundation Day of the Congress. In the absence of any formal explanation regarding your decision to stay absent from a rather chilly, it is plausible that you may have decided on a sojourn to a place similar to the one you went to recover last summer after a hard fought election campaign where you oversaw the party plummeting to its worst ever performance. It’s a cliché to say that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. It can also be said that those who remain oblivious of history are unlikely to leave a mark on it.
It is more than a decade since you formally entered politics by contesting the Lok Sabha polls in 2004. Politics is a strange vocation in India and given the serial nature of elections, senior leaders of all parties do not have the liberty to treat it as anything besides a profession. India is also probably the only country where politics is an enterprise and this is evident in burgeoning personal wealth of leaders after they become parliamentarians or legislators. Unfortunately because of these factors that gives politics in India its specific characteristics, there is no space for part timers. Sadly, that has been your wont from the time you entered politics. You chose to accept its trappings and swelled in the adulation you received. Yet, at no point you gave total commitment to your party, constituency and nation.
You may argue that people have little business about the manner you choose to conduct or rather not conduct your life and your profession. But the problem stems from the feudal manner in which your party has been run for the past 45 years or so since your grandmother wrested control of the party from a group of ageing party bosses. Barring a period in the 1990s — lasting for less than a decade — your party has been run on the diktats of one member or the other of your family. You have however been a reluctant chieftain of your party. Your mother has given sufficient hints that it was time she stepped aside, but your prevarication has held her back.
But you holding the position that has been assigned to you, prevents several of your peers who may be equally accomplished, if not more, to take charge of their battalions. It is not that the Congress Party lacks leaders. In fact, there are many who, if they had been given due responsibility before the polls, could have led the party to a less dismal performance. The problem is that even after the disastrous performance of the party you have not allowed the jury within to hold you responsible for the debacle.
Your mother used to refer to her husband as a reluctant politician in the years before he became Prime Minister. There are sufficient accounts from that period that suggest that she was not a willing partner in accepting your father’s elevation as Prime Minister. But once he assumed that position, he committed himself headlong and though many like me viewed several aspects of his tenure from a critical prism, there is no denying his dedication and enthusiasm to his task. Senior scribes of the time remember the enthusiasm he tried to rid the government and the part of the flab it accumulated over the years.
There is no evidence that you were a reluctant entrant which makes your decision to remain a part-time politician difficult to understand. It is the beginning of the 2015 and this year should either witness you in a more wholesome role or you should willingly allow the party to find its own leader for the future. The Congress has a history of 130 years and this cannot be jettisoned for a single individual however true her or his pedigree. Time comes in the life of every individual when a decision on the calling has to be taken. Your time came long ago. But you can still make this an occasion for a vital personal decision which will greatly determine the shape of Indian politics in years to come.
The writer is the author of Narendra Modi: The Man, the Times
