Talking Turkey: The mantle of power

With the Bharatiya Janata Party’s triumph in state Assembly elections in Maharashtra and Haryana and the Congress’ continuing decline, the focus has inevitably shifted to the latter’s future.

If the Congress remains something of a force in the country, it faces the challenge of near irrelevance in the future.

The key to the Congress’ future lies in what becomes of its leadership. This is inevitably linked to the party’s history in the Indira Gandhi period. Traditionally, given its sterling role in the Independence struggle and Jawaharlal Nehru’s contribution to the making of modern India, the Congress for many, from the high to the humble worker, was more a conviction than a party.

In Indira’s struggle against the party bosses after assuming the Prime Minister’s Office leading to two splits, she destroyed this intangible but elemental link between the grassroots Congressman and the party. Her dilemma was that she had no option but to adopt Communist-like tactics to assert her authority and let an army of wheeler-dealers man the barricades.

Indira rose to the heights of political authority her peak was the Bangladesh War to govern the country as the unquestioned leader. But the price the Congress and the country had to pay was the destruction of the party élan and an over-dependence of the hoary old Congress on one family, distinguished as it was in its services to the country.

Inevitably, the Emergency imposed by Indira led to her assertive younger son Sanjay emerging as the future leader. His untimely death in an air accident was followed by her assassination and her elder pilot son Rajiv had no option but to step into his mother’s shoes.

It was no accident that with Sonia in mourning after her husband Rajiv’s assassination, the Congress was in the doldrums. After an agonising period, Congress leaders petitioned Sonia to take the helm and revive the party.

Remarkably for an Italian-born housewife, Sonia proved more than equal to the task and showed rare political acumen. Being Indira’s favourite daughter-in-law, she had probably learned from a vantage point the techniques of dealing with party men and opponents by watching the Prime Minister play her cards.

However, Sonia’s performance showed how dependent the Congress had become on the continuing mystique of one family. And in anointing a new generation of Gandhis in the form of son Rahul, the party’s fortunes began to slide.

Over state Assembly and Lok Sabha elections, Rahul has shown that the political astuteness of his mother and grandmother is not in his genes. Simply put, he is not cut out for the world of politics. The tragedy is that his mother feels that it is her obligation to the first political family she is married into to promote the leadership of a new Nehru-Gandhi generation.

The larger tragedy of the Congress is that it has become so dependent on one family, after the Indira Gandhi period, that it cannot remain viable bereft of one of its members leading it. Increasing cries of bringing Rahul’s more politically astute sister Priyanka, despite the baggage of her less than ideal husband, into a leadership role is as much a sign of desperation as it is of hope.

Against this backdrop, what is to become of the Congress in a scenario that is projecting the continuing rise of the BJP? As it is, the political space for the Congress is shrinking rapidly, underlined by the loss of two important states.

There were extenuating factors in the sense that the Congress had ruled these states for 10 and 15 years. But they will bring scant comfort to a party reeling from earlier losses and the party’s near rout in the Lok Sabha elections. They are destroying the morale of what is left of the party.

It is par for the course that Congressmen and women take great care publicly to shield the family from responsibility for election reverses. Equally, the prevailing buzz on renovating the party is likely to prove an inane exercise, given the impossible nature of the problem.

In blunt terms, the Congress will not retain its shape if there is no family member to lead it. But it will be on a continuing slide if Rahul retains a leadership role. In either case, the prospects for the party look gloomy.

The question then is: who will occupy the Congress space? To begin with, the BJP has the ambition and the leadership qualities of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take up the Congress space.

But its problems are both ideological and the pulls of the party’s mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). In the first category, Mr Modi is seeking to impose its own idea of India on the Nehruvian concept of an open society by marrying modern technology to myths. The RSS, for its part, is a powerful restraining factor on the Prime Minister’s freedom of action.

The succession of the BJP’s triumphs under Mr Modi’s leadership in elections gives him much greater leeway in having his own way in the ideological battle. But it remains to be determined how far the Prime Minister is willing to go in moving away from the cult of RSS beliefs in which he himself has been reared.

Apart from the Congress, the other Opposition parties seem incapable of assuming the role of the principal Opposition. They are either regional outfits restricting their ken as national parties or Left parties continuing to mourn the demise of Left and Communist ideologies around the world.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) had turned itself into a virtual regional party, given its long stint in ruling West Bengal, before it fell to the rhetoric and political techniques of Mamata Banerjee and her party. In any case, her ambitions to spread out have been stunted by the scams surrounding her party members and her own alleged culpability.

For the present, the political field seems open to adventurers even as the BJP self-consciously assumes the mantle of power.