Congress Returns to Gandhi's Gujarat: A Century Later, A Party at the Crossroads
Two years before the elections to the Gujarat Assembly, the Congress is going back to one of its original strongholds to hold a meeting of the All-India Congress Committee to mark the occasion of the centenary of Mahatma Gandhi’s presidentship of the party and the 75th year of the Constitution.
While the official party has made its usual statement about the meet — to come up with a bottom-up plan to energise the cadre at the grassroots level — the desperate younger generation has unusually made its expectations public. Sachin Pilot, who verily represents this section, has talked of a “generational shift” within the party, with young leaders stepping in.
It is not that the grand old party is ignorant of the fruits of generational shift and democratic practices, but it has been deeply entrenched in its own practices that it takes a revolution of sorts if it were to make a shift in its thought process. The party is so identified with the ordinary Indian that despite a series of failures, the party flag still flutters in several places, and Gujarat is the best example. It is not because the national leadership has done something extraordinary there; the party survives basically because a section of the ordinary Indians finds it the most comfortable political formation to be associated with.
The BJP has its Hindutva agenda for everyone to see and its electoral successes are thanks to its unapologetic and unwavering commitment to it. The Congress, on the other hand, has not yet firmed up its approach to the communal angle the nation’s polity has taken. It sometimes plays hot and cold with the secular core of its larger political identity. The party must have understood that its followers would be comfortable when it remains a secular one, instead of peddling soft Hindutva; the results of the Karnataka Assembly and the 2024 Lok Sabha elections must have thrown up some lessons. The party may do well to frame its position firmly and articulate it cohesively instead of “strengthening” it at the grassroots level.
Gujarat has produced several practical Congress politicians, Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel included. The Ahmedabad meet may help the party pick some lessons from those illustrious leaders.
