India’s Congress party needs to think beyond the Gandhis

The more things change, the more they remain the same!

In a nutshell, that is the state of affairs with the Congress party in India – the country’s oldest political party, with a kind of footprint that few political organisations around the world can boast of.

Heading into the Congress party’s Working Committee (CWC) meeting last Monday, interim president Sonia Gandhi had announced that she would not continue in that post anymore and the time had come for the party to choose a new captain.

This declaration came in the wake of a letter by 23 senior Congress leaders and functionaries to Sonia seeking a complete overhaul of the CWC and the Congress Parliamentary Board — the contents of which were leaked to the media.

Thereafter, at the CWC meeting, demands were raised for Sonia to continue and there was a chorus of support from a coterie that has always been loyal to the Gandhi family, thereby once again paving the way for Sonia to change her mind and agree to stay on.

Some of the signatories to that confidential letter to Sonia, such as Ghulam Nabi Azad and Kapil Sibbal, even wanting to quit if their allegiance to the party leadership was found to be wanting!

What happened at the CWC meeting last Monday was a replica of what had transpired at a similar CWC meeting in May 1999. On that occasion, too, Sonia, the then party president, had offered to quit after a ‘revolt’ of sorts against her leadership over the issue of her foreign origin.

Three senior Congress members, Sharad Pawar, P.A. Sangma and Tariq Anwar, had openly said that sensitive public and constitutional offices such as those of the prime minister, president and vice-president should not be allowed to be occupied by anyone who is not an Indian by origin — taking direct potshots at Sonia’s Italian roots and thereby trying to scuttle her prime ministerial ambitions.

So, do we see a pattern in this?

To call a spade a spade, we’ll be worse than an ostrich if we really believe it’s otherwise!

Just come to think about it: Who stands to gain each time a doubt or question is raised about the leadership of the party being in the hands of a Gandhi family member? It’s the Gandhis themselves!

At least in 1999, Pawar, Sangma and Anwar had the guts to walk out and form a new political organisation called Nationalist Congress Party. But this time around, the very people who were signatories to that letter, that purported to stoke the fire of self-analysis and criticism within the party, were seen tripping over one another in reaffirming their allegiance to the party and its central leadership (read Sonia)!

Also note the way the letter was leaked to the media barely a day before the CWC meeting. According to a section of Congress party insiders, the entire bit about a supposed ‘conscience call’ within the party was a stage-managed affair that only helped the Gandhis strengthen their stranglehold over the organisation.

While the point-counterpoint over such a claim will most likely continue for some more time to come, there can at least be no debate on one count: That with every passing day, as the Congress leadership chooses to play the ostrich, the further removed the party gets from reality and realpolitik.

If the party is sincere about mending its ways and taking on an opponent as regimented and well-knit as the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) then it’s high time it got cracking on two crucial fronts: Clear the decks for a complete re-constitution of the CWC and hold immediate organisational elections for the post of the party president.

If an average Congress worker or member ought to realise that merely owing allegiance to the Gandhi surname isn’t going to be enough to help the party even put up a semblance of a fight in a general election, forget about winning it, then what Sonia ought to acknowledge is that by repeatedly expressing her desire to quit as party chief and yet staying on, she has only helped exacerbate the leadership vacuum within India’s Grand Old Party.

By constantly deferring a tough and pragmatic decision on the party president’s election -- and with Rahul Gandhi’s penchant for the job and his ability to deliver results looking more suspect with every passing day — what Sonia has only managed is wishing the inevitable away, thereby perpetuating the Congress hubris.

If members across the party rank and file get to vote and if even a Gandhi family member gets endorsed as the popular choice, then so be it.

That way, the outside world will know that here’s a Congress president who has been democratically elected and not just backed by a bunch of yes-men doing the bidding to keep one of the Gandhis at the helm.

Within the party, too, it will bring in a breath of fresh air, in the sense that the rank and file will know for sure that their leader indeed has a popular mandate among party members, which in its turn, will only make an average party member more accountable for the party’s actions and not just allow them to shift the blame to the central leadership when the chips are down.

The sooner Sonia and the Congress coterie surrounding her realise this, the better.

Twitter: @moumiayush