Soon after the Lok Sabha poll results were out, when everyone was baying for Rahul Gandhi’s blood, I was among the very few journalists who had opined that the Congress would fall apart without the Nehru-Gandhis at the helm.
A former colleague, writing in a leading newspaper, had succinctly said whether we like it or not, today the Republicans (US) without their evangelists, the Labour Party (UK) without their trade unions and the Indian National Congress without the Gandhis are an absolute no show and might as well cease to exist.
Which is why I think it has been very irresponsible of Rahul to have left the Congress in a limbo the way he has—the events in Karnataka and Goa were bound to happen sooner or later, but with no leadership in sight, why should anyone blame the Congress legislators in both states for looking out for themselves?
However, it is not just a question of MLAs in Karnataka and Goa crossing over to the BJP. Even where there is no power to be gained, many fifth columnists have emerged in the Congress and are unlikely to accept each others’ leadership. By and large it is a fight between the old and the new, but even where they belong to the same generation there is now a mad scramble for the top post and infighting even between Rahul loyalists who all seemed to be on the same side before his resignation, despite the electoral debacle.
The gloves are off and no punches are being pulled. It is not just the “Rahul virodhis” in the Congress who are out for each others’ jugulars, even those who seemed united behind him and held back their differences are now at each others’ throats, as witnessed by the war of words between the former and incumbent Mumbai Congress presidents during the Karnataka imbroglio.
It is a vindication of the opinions of many political observers that the Gandhis, whatever their shortcomings, are the glue that holds the Congress together and no matter who takes over as party president, these kinds of fractiousness and defections will continue or there may even be another split which neither faction might survive.
Something of the sort had been envisaged years ago by senior Congress leader Madhavrao Scindia who told me months before his death that at one time, people like him even stood against most of their immediate family members (mother, sisters, all in the BJP) on ideological grounds and firmly with the more pluralistic and socialistic Congress. Nothing, not even the Emergency, compelled either to switch sides one way or the other. But now ideology does not matter, he said. Anyone will go wherever he sees better prospects for himself and you cannot do a thing to stop it. The return of the Congress to power a short while later stopped Scindia’s prophecy from coming true for a while, but now I am beginning to think he was more prescient than even he knew at the time.
Tectonic shifts in Indian polity have coincided with major changes in the world, notably the fall of the Berlin Wall, followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Political thinkers and historians like Francis Fukuyama and Eric Hobsbawm have held 1989 responsible for the end of both ideology and history. That was when the last full-blooded Congress government was in power in India and that was the year ideology took a flying leap out of our own windows with both the left (Communist parties) and the right (BJP) joining hands to support a centrist coalition against another centrist organisation.
Fukuyama thought history as we knew it had ended in 1989 because the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the coming up of liberal democracies in most nations had completely blurred the edges of ideologies. 1989 is also the year marked as the end of the “short 20th century” by British historian Hobsbawm who believed that the 19th century was a long one from 1789 to 1914; the first phase till 1848 saw many revolutions and then capitalist societies were established from 1848 to 1875. The era of the empire continued till 1914, ending in World War 1 and, formally, the 19th century. But the collapse of the USSR ended not just communism or ideological divides but also the 20th century; and the 21st century, which we now know is headed in the opposite direction to Marxism, actually began in 1989. Note that 1914 to 1989 is about the time frame for the rise and decline of the Congress as well and although we are a more nascent liberal democracy, we could not have not been buffered against these global trends. So it is about right that the end of ideology should also have begun in India thereabouts.
I remember interviewing Hans Modrow, the last prime minister of the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany), soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall. He told me, much as people were then deriding communism, capitalism too was not the answer to peoples’ problems. While the left might have failed, the right-wing political ideologies that he saw sweeping across the world even then might also not be the solution to society’s ills.
A middle way will have to be found, he said, and then added something that really startled me—he told me that you have that in your country. “You democratically elect your left parties to govern your states and your federal government is neither right nor left, not communist
or capitalist.”
I supposed he meant the Congress. But I did not know then that the Congress had also ended in 1989. The fifth columnists in the party are only dealing it the final blows.
Sujata Anandan
Senior journalist and political commentator
Email: sujata.anandan@gmail.com