It was Plato who, through Socrates, flagged the danger that the man of enlightenment faced the risk of getting killed by entering politics. In a variant of the same pattern, Jesus Christ said that a prophet incurred the same risk in religion. We watch, with bated breath, how the Congress, shell-shocked at its electoral humiliation, would deal with the only ‘philosopher’ it has in its ranks.
I was among the first to express reservations about Rahul Gandhi becoming the helmsman of the Congress party. I had observed him closely while he was a student for a while in St. Stephen’s. In my four-decades-long stint in higher education, I have seen the children of several political heavyweights. None surpassed Rahul in gentlemanly conduct and the geniality with which he treated his peers. His father was the prime minister, but Rahul conducted himself like an ordinary student. He inconvenienced none. I thought his conduct was too good to be true. This is the truth, and it needs to be stated even if it may not be politically correct to do so.
It was because he was so gentle and self-effacing that I expressed myself against Rahul’s entry into politics. I knew then, and I still hold the view, that one’s virtues and strengths could prove liabilities, depending on the prevailing context. I had learned this from my study of tragedies. Hamlet becomes a disaster because he had a philosophical bent of mind in a context of crass political realism. Macbeth meets with a tragic end precisely because he would not philosophize and is precipitous in action. Instances can be multiplied. In our own history, Gandhi was assassinated, as Einstein said, for being too good. By 1948, it had become a crime to be a witness to truth and a clarion call for justice. A Mahatma was already a nationalistic pestilence.
There is a principle of much political importance that all of these illustrations. Ironically, that seems to be understood only by the BJP. It is something that the Congress, in particular, seems to have willed itself to not know. Ideals are poignantly powerless in themselves. For ideals and values to move human hearts, or to appeal to a people’s imagination, it is essential that a favourable context, a climate of opinion, a cultural matrix, is created. The prevailing idea of politics is that it is the art of the possible. Expediency, not a commitment to values, is the shaping principle. Winnability, for instance, is the sole criterion in fielding candidates. Never mind if they are hardcore criminals; it’s all right if they can add to the party tally. How can a man of principled politics be anything but an anachronism and a dismal failure in such a context?
The Congress expects Rahul to deliver, just as they expected Sonia Gandhi, and the two Nehru-Gandhis before her, to deliver electoral bonanzas on their personal charisma alone. This means only one thing. Congressmen are, clearly, anything but Congress. The Congress as an ideology, a political vision, has been a long time dying. Take the best-case scenario: the state of Kerala, where the Congress has done flatteringly well.
By what courtesy of consideration are politicians like Oommen Chandy and Ramesh Chennithala, and the parasites that fawn on them, ‘Congress’ in thought or sentiment? The state leadership of the party is a blatant contradiction of what the party was meant to be. Self-promotion and self-preservation are their only motives. Neither the party, nor the country, figures among their concerns. Rahul Gandhi had to enter the fray in Wayanad, inter alia, to control damage from the bitter bickering between these Congress factions, each trying to thrive at the expense of the other, even as the party leadership at the national level was drumming up the mission to halt the Modi juggernaut!
Some years ago, I spent a while travelling extensively in four north Indian states to study the ground realities. I paid particular attention to decoding the organisational DNA of the Congress. I was shocked. Wherever I went, I found a handful of local netas, each trying to undercut the other and none not even casually interested in making the stand of the party intelligible to anyone around. I was greatly surprised when, therefore, the Congress came to power in 2004 and improved its position in 2009.
The clearest sign that the Congress as a political movement of the Mahatma pedigree had reached its terminal stages was that it depended, for every electoral gain, entirely on the Nehru-Gandhi charisma.
I recall a conversation with Natwar Singh, a long-time 10, Janpath loyalist, in 2010. He had fallen out with the party by then. A former student of St. Stephen’s, he called on me in my office when he came to address the students. I asked him what he thought of the Gandhi family. Here’s what he said. “I am out of favour now. But I can tell you one thing. The day this family ceases to lead the Congress, it will break into a hundred pieces.” None understands this better than the present BJP leadership; the reason a propaganda blitzkrieg is sustained on Rahul to discredit him as a liability to the Congress. The truth is that he is a liability to the BJP in its mission to create a Congress-mukt Bharat.
Congressmen in panic should not diagnose their malady wrong. The problem is not Rahul. The problem is that the Congress ideology has been left far behind. It can be, and needs to be, resuscitated. Rahul makes all the right noises in this direction, but he hasn’t had the time to reinvent a moribund political phenomenon in its original vitality. He, unlike Modi, is no magician. Logic is more time-consuming than magic. Congressmen need to realise that there is no alternative to an ideological revitalization of the party. How can elections be won as long as Congressmen do not know or believe in what the party stands for? The remedy is not to replace Rahul with someone worse, unless treating
the ailment is to be tantamount to killing the patient.
Valson Thampu
Former principal of St Stephen’s College, New Delhi
Email: vthampu@gmail.com