After the Tsunami in Maharashtra that drowned the remnant dredges of the Indian National Congress—once a political party—time has come to the legacy and the burden of past in contemporary India. Lest there is any misunderstanding, it’s imperative to make it clear at the outset that the term Gandhis has no relation to the Father of the Nation.
Late Prime Minister Indira Priyadarshini Nehru got this suffix after her marriage to Feroze Gandhi, a Parsi gentleman and feisty parliamentarian who was often a strident critic of his father-in-law’s policies. She found it convenient to use a hyphenated surname to proclaim that she was the inheritor and custodian to two great men’s legacy.
This isn’t the place to recall differences between the Mahatma and Panditji, and the contrasting visions of India of their dreams. Hind Swaraj and Discovery of India are difficult to reconcile. But let’s not digress. What is referred to as the first family in Independent India’s politics has quite happily erased the word before the hyphen and for majority of Indians anyone in the family bearing the Gandhi name from Indira, Rajiv, Sonia, Rahul is an heir to the priceless treasure trove. Even Sanjay, Maneka and Varun have benefited from the ambiguity of historical resonance. Priyanka Vadra, too, has chosen to retain the Gandhi part in her name in public life.
To some it may appear as futile an exercise as beating a dead horse, but the INC reduced to a mom-n-pop shop is far from a dead horse. It continues to be a nightmare. Even those who detest Prime Minister Modi’s polarising politics believe that the zombie-like presence of the dynasts in the electoral arena makes his task so much easier. All he has to do is to aim a few barbs at the shehzada and others who display a sickening sense of entitlement—divine right to rule by birth and to lead autocratically the carefully created aura of charisma dissolves.
The ‘Man who would be King’ is exposed as the poor Humpty Dumpty time and again. As the rhyme has it, all the kingsmen can’t put him together again. The coterie-sycophants never tires of chanting mantras like shamanic priests of yore to make the Phoenix rise from its ashes. They refuse to accept that people of India are sick and tired of their antics.
They have rejected the alternative offered by Rahul Gandhi time and again. Many who once supported the Nehruvian idea of a Secular Socialist India have started having serious second thoughts about the agenda articulated by RaGa. When NaMo calls the INC a parasitic party that feeds on its allies, the sarcastic allegation rings true.
The whimsical way in which tickets are distributed, allies arrogantly alienated, favourites catapulted or paradropped, has destroyed the organisation. How long can they blame the hacked EVMs and misuse of ED and CBI, etc? The scale of BJP’s victory in Maharashtra is so huge that if the party sniffs a conspiracy it can’t deny that it was a vastly popular conspiracy. It’s said that there are none so blind as those who don’t wish to see. The INC may continue to dwell in an echo chamber denying reality till it becomes extinct insisting that all this is their internal matter but the harsh reality is that RaGa and Co. have been written off by the majority of Indians.
Partisan analysts may continue playing with words like the North-South Divide or mushrooming dynasties in all parties, including the BJP, but what needs underlining is the writing on the wall—the voters from Haryana to Punjab, Kashmir to West Bengal, Jharkhand to UP have given the Congress a big Thumbs Down. The INC hangs like an albatross around its allies necks. It has lost all leverage to orchestrate anti-NDA strategy in the Parliament or on the streets. Like the originally lampooned Bourbons in pre-revolutionary France, the INC Gandhis refuse to learn. They keep threatening their compatriots, Apres mois le deluge! Nor have they shown any awareness of Marx’s dictum about history repeating itself as tragedy and farce.
The greatest casualty in the Quixotic tilting at windmills has been the Idea of India envisioned by the first prime minister. No one can deny his Himalayan blunders vis a vis China and Pakistan, but it would be churlish to deny him credit for laying the foundation of a modern, industrially self-sufficient action. He also strove to build democratic institutions. He had his weaknesses and was certainly no Mahatma. But the poor man was enthroned, not by his father, but by the Father of the Nation, who overrode the majority who in the party favoured the Sardar.
Ironically, his is the case of sins of children visiting on the father. It’s the children born in the 21st century who will build India of their dreams. One should have faith in their ability to do so discarding the deadwood and the dynasties.
Pushpesh Pant
Former professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University
pushpeshpant@gmail.com