The Congress must have ‘introspected’ a zillion times since 2014, and they still haven’t figured why India marginalises its oldest national party at almost every second opportunity. The results in Maharashtra again underline the party’s irrelevance.
In Jharkhand, too, the Congress secured 16 seats to the BJP’s 21; the JMM was the hero with 34 of the 81 seats. Hemant Soren’s personal misfortunes, including a 5-month jail term on charges of money laundering, and tribal pride played an emotive role in his victory, as perhaps did his Rs 2,500 monthly assistance scheme for women. ‘Perhaps’ because the BJP also promised a similar dole.
In West Bengal, despite the harrowing R G Kar Medical College case, the TMC won all six seats in the assembly bypolls. Out of the three assembly bypolls in Kerala, the Congress won two, assisted by the CPI(M)’s lumpen politics.
In Maharashtra, the Congress won just 16 of the 288 seats, the kind of number a local party would not have minded. Despite the Maha Vikas Aghadi’s social equity and welfare-themed campaigns led by Rahul Gandhi, and alliances with regional heavyweights like the NCP (Sharad Pawar) and Shiv Sena (Uddhav Thackeray), the results exposed the opposition’s chronic inability to defeat one of the most cynically opportunist regimes ever to grace the Mantralaya.
During the general elections last summer, I pointed out that Rahul Gandhi’s caste census agenda to consolidate minority and women’s votes was not quite working out. The truly downtrodden are interested in money, not in the culture wars that mostly self-serving urban liberals are preoccupied with.
Nevertheless, caste was Rahul Gandhi’s theme in his Maharashtra campaigns, too. But the OBC component (about 34 percent of the population), Muslims (11 percent) and women (roughly half) continued to fail to consolidate.
The welfare schemes that both alliances competed to upgrade are roughly compatible. Never mind that it is the taxpayer’s money that the political parties are auctioning away to get votes. Women, for example, stood to get Rs 2,000-2,500 each. On occasions, Rahul Gandhi hiked this to Rs 8,000. But if the results are any indication, women seemed not too enthused enough to vote in large numbers for him or his alliance. On the other hand, direct cash transfers are obviously essential for those challenged in meeting the basic needs.
Rahul Gandhi’s constant upbraiding of big business cannot have helped either to secure for him an image of reliability or funds for their campaigns.
True, Rahul’s campaigns in Maharashtra drew more crowds than Modi’s. But, the larger turnout was deceptive, as the poll results now show. The Indian voter is cunning. He goes to hear Rahul Gandhi taking Modi down because someone famous is giving vent to the voter’s suppressed anger at the Big Man. It is vengeance by other means. Then they go to the Big Man for the handouts. It is like watching an action movie with the ticket and popcorn paid for.
Rahul Gandhi and his party are not the only crumbling narratives. Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena faction suffered from internal fissures and the perception of a weakened leadership. Family loyalties, a hallmark of the original Sena appeal, no longer hold true. Eknath Shinde, who certainly looks the more authentic driver of the two, now has stolen the Sena legacy. Bloodline and family lineage have nothing to do with either bloodline or lineage, it turns out.
Which brings us to the point.
The Congress has pretty much tried everything. Rahul Gandhi, for example, has stepped out of the comfort zone of central Delhi, quit closed-door cabals, walked the length and breadth of India, and lived among the poor and the dispossessed.
The party is headed by a Dalit and is exhibitionistically pro-minorities and pro-women. It no longer behaves like a Big Brother with its allies. It is as secular as possible to the effete intellectual satisfaction of the urban elite. It has increased its presence on social media manifold. Whenever possible, the party’s leadership visits a temple to reassure the moderate Hindus. What more can it do?
The question, then, is: what must it do? The answer, in one word, is dissolve.
On January 27, 1948, three days before he was assassinated, Mahatma Gandhi wrote that the Congress had “outlived its use” in its present form, and that the party should be disbanded so that it transitions from a political unit to a social one—“flower into a lok sevak sangh”. The note appeared in an article in the Harijan on February 2, 1948, titled ‘His last will and testament’.
Modi and his friends are super specialists at holding on to power and are all set for the foreseeable future. Rahul Gandhi has no real option but to disrupt Indian politics, and then impose his kind of order on the chaos.
To bring this about, Rahul Gandhi must quit the Congress and launch a new party or movement. In April 2016, a frustrated Emmanuel Macron announced the creation of En Marche! (Forward!), a popular movement he characterised as a “democratic revolution” against a stymied political system, and became the French president the next year.
The Congress, if it survives dissolution in some form, can continue to support Rahul. Suicidal? Yes. But sometimes you need to fall to soar, die to resurrect.
(Views are personal)
(cpsurendran@gmail.com)
C P Surendran | Poet, novelist, and screenplay writer. His latest novel is One Love and the Many Lives of Osip B