The political situation underwent another churn when the Delhi election results were declared last week. Since 2014, the BJP has been on the ascendant. Their movement up and up seemed arrested in 2024 when they lost their majority in the Lok Sabha, and they had to form a government with the support of other parties. The Congress celebrated this event as a great victory, a harbinger of many more victories in the future. Their defeat in Maharashtra and Haryana took some wind out of their sails.
Their reaction to the election in Delhi is unclear. Their vote share is only 6 percent, but they seem overjoyed at the defeat of their ally, the AAP. Earlier, they had fought tooth and nail against another ally in the rapidly vanishing INDIA bloc, the TMC in West Bengal, and lost comprehensively. The party’s strategy appears confusing, to say the least: is it to challenge the dominant BJP or to finish off the regional parties and clear the decks for the BJP? Has it given up hopes of challenging the BJP? Or is it living in a fool’s paradise?
The evolution of the Congress is fascinating in this context. Praveen Rai and Sanjay Kumar, in an article in the Economic and Political Weekly, noticed three distinct phases in this evolution: the period of Congress dominance from 1952 to 1968, the Indira-Rajiv era from 1968 to 1991, and the Sonia-Rahul era from 1998 onwards.
The first period was one in which Nehru was unchallenged. The famous political scientist of yesteryears, Rajni Kothari, described the period in oft-quoted words: “It consists of a party of consensus and parties of pressure. The latter function on the margin and, indeed, the concept of a margin of pressure is of great importance in this system. Inside the margin are various factions within the party of consensus. Outside the margin are several opposition groups and parties, dissident groups from the ruling party, and other interest groups and important individuals.”
The Congress, the party of consensus, was clearly in the saddle, and the lesser opposition parties were parties of pressure, which occasionally influenced decision-making. While Nehru firmly believed in the Westminster style of democracy, he felt the ruling party had to listen to other strands of political thought within his government. Democracy survived and became stronger because factions grew within the “party of consensus”, which asserted different interests. Consequently, there were political, administrative and constitutional changes, such as the emergence of linguistic states in the ‘50s.
The period after Nehru showed signs of the weakening of democracy. The party became a handmaid of an all-powerful government. The party chose the successor to Nehru from the three leading contenders—Morarji Desai, Lal Bahadur Shastri and Jagjivan Ram. The party president, K Kamaraj, discussed the issue internally and recommended the appointment of Lal Bahadur Shastri, a unanimously accepted proposal.
The prime minister’s office under Indira gained ascendancy over the party. After the triumph of 1971 in East Pakistan came years of strife and legal conflict for Indira, which ended in an impulsive decision to impose an Emergency.
In the words of Jona Aravind Dohrmann in his paper, The Congress Party as the Creator, Preserver and Destroyer of the Indian State?: “The very goals the INC fought for zealously during the pre-independence era were compromised by Indira Gandhi and the INC callously. They tampered with government structures and weakened all government and civil institutions….Her own party suffered probably the most. It was just expected to be a disciplined organisation without any inner party democracy, riddled by splits and popular contempt. The party, far from being a cadre party, was in an advanced state of decay, having become totally dysfunctional as power was concentrated in few hands.”
It recovered its supremacy with the election of Rajiv Gandhi but lost it again thanks to its ambivalence regarding what exactly secularism entails. The last phase from P V Narasimha Rao onwards was characterised by powerful economic change, transforming India’s global image. Political weakness, however, continued and ultimately resulted in the emergence of the BJP.
And thus, we come to the age of Rahul Gandhi. Ramachandra Guha, in his paper, The Past and Future of the Indian National Congress, writes about the possibility of Rahul Gandhi as PM. He asked a politically savvy person what Rahul’s forebears would have thought of him occupying the office. The reply was, “Motital would have been pink with pride… whereas Jawaharlal would have turned crimson with embarrassment.” It is not that the Congress lacks high-quality leadership. It has the likes of P Chidambaram, Shashi Tharoor, Abhishek Manu Singhvi and many others. But they appear to be in the shadows while the party flounders.
The BJP also appears to be making the same mistake as the Congress did: the centralisation of power and the evolution of a personality cult. Added to this were an anti-minority rant and more respect for a sengol than for the Constitution. The BJP also felt they could do without their parent organisation, the RSS. The BJP president even went to the extent of telling a newspaper in an interview in May 2024 that the BJP was now strong enough to do without RSS support.
Frequent statements against these negative trends came from RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat. At a meeting in Pune, he said, “We should not consider ourselves god. Let people decide if there’s a god in you.” In fact, the reverses of 2024 could be attributed more to the lack of enthusiasm of RSS workers in some parts than to the growth of Congress power or opposition unity.
This situation corrected itself after the elections, which was probably reflected in the poll results in Maharashtra, Haryana, and Delhi. Yet, there are signs that the old tendencies are surfacing again. The AAP was obviously too ambitious too soon and paid the price in Delhi.
History will tell us which of the two main political fronts will learn its lessons faster or if there will be another twist in the tale. For us Indians, let us hark back to Allan Octavian Hume, who wrote in his poem, ‘Awake’: “Are ye Serfs or are ye Freemen/ Ye that grovel in the shade/ In your own hands rest the issues/ By themselves are nations made!”
(Views are personal)
(kmchandrasekhar@gmail.com)
K M Chandrasekhar | Former Cabinet Secretary and author of As Good as My Word: A Memoir