It has been said so many times that the Congress is going through an existential crisis that the term has lost its meaning and gravity. Some say it in desperation as they see the space for liberal thought shrinking while others get sadistic pleasure because, in their hearts, they hate the Congress. Between desperation and hatred, an honest assessment of the Congress is the biggest casualty.
A party that has lived for more than a century will always have its admirers and haters, well-wishers and doomsayers. When the Congress was formed in 1885, although a cultural awakening was taking shape, the sleeping giant that is India was nonetheless being taken for granted by the British. Though British imperialism had received a serious jolt in 1857, the country was still politically a naive society. No one in Britain then took the Congress seriously. It was not even noticed. By the end of the 19th century, it was still perceived to be a brown men’s club that believed in extracting a few concessions from the British Empire through petitions. A militant movement was a distant dream.
There is no doubt that leaders like Bal Gangadhar Tilak tried to connect the Congress with the masses, but it only became a mass movement in the real sense of the term with the innovative imagination of Mahatma Gandhi, for whom politics was an ethical issue. Like a philosopher, Gandhi was more interested in the metaphysical dimension of politics. For him politics was an ethical therapy, a spiritual journey; it was a project to produce pure-hearted human beings, to create a nation of idealists. It was this spiritual regeneration that awakened the centuries-old civilisation from its deep slumber and made it impossible for the British to govern and they finally had to leave India on Aug 15, 1947. But Nathuram Godse’s bullet meant that experiment was left unfulfilled.
It is my firm belief that had Gandhi lived for another decade, India would have been a different country. The ethical decay that we witness today all around us is the result of that unfulfilled dream. When Gandhi withdrew his Satyagraha movement in early 1922, after the Chauri Chaura violence, he knew the country was not ready for freedom. No wonder, on Aug 15, 1947, when the country
was celebrating Independence, Gandhi was an unhappy man who was nowhere near Delhi. He was a broken man. The blood and barbarism on display had shaken him. He knew his experiment with the truth had failed. This was not the India of his imagination where one man was baying for another’s blood.
After Gandhi’s departure, his protégé Jawaharlal Nehru tried to carry the momentum forward. But his problem was that he took command of the Government as well. He thought government could be an instrument to create a new society. He did not realize that power had its own dynamics. Gandhi knew this and that was why he never joined any government and, in 1934, resigned from the primary membership of the Congress. His was a moral power. If today the Congress is struggling to remain relevant, it is because after Independence it reduced itself to an election-contesting machine.
Today, the Congress is faced with a situation in which it must decide whether to recreate the Congress of Gandhi who could confront the politics of hate and divisiveness or continue to be an election-contesting machine. This dilemma has created a peculiar situation for the party. The Bharat Jodo Yatra is being hailed as a new experiment with the long-term objective of generating an ethical
narrative, and to counter the narrative of the establishment. The yatra claims to be non-political. It has invited everyone. Its message is simple: Gandhi’s India can’t afford another round of divisive and religion-based politics. The Partition of India was the culmination of exactly that politics. Proponents of the two-nation theory laid the ground for a bloodbath and a division of the country. Millions lost their lives and homes. The pangs of Partition are so deep that it is still corroding the Indian nation from within and taking the country to another disaster. But the larger question is, can the Bharat Jodo Yatra win elections for the Congress? Nobody has a definite answer. But in its zeal for the yatra, the Congress is being accused of ignoring electoral politics.
The Congress today has to fight assembly elections in two states — Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat. In Gujarat, the Congress fought well the last time. Though it did not win, it made Narendra Modi vulnerable in his home state. This time, however, the Congress seems to have given up. The reason given is that the entire party mechanism, instead of putting its might to fight elections in these two states, has been galvanised around Rahul Gandhi to make the yatra a success.
Mysteriously, the yatra is not passing through Gujarat which, if it had, would definitely have had an impact on the elections. Rahul Gandhi, the party’s top leader, has not visited Gujarat since the yatra started whereas Arvind Kejriwal and Mr Modi are mostly spending their time there, which has generated the perception that the Congress has given up on Gujarat and AAP is gaining at its
expense. Similarly, in Himachal Pradesh, where the Congress can trounce the BJP, it is running a lacklustre campaign. Mr Gandhi is once again away from the state. Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has taken command, but it remains to be seen how much she can deliver.
The Congress at the time of writing is so precariously placed in Gujarat that opinion polls are predicting that AAP may emerge as the number two party in the state, pushing the Congress to the third spot. If that happens, the Congress will be doomed in the state. After Delhi and Punjab, the Congress will lose another state to AAP.
Thankfully AAP is not contesting Himachal Pradesh with the same seriousness as Gujarat. But if the Congress loses Himachal and is pushed to the third position in Gujarat, it will definitely have a cascading effect and create a momentum for AAP in other states too at the cost of the Congress.
Assembly elections are scheduled in four major states next year: Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. In 2018, the Congress was the winner in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. In Karnataka it was in government along with the Janata Dal (Secular).
The Gujarat result will definitely have an impact in these states. The Congress has still not overcome the loss in Punjab, Uttarakhand and Goa where it could have easily turned the tables on its opponents with more cohesion and strategy. There is an argument that the Congress can’t fight the BJP. That argument will get more traction if it loses to AAP in Gujarat and to the BJP in Himachal.
Today, the Congress has a much more daunting task. It not only has to rediscover its spiritual roots, which Gandhi invented after 1915, but it also has to remain electorally relevant. Voters are fickle. Once they lose faith in a party or individual, it is very difficult to reclaim that trust.
The BJP during its journey remained at the margins of Indian politics for a very long time and lost many elections, but that was a different world. Politics was not all that competitive; opponents were not treated like enemies and hostility was not the defining creed of the time. The BJP could afford to lose, without facing an existential crisis. The Congress can’t afford to do that. In a changed world it has to fight elections with a killer instinct to win. The Bharat Jodo Yatra is important, but the big question is, should it be at the cost of elections?
The writer is Editor, SatyaHindi.com, and author of Hindu Rashtra. He tweets at @ashutosh83B
