JOIN USA fork in the road for Rahul Gandhi
‘This time Modi, next time who knows?’ This attitude, it is safe to say, characterises how many opponents of the Modi-led BJP view the road ahead for themselves in the aftermath of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. All except one, perhaps. The 49-year-old president of the Congress, Rahul Gandhi, has decided to own up responsibility for the party's failures and quit.
The move has triggered rounds of panic in the Congress party, which remains a collection of competing interests held together by the Gandhi family as its organising principle. There is some irony in this. Rahul, for all the attacks he has suffered at the hands of the BJP and its cohorts, has never been a more popular man within the Congress than he is now.
This coming of age in the eyes of the Congress and its extended establishment collides with the biggest setback for the party in decades – its sheer scale is captured in the loss of Amethi, from where Rahul was a three-term MP until recently. The unfortunate turn of events has meant that the Congress and its leaders are left with nothing to argue with, except citing improvement in Rahul’s ability to campaign and a change in his public image over the last few years. But without popular backing, the claim of improvement sounds meaningless.
Yet, that has not deterred party leaders from asking how Rahul can choose to quit at a time when they feel he has done so well. They are not alone. In the liberal intellectual establishment that saw itself at the vanguard of opposing Modi, Rahul found favour with many. He was in tune with what this constituency wanted to hear about Modi and so his quitting makes no sense to them either. However, within this group, a few continued to question his effectiveness, his leadership mettle and indeed the principle on which he was chosen to take up the job of countering Modi, namely the dynastic principle. To these people, his quitting seems logical.
In the midst of all of this, it remains unclear where exactly Rahul himself stands on his role.
Will Rahul merely attempt to be seen as doing the ‘right thing’, in effect submit his resignation, and exercise control over the party through a proxy power, or is he hoping to revitalise the Opposition space through a process akin to letting the Congress thrash about in the water until it rediscovers a survival instinct of its own instead of throwing it a defective lifeline called the Gandhi family? This, in essence, is a big choice confronting Rahul.
Rahul has been a long-time votary of bringing about fundamental changes in the Congress organisation. In fact, he set out to do exactly this years ago on first entering politics. However, the project had a contradiction at its heart. How could Rahul speak about ‘opening the doors of the Congress’ to anyone who wished to enter politics and then facilitate free and fair elections even while his family and he continued to call the shots at the helm of the party? Coteries were part of the Congress culture and could not be done away with just because the newest Gandhi in politics saw himself as a democrat.
The project eventually came to be dominated by the kin of established leaders within the party and never fully took off. Although it threw up some new leaders – Manickam Tagore (who won from Virudhunagar) and Jothimani S (won from Karur) in Tamil Nadu and Ashok Tanwar in Haryana (lost from Sirsa) and few others – it was unable to resolve its inner contradiction. After Rahul became Congress vice-president and later president, he stopped speaking of it in the same way that he used to.
It’s not clear if Rahul will return to that project and take up its unfinished work. In some ways, this work goes back to what his father Rajiv had hinted at when he said in his famous 1985 AICC session speech that the Congress had come to be controlled by “brokers of power and influence” who were undermining a mass movement by converting it into a feudal oligarchy. To bring this long-pending project to its conclusion, Rahul will not just need to bat for a non-Gandhi leading the party, but also ensure that there is no interference from his family or him in the running of the party.
It’s a tall order and one could mean the demise of the Congress as it now stands. The party could splinter in the absence of the Gandhis. However, this will be good for Indian democracy because it will allow the rise of a political force that will either be a renewed Congress or something new and reflective of the current realities.
If Rahul goes for this option, he will come across as more committed to democracy than many of his political contemporaries. He may even emerge as a figure of moral import.
In the other scheme of things, Rahul’s decision to step down would mean a ticking of the right box saying, ‘I have displayed accountability’. This would be a slight improvement over status quo in the sense that the Gandhis will still be seen as fallible and not beyond accountability within the Congress. However, given their continued presence within the party, it seems difficult to imagine any other power centre flourishing for long.
Moreover, the problem with this -- the Gandhis controlling the party through proxy -- is that it will leave him open to attacks of the same kind that were witnessed during the 2019 election campaign when Modi successfully portrayed the Nehru-Gandhi family as a symbol of what is wrong with Indian politics. That this way of thinking now finds takers among a section of voters is beyond doubt. If he goes in for this option, it may serve to underpin the existing cynicism about the Congress.
Of course, he could just end the impasse by withdrawing his resignation. Things can go back to business as usual and he too can learn to wonder, ‘This time Modi, next time who knows?’
The question is: What will Rahul choose for himself?
Also read:
Don't go voices grow in Congress; Rahul non-committal
Stand firm, Rahul, and go
https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/first-edit/stand-firm-rahul-and-go-736494.html
Where does Cong go from here?
https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/first-edit/where-does-cong-go-from-here-735937.html