A Congress in tatters by Sunil Sharan

A Congress in tatters by Sunil Sharan

Topic: A Congress in tatters

Writter: Sunil Sharan

Publish Date: Sunday, 17 December 2017

Published on : The Times of India

A Congress in tatters

Whoa. The fireworks went off. And she seemed annoyed. But the fireworks could not have gone off without her approval. For not a leaf moves in the Congress without the approval of Sonia Gandhi.

India’s grand old party is over a hundred years old, two decades of which have been presided over by Sonia. Sonia took over the party in the late nineties, chucking, literally, Sitaram Kesri from office. Just five years later she astonished everyone by slaying the BJP.

But it has been a downhill journey ever since. 2009 was more a victory about Manmohan’s good governance than about Sonia’s overlordship, and 2014, well 2014 was the Congress going the way of the Titanic.

Nobody has been put out to pasture for 2014. Nobody has claimed responsibility. The same Digvijays, Patels, Manis, Sibals, Voras, Naths, Antony’s et al rule the roost. Sonia has stayed long enough to pass the baton, somewhat, to Rahul.

Many commentators wish that if only the Sangh Parivar would abandon the faith and move to the centre from the centre-right, India would have two wholesome national parties and all of the country’s problems might get solved. But instead of the BJP moving leftward, Gujarat 2017 has shown that the Congress is moving rightward. Rahul has never worn Hinduism on his sleeve until recently.

Before he would just say that his religion was the religion of the nation or of humanism or of whatever hogwash. India aspires in many ways to be like the West; these same Western countries give lectures to India on secularism.

But the leader of the West, the United States, is over 90 per cent Christian, and ferociously Christian. Barack Obama had a Muslim father but had fervently embraced Christianity. Still about 30 per cent of Americans believed that he was Muslim. The head of the UK, the Queen, is also the head of the Church of England. Even in stridently-secular France, it is hard to imagine a president or a prime minister from being outside the Christian faith.

2004 to 2014 saw a strange phenomenon in India. Most of the top leaders were outside the Hindu faith. The supreme leader was Catholic. The prime minister was Sikh. The heir-apparent never claimed to be of the Hindu faith. The vice president was Muslim. In which other countries of the world, with over 80 per cent of the population adhering to a certain faith, would the bulk of the leadership be outside that faith.

The situation had begun to grate on many Hindus, and not just the Parivar-types. And then one had the constant drumbeats of secularism, intolerance, blah blah blah. Countries like Pakistan were pointing fingers at us–it was like the pot calling the calling the kettle black. And the Manis and the Digvijays never failed to take a pot shot at the Parivar, without seemingly ever calling the Pakistanis to account.

I luv Rahul read a poster at his anointing. In the audience was seated the person most Congresspeople wanted as the inheritor, the glam sister. And next to her sat one of the most criticized men in India. How is all this going to play out?

Barring a few hiccups, since Independence, the Congress has been a Nehru-Gandhi serf. Rahul does not have a heir. If he does not produce one, the party will look toward the glam sister’s progeny. But they are also the progeny of Robert Vadra. The party, subservient as ever, might accept Vadra’s progeny, but the people of India will not. Is Rahul then the end of the road for the dynasty?

The prime minister could never have imagined in 2014 when he promised a Congress-mukt Bharat that his dream would come true so soon, almost. And now the dynasty itself could be at an end.

The Congress is in tatters, almost irredeemable. Can Rahul save it? Unlikely if he goes on with the current cast of characters. You can see it in the faces of the princelings, no longer young, but still princelings, the Scindias and the Pilots and the rest of them. They never seem to smile; tension is writ large on their brows. When will the old guard retire? When will Mani-talk end? The Mani-fiasco in Gujarat has ended up hurting the Congress, but it is still all about Mani, not the party.

Finally, when will the most disastrous president in the party’s history quit, and take all her hangers-on with her, so at least the youngish and the middle-aged aspirants get a chance? And middle age ends at 55, not 70.