Out Of My Mind: A tragedy

The latest election has confirmed the decline of the Congress. Once again, Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi confronted each other. There is no doubt that Rahul is trying harder and getting better. But ultimately it is Modi who has made the BJP the party of the future.

Written by Meghnad Desai | Updated: May 20, 2018 12:15:48 am

congress rahul gandhi forms alliance with jds alliance against bjp in karnataka election

Congress president Rahul Gandhi, right, and party leader Randeep Singh Surjewala address the press on Saturday in New Delhi (Express Photo/Amit Mehra)

Next Sunday will be 54 years since Jawaharlal Nehru died. He was a towering figure as prime minister and party leader. He was the last party leader to be PM three times in a row. Unlike his daughter and grandson, he did not inherit but earned his position. He laid such deep foundations for India’s democracy that even his daughter could not destroy it despite her best efforts. He gave a shape to the Indian Union which has endured. But his party is a sad shadow of its glorious past. Indira Gandhi split the once great party five years after Nehru’s death. She transformed a vibrant party with a long tradition of service and progressive thinking into a family firm where only blind loyalty was rewarded. The fruits of that corruption are now coming up thick and fast.

The latest election has confirmed the decline of the Congress. Once again, Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi confronted each other. There is no doubt that Rahul is trying harder and getting better. But ultimately it is Modi who has made the BJP the party of the future.

This conclusion is not affected by who will form the government in Karnataka. If the BJP does not, it will be because the Congress has decided that it is happy to be a B-team to stay in office.

It is the consequence of the Congress having been in denial ever since 2014. It has never analysed the reasons for its debacle in 2014 and since. It has not had a serious examination of its ideology nor of its policies, let alone the party structure. The idea of public service has left the Congress. It has been worried only about the apex leadership, i.e. Rahul Gandhi’s succession. Sonia Gandhi quite rightly refused the crown when it was offered to her after Rajiv Gandhi’s sudden and tragic death. Alas, that act of self-abnegation did not last long despite the spectacular record of Narasimha Rao (for which he was punished by the Family). The Family reasserted its control in 1998 and the rest is dysfunctional history. If the Congress had any decency, it should have offered Manmohan Singh the Presidency. It was he who restored the Congress’s reputation by winning a second term in 2009. For that he suffered the best efforts of senior Congressmen to undermine him.

The loss in 2014, the decline to third position in Bihar and now the willingness to sink to number two despite having the larger number of seats are symptomatic of the desperate hunger of the Congress to cling on to the trappings of power. This is because it is so used to being in office that it has no knowledge of how to behave as an opposition. It has no capacity for forward thinking and no way to clarify, let alone redefine, its ideology. It has no facility to train new cadres of volunteers. The foreign consultancy engaged to reshape its image advised it to become a paler version of the BJP. Hence the temple visits and the boast of Rahul being a Brahmin.

It is a tragedy. A great party, one of the oldest in the world, an exemplar to many other parties across the formerly colonised world has become a shadow of its former self. India deserves better.

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