The Indian National Congress took a great leap forward in Shimla and landed in 1967. Since half the country was not born in 1967, and the other half might not remember, this may need a bit of explanation.
1967 was a watershed year in Indian democracy. The Congress had been in power since Independence: It was the Establishment, the Position; the other political formations were the Opposition. The non-Congress parties came in all hues, sizes and ambitions, from the economic right-liberal (Swatantra) to the economic left-liberal (Socialists) to the minority-bashing Jana Sangh to the Communists (already split). They were national in vision, regional in character and vaulting in ambition.
When you pole-vault you have to make sure that there is a cushion on the other side, otherwise you could break your back. After the tumbles of 1957 and 1962 the Opposition parties decided that the only effective cushion was a united front. Such was the conviction that they set aside their often vicious differences of personality (nothing is more vicious than ego) to sit on a common platform against the Congress. The United Fronts were born. They even found space for breakaway groups and minor parties. One Congress leader who will remember this wistfully is Pranab Mukherjee, because he belonged to the Bangla Congress. The rewards were instantaneous. In 1967, the Congress majority in the Lok Sabha tumbled to a paper thin 21, which was insufficient to keep the fourth Lok Sabha alive for a full term. The Swatantra won 44 seats, the Jana Sangh 35 and the two Socialist parties between them had 46 seats. The Congress lost every state from Punjab to Bengal, and Orissa and Tamil Nadu as well. Had it not been for Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, Congress would have lost the Center too. Defeat awakened tensions within the Congress leading to a split, which Mrs. Indira Gandhi exploited brilliantly to refashion the party into a coin — ideology on one side, herself on the other, and the two interdependent.
This was a defeat but not yet a disaster. The Congress had been punished for bad governance. Though the traditional Congress voter also suffered (the Muslims from continual riots, the Dalits from continued impoverishment), he had not yet lost faith in the Congress commitment to its secular, socialist ideology. That is why Mrs. Gandhi was able to recover the Congress constituency in 1971, and send the Opposition parties reeling back into single digits. Even the Emergency did not eradicate the Congress base, although enough voters angrily rejected Mrs. Gandhi’s flirtation with dictatorship. But being the intelligent politician she was, she took decisions during the Emergency which reinforced her links with her party’s traditional voters. This is why she could repair the damage of 1975-77 and return to power with a comfortable majority in 1981.
In other words, the Congress may have lost elections between 1967 and 1977 but it had not become fundamentally vulnerable. Its disconnect with its base was temporary. This is why, whether in power or not, it still remained the party to beat. Whether in power or outside, it remained the party of Position, and the others were the Opposition. This reality was reflected in common parlance, in a paradoxical phrase used whenever the non-Congress parties came together to rule: “The Opposition is in power.” No one said that the Opposition had come to power when the Congress defeated the Left Front in Bengal in 1972 or the Janata Party at the Center in 1981.
The Congress began to lose its status as the central axis of Indian politics in the eighties, when it betrayed all three of its core voting groups in the north: Brahmins, Muslims and Dalits. It lost the Brahmins and Hindus across the spectrum when it supported Muslims against the Supreme Court in the Shah Bano case. This was also a betrayal of common sense, in addition to an insult to the law, because it supported an obvious injustice in a cynical obeisance to ranting extremists.
Then, astonishingly, it betrayed the vote it had sought to protect — the Muslims. Equally cynically, it opened the locks of the forgotten Ram mandir at the site of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, and then, unbelievably, laid the foundation of a temple at the site. Since these events happened fifteen years ago, it might be forgotten that it was not the BJP or the RSS that laid the foundations of the temple, but the Congress. (This was compounded by terrible mismanagement of riots like the one in Bhagalpur.)
The growing distance from the Dalits was not perceived until Kanshi Ram and Mayawati appeared. The ranking leader of the Dalits since Independence, Babu Jagjivan Ram, left the Congress in 1977. After him, the Congress thought that it could assuage the Dalits through toadies whose only qualification was a rather pathetic kind of loyalty to the leadership.
Ask yourself a simple question: can you recall the name of a single Dalit leader in the Congress after Jagjivan Ram? I can remember one or two, but I would rather not. There was a time when Kanshi Ram, still attracted by the Congress mystique, could have been absorbed into the Congress. But he was derided as a “CIA agent” and dismissed as a maverick. The Dalits shifted en masse to Kanshi Ram and Mayawati.
There is a rule in political life. You can do enough to lose the vote, but you will not have lost it totally unless there is someone around who can find it. In the decisive decade of the 1980s there were political leaders who knew how to pick up the vote that the Congress was losing. Lal Krishna Advani in the BJP drew a line between majority sentiment and the Congress. In the 1990s regional parties led by former socialists absorbed the Muslims into their fold. Kanshi Ram became the undisputed hero of the Dalits. The accidental phase of Congress rule in Delhi in the 1990s, when P.V. Narasimha Rao became Prime Minister after Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated, did not staunch the process, because Rao did not use power to change the direction of drifting sentiment.
For a while Sonia Gandhi thought, or perhaps believed, that she could re-launch the Congress from 1971, the year of Indira Gandhi’s finest victory. She copied her mother-in-law’s mannerisms to encourage the notion that an Indira had been reborn. But Indira Gandhi was more than her walk, and certainly more than her sari-style. Indira Gandhi made huge mistakes, for which she paid an equal price, but she protected her party’s relationship with its voters through policy and personal intervention. Indira Gandhi could sit on an elephant in Bihar, go to Belchi and transform the electoral mood — because she had credibility. Such credibility cannot come overnight. Sonia Gandhi has been president of the Congress for five years. Has she led a single street campaign? Is there a single issue with which she can be identified?
Reading repetitive speeches prepared by others in front of seated crowds is passive politics. It has limited value. Sonia Gandhi had an excellent opportunity to identify herself with a core Congress constituency after the Gujarat riots. Instead, the Congress campaign during the Gujarat Assembly election was an exercise in me-too Hindutva. The only time Sonia Gandhi wet her feet in public was when she dipped a knee into the Ganga to suggest that she was a quasi-Hindu. The Indian electorate has stopped purchasing clichés that have outlived their sell-by date.
In Shimla the Congress reversed 1967: It decided that it was no longer in a position to win an election alone. It formally declared that the BJP had become the political party to beat. It thereby made a vital psychological concession: The BJP had now become the Position, the new Establishment, and other political parties, including those currently with the BJP, should unite to remove it from power. This may not travel easily through the Congress ego, but it is pragmatic. It recognizes that the Congress is a diminished force.
What does the Congress bring to the table in any such coalition? It brings history and presence, which is important. In many states where there is no third party, the Congress is the only receptacle for anger against a government. Andhra Pradesh is a very good instance.
The number of such states however is diminishing: Andhra, Kerala, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Uttaranchal, Himachal, Haryana, Punjab, Assam and some parts of the Northeast come to mind. Karnataka and Maharashtra are in transition. In the other states, which generally happen to be far larger, the Congress is now a negligible fact. And in many of the “Congress states” the party is in power, and therefore a negative factor for the next election.
Surely the most important fact is that the Congress has not been able to resurrect its old coalition in the north. The Muslims will vote for the Congress only in those states where there is no alternative to the BJP. This is a compulsion vote. Even with other groups, Congress support is the first to get whittled when a third force enters the fray. In five years, Sonia Gandhi has not been able to change this. She retains some mystic belief in the power of dynasty, and presumes that is sufficient. It is not. Moreover, for a sizeable section of the electorate, her origins, and her accent, remain a serious negative. You could lose your place in the Congress for suggesting this, but it is a fact.
For the first time in its history the Congress will be part of a coalition in a general election. If it happens. For further news, wait for the results of five Assembly polls due in the autumn. It will be a Happy Diwali — but not for everyone in politics.
Arab News Opinion 13 July 2003
