Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan. Nothing sums up the current predicament of the India’s Congress party better than this famous John F Kennedy quote.
The Congress cup of woes is still filling up even after the worst electoral drubbing the 128-year-old party faced in the bitterly fought recent general elections. The grand old party could manage just 44 seats in the Lok Sabha, 11 short than the mandatory 10 percent of the total house strength (543) for the party to qualify for the Leader of the Opposition status.
Last couple of days have rubbed salt in the Congress wounds with two developments: One aimed at former Premier Manmohan Singh and exposing yet another corruption scandal involving his government; and the second, even more serious, as it aims at the party Vice President Rahul Gandhi who still remains future prime ministerial candidate of the party though Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Narendra Modi made a mince meat of him in the recent elections.
On Sunday, former judge of the Supreme Court Markandey Katju, uncorked a political genie by writing a signed article in a leading Indian English daily that the UPA government used political pressure for elevating a judge of Madras High Court despite charges of corruption against him. This happened in June 2005 when the UPA-1 government was just about 13-month-old. In the process, Katju also damned three former chief justices of India, who, as it turned out, lent a helping hand in elevation of the alleged corrupt judge. But the biggest target of Katju’s expose was none other than Singh whose reputation took yet another hit even after demitting the office of the prime minister.
The Congress predicament has not lessened one bit even by the fact that Katju and controversy are synonyms. Katju, currently the chairman of the Press Council of India, had remarked in December 2012 that “90 percent of Indians are idiots.”
Katju’s views on Pakistan too are nothing short of being outlandish. He has repeatedly said that he does not recognize Pakistan as a legitimate country because Pakistan came into being on the basis of the two-nation theory and he does not accept this. Katju has also claimed that the eventual reunification of India and Pakistan is the only solution to the Kashmir issue.
As though the ‘Katjugate’ were not enough, political developments in past couple of days have numbed the Congress party. The party is being rocked by rebellion and the target is none other than Rahul. Senior leaders of Maharashtra and Assam, both poll-bound states, have quit, lending traction to mutiny against Rahul.
He suffered another personal blow when Jammu and Kashmir’s (J&K) ruling party National Conference parted ways terminating its 6-year-old alliance with the Congress. Rahul had invested a lot of political capital in this tie-up and had personally nurtured the alliance.
Besides, there are rumblings from Maharashtra indicating that Nationalist Congress Party, an ally of the Congress and a junior partner of the Congress in the ruling coalition in Maharashtra, may also disassociate itself from the Congress and contest the Maharashtra assembly polls without the Congress.
Similar negative reports are emanating from Haryana too, a state ruled by the Congress and due for assembly elections later this year.
The BJP is obviously watching the Congress discomfiture with a wide grin and sensing a political kill. The BJP is hoping to wrest more states from the Congress, particularly Maharashtra and Haryana.
Besides, given its extremely good performance in the states of Assam and J&K, the BJP would be targeting to install its government in these states too. Assembly elections are due in J&K in January 2015. In the case of Assam the political situation is in a flux, though technically Assam is due for assembly elections only in April 2016.
In light of the above, it won’t be wrong to say that the Congress is passing through its worst phase. In many ways, the party is faced with an existential crisis. What can be a bigger crisis for a party when its tallest leader, the 44-year-old Rahul, is facing an unprecedented rebellion from across the country?
Rahul’s grandmother and former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had also faced all this before — political defeat, political oblivion and political vendetta. And yet she had bounced back and trounced those who had trounced her in elections. But at that time there was no Modi!
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The writer is a New Delhi-based independent journalist and a political commentator who tweets @Kishkindha.
