Let it be said that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Hindutva right wing generally have a far better appreciation of the nodal importance of the Indian National Congress than many in the political opposition who cannot wait to see the grand old party dead.
The unrelenting and often gross attacks launched by the Hindutva right on the Congress, its icons, its record of governance, are evidence of the fact that the saffron camp continues to recognise the Congress as still the only potential alternative to it at the national level, be it singly or at the head of a secular coalition.
Consider the fact that the Congress is the only party that has never yet teamed up with any government of which the BJP has been a part; pretty much all others have done so. This is not just an incidental detail; this record goes to underscore the historical fact that the Congress and the Hindutva right wing remain sentiently aware of the irreconcilable nature of their ideological moorings and histories—a binary that captures so much of the career of modern political India. This, notwithstanding the jibes, sometimes warranted, that have been directed at the Congress for copy-catting Hindutva moves now and then from a loss of ideological nerve in the face of electoral exigencies.
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What is of great macro-historical significance is the fact that the people of India, across the board in a sort of muted collective subconscious mind, know that the chief antagonist of the Hindutva right wing still resides in the Congress nationally, even if recent times may have seemed to eject the grand old party from national considerations.
Proof of this lies in the political happenings of the past year or so in the life of the republic. The much lamented organisational disarray of the Congress, as well as its wobbling loss of ideological focus from time to time notwithstanding, the party keeps coming back into reckoning whenever the electorate feels it needs an alternative. Of the states that the BJP has lost within a year or more, three major ones have gone to the Congress, and two others to a Congress-in coalition. All within a season of mourning in which many political observers have written obituaries of the grand old party.
The conclusion seems warranted that, like it or not, a vast enough electorate still recognise in the Congress culture and history, warts and all, a sort of anchor and centre of gravity that may be trusted to stabilise the beleaguered plurality of the complex social fabric we call India. This, without regard to the many fault lines that have derailed the ideological self-belief of the Congress, in the various phases of its life, often to its grief. More imaginative political observers have of course frequently noted that many of these fault lines have after all been aspects of a history of accommodation in which the Congress as a movement has generally sought to cater inclusively to contradictory social pulls that brook no smooth synthesis of any permanent nature.
To many, the BJP and Congress represent a binary in modern Indian politics. Photo: Reuters
Found its moorings again
After some years of disorientation, the Congress seems to have yet again found its moorings. Its old and trusted connect with the people at large seems now visibly back as the fulcrum of its political being and conviction; it seems also to be more courageously working out conundrums in which the right wing has sought to trap its ideological authenticity. For example, it appears now to be able to think and say that whereas visiting temples is normative secular Hindu activity, pogroms conducted against so-called love-jihad, targeted lynchings, violent vendetta perpetrated in the name of cow-protection, cultural assaults on inter-faith marriage and sundry culinary and sartorial habits make one not a Hindu but a right wing, reactionary bigot.
It needs to learn to say with bold forthrightness that the most grievous “appeasement” politics has always been practised by the Hindutva right, not by the Congress: in a democracy, as Nehru had prophetically taught, whereas the communal demands made by minorities are in pursuit of livelihood improvement and social justice, it is the appeasement of the majority that can lead to fascism. The minority, however large, cannot capture the state.
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Likewise, its overall welfarist state-ideology issuing from its accreted memory as a progressive movement with an onus to keep the last man as the chief focus of its policies and governance has been finding renewed articulation. It is noteworthy that important segments of the industrial class have been voicing their disillusionment with the current dispensation which, contrary to the expectations it had raised, has turned out to be clueless in nursing manufacturing activity to sound economic and social purposes, while subjecting the growth sector to oppressive bureaucratic diktats, and crony political pressures of a threatening kind.
It is heartening to see more and more young Congress workers out on the streets from day to day against one or the other excess of the ruling dispensation. It is in such persistent attention to the just concerns of the populace and to systemic fairness that the political fortunes of a genuinely secular party can flourish with merit.
In that context, the public meeting organised by the Congres party recently at the iconic Ramlila Maidan in the capital was more than noteworthy, both in terms of the attendance—which some put at above two lakhs—and fervour. Especially, none of the speeches made there, for once, seemed to prevaricate on the ideological issues of the time. An articulated perspective was available, reminiscent of the more self-confident days in the career of the party.
Senior Congress leaders at the ‘Bharat Bachao’ rally held at Ramlila Maidan in New Delhi on December 14, 2019. Photo: PTI
It may also be the case that other secular formations are beginning to realise that instead of wishing the Congress dead, the need of the historical hour is to both participate with it and to strengthen its fortunes wherever it confronts the right wing, eyeball to eyeball. At a time when the continuance of the republic itself is in peril, these new orientations, both within the Congress and among supportive secular forces are all to the good. That these conjoint efforts have traction is evidenced by the continuous losses the ruling BJP has been suffering in election after election and most bye-elections.
Our experience of recent years suggests that those who wish longer life to the republic than sometimes seems possible, had better also, without being squeamish, wish longer life and potency to the Indian National Congress. Whatever its sins, its commitment to constitutional rule can be trusted to remain an article of faith. It is instructive to recall that the unforgivable repression that came in the wake of the Emergency of the mid-70s derived, like it or not, from a then existant provision in the Constitution (thankfully ejected subsequently).
By contrast, the quality of maverick rule that has been in evidence over the past six years or so, be it with respect to the functioning of state institutions or the state’s insidious hold on avenues of free expression, right to peaceful assembly and protest, and social and intellectual dissent with government policy remains entirely unauthorised by any constitutional injunction, and fatally arbitrary on a daily basis.
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On another matter: all those who recognise the contingent desirability of the Indian National Congress re-assuming its obligations to the republic had best leave questions related to the organisational tasks of the party to the wisdom of its workers rather than offer lordly counsel from the outside. All we may justly say as citizens is that such tasks ought to be addressed by the party in visibly transparent and democratic ways, such as may carry the widest assent of its grassroots membership.
The party needs to recognise that its inability to have mounted open-ended organisational elections, even some seven months after Rahul Gandhi’s chose to step down from the post of president hardly bespeaks the culture of a political formation that ought at all times and in all ways be grounded boldly in an imperative democratic ethos and injunction. The well-wishers of the party look to a system of franchise within its structures which alone may determine overtly questions of leadership at the top.
Crucially, as a last imperative, the Indian National Congress must now continue to pursue a politics that accords pluralist space to regional political forces as partners in a larger agenda of retrieving what is left of the republic from totalitarian impulses that run counter to the genius of India’s diverse polity.
Badri Raina has taught at Delhi University.