By Not Moving Out Of The Way, Gandhis Perpetuate Modi
Rule
Saeed Naqvi
The utter
irrelevance of the Sachin Pilot-Ashok Gehlot spat is matched only by the
saturation coverage accorded to the mishap by the media – atleast a large
section of it.
Of Rajasthan’s
storm in a teacup the amplification is more disturbing than the storm itself. It
reinforces the perception which is most helpful to Narendra Modi: “Look, that
is the disheveled lot being positioned to replace me.” Modi’s own men will not be able to devise a
script more favourable to him, and it is so simple: just keep the Gandhi family
in focus as the only alternative.
After the fall
of the Soviet Union, neo liberal strategist, Francis Fukuyama predicted the End
of History. The neo liberal Utopia had arrived. He was wrong, indeed he was
shamed. Observers of the Indian scene are liable to be proven equally wrong if
they predict that the Congress party is about to go over the cliff. As in the mobike
ad, the party may just splutter over the chasm. Much more helpful will be the
analyst who can peer into his binocular and report, like Sanjay of Mahabharata,
the departure of the Gandhi family.
This would be
a welcome outcome not because some Lutyens’ bungalows in their occupation will
become available for other politicians. Quibbling over security for Priyanka is
partly misplaced. Sonia Gandhi was paranoid about the family’s security (quite
understandably) when a reluctant Rajiv ascended the gaddi soon after Indira Gandhi’s
assassination. Once he had worn the crown, the security of the two Gandhi
siblings was such a matter of concern that “uncle” T.N. Kaul, ambassador to the
Soviet Union had more or less arranged for Rahul, then 15 and Priyanka, 13, to
be parked in Moscow, which seemed like a wonderful idea because Mikhail Gorbachev
had so warmed up to the young Indian Prime Minister.
Had Rajiv lived
through the 1991 elections, he would have sat in the opposition. His assassination
in Thiruperumbudur in Tamil Nadu, half way through the campaign, changed Congress
fortunes. It derailed the Gandhi family though.
Rajiv was
losing seats in the North in the first phase of the 91 campaign. The sympathy
factor after the death operated in the South to boost the Congress barely upto
the pipping post. The South Heavy Parliamentary party became the anchor for the
Party’s first Prime Minister from the South, P.V. Narasimha Rao. The wily Brahmin
that P.V. was, his politics became clear from the very outset: no challenger
would be allowed to prosper in the North particularly if he happened to be non-Brahmin,
indeed a Thakur like Arjun Singh. It is interesting that the strongman of Madhya
Pradesh, secular in the Nehruvian mould, whom Rajiv had once elevated as Executive
Vice President of the party, was outside the pale for P.V. As late as June 4,
1992, two days before the Babari Masjid demolition, Singh was warning friends
that the mosque could fall. After the fall, mass defection of the Muslim vote
brought P.V.’s Congress to its lowest ever – 140 seats.
This was the
state of play when Sonia concentrated on her children, family friends like Satish
Sharma (they were Indian Airlines pilots) and sundry school friends. In 1997, Priyanka,
25, married an upwardly mobile Robert Vadra who had leap frogged from the
family’s brass business in Moradabad to the British School in New Delhi. He was
married into the premier family, alright, but his mobility upwards would be
boosted if Sonia Gandhi emerged from her political retirement. Within months of
the Priyanka-Vadra marriage, ambition stirred in Sonia’s breast too. P.V.’s
dethronement in May 1996 after his dismal performance and a general restiveness
in the Congress Working Committee, that a low level, “teli” (seller of oil in
rural India), Sitaram Kesari, then President of Congress, was angling to become
Prime Minister, provided a suitable occasion. What was speculation was
dignified as fact by the senior most Congressman, former President Pranab Mukherjee
in his book “The Coalition Years”.
Nothing became
her less than the illegal manner of Kesari’s ouster. He was locked up in his Congress
office; just in case he protested. Pranab Mukherjee, among others, supervised
the wrenching out of the Kesari name plate: it was replaced by “Sonia Gandhi” Congress
President, written in black ink as a temporary measure.
Quite unlike Kesari’s
ouster, nothing ever became Sonia more than her refusal of the crown after the
party’s shock victory in 2004. That the 2004 to 2009 term was the high point of
Sonia-Manmohan Singh team is not celebrated with high decibel drum beating
because a great deal of restraint and dignity was imparted to the power
apparatus by the 61 Communist MPs who supported it from the outside. By setting
up a National Advisory Council as a restraint on neo liberal excesses Sonia too
asserted herself.
In the 2009
elections, the Congress’s 209 seats were a huge improvement on 140, 141, 143,
145 under P.V., Kesari and Sonia respectively. Before Rahul Gandhi could unfurl
his wondrous talents, the party sank to 44 seats in 2014 and 52 in 2019.
There is a huge
lie Indian ruling classes have told themselves: like our masters in London and Washington,
we have become a two party system. A multi ethnic, multi religious, multi
lingual country where currency notes indicate every denomination in seventeen languages,
most with classical literatures pre dating Christ –
will this immense diversity ever be contained within two parties?
By not moving
out of the way, the Nehru-Gandhi family is holding up political movement, a
churning, shuffling by which the regional parties will have a stake in an accommodative
central unit which is not obsessed with the unrealistic desire to revive “on
its own” just because the straight laced Randeep Surjewala announces, without
an iota of embarrassment, that his leader, Rahul Gandhi, is a “janeudhari Brahmin”.
By its mulish obstinacy, the Gandhi family is ensuring the perpetuation of one party
rule on the other side.
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