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IN a number of official documents, the Indian National Congress describes itself as the largest democratic party in the world. Vijay Sanghvi's recently published book The Congress: Indira to Sonia Gandhi does not make any direct reference to this claim, but nonetheless its central thematic thrust is one that comprehensively demolishes the party's assertion. Over its 306 pages, the book underscores the fact that democratic values and thinking have long ceased to be reflected in the political and organisational structures of the party.
As a political journalist, Sanghvi has been on the "Congress beat" for more than four decades. Neither seniority in the profession nor age has slackened his pace. One can still see him carrying on with his "legwork" in a committed manner. The book essentially draws on his vast experience and dedication as a journalist. It is on the strength of this professional perseverance and commitment that Sanghvi categorically states that the Congress "vehicle may keep changing one driver after the other, but the depreciating brand equity has to take its toll". He also points out that "the engine that propelled it [the Congress] was becoming suspect and the energies that had driven it seemed half-exhausted".
This metaphorical deposition is in the penultimate chapter of the book, titled "The Slide", but the 13 earlier chapters explain the metaphor and the manifold symbols used in it in some detail. As the title suggests, the book examines the developments in the Congress from the period of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to that of the present party president, Sonia Gandhi.
Roughly, it spans four and a half decades, starting with the rise of Indira Gandhi in the party following the death of her father and first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru.
The book analyses the skills, style and discernment of various "drivers" of the Congress from Indira Gandhi; the manner in which they handled and developed the organisational "engine"; and what sort of political and ideological "energies" they infused into the party. The basic tool used by the author is that of journalistic understanding of realpolitik, which draws from the political and organisational events that influenced the party as well as interactions between political leaders. Many of these events and interactions are well known, but many other crucial developments cited in the book are not so well known.
Sanghvi pinpoints a common thread in the seemingly diverse happenings that have dictated the course of the Congress in the last four and a half decades. It is that since the rise of Indira Gandhi as the tallest leader of the country in the late 1960s, and since the split that she engineered in the Congress in 1969, the party's organisational structure has frozen in a state singularly bereft of internal democracy. Sanghvi emphasises that this four-and-half-decade-long freeze is nothing short of a metamorphosis from the legacy that the Congress had at the time of Independence. In 1947, the political edifice of the Congress was based on mass culture, but it has turned into one based on elitism and sycophancy.
This, says Sanghvi, virtually did away with open communication and the exchange of ideas in the party, leading to a consistent failure in evolving vibrant and creative political/ideological initiatives. In a harsh judgment, Sanghvi even brands the Congress as a "living example of a party without vision, clarity, leadership and maturity". Naturally, the political health of the party has deteriorated steadily over this period, and Sanghvi has no doubt that it is an uncertain future that lies ahead of the Congress under Sonia Gandhi. At the time of Independence, the Congress was truly a party with an all-India character, but that situation changed steadily with the reduction of the party's influence in key States, including Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
Through a delineation of the developments in the Congress during the 1960s, the author makes it clear that a gradual erosion of political support for the Congress started right from the last years of Nehru's premiership. However, Sanghvi maintains that it was Indira Gandhi who first cut a swathe through the internal democracy of the party. He also points out that many an internal disaster suffered by the party was self-inflicted and was due to individual whims and fancies or immediate political compulsions.
The rise of Indira Gandhi to the position of Prime Minister, Sanghvi points out, was dictated by such personal whims and political compulsions. The author notes that Dwarika Prasad Mishra, who turned out to be the chief mobiliser in favour of Indira Gandhi during the inner-party election to decide the Prime Minister, was somebody who had "abused Nehru in 1952 after he had forced the then Congress president P.D. Tandon to step down". But Mishra's animosity towards Morarji Desai, Indira Gandhi's opponent in the inner-party contest, was more severe, and hence, he rallied around Indira Gandhi and mobilised other Chief Ministers, too, in her favour, he says.
The book indicates that while this campaign kicked off the process of setting up power groups and cliques in the party, the death knell for internal democracy was sounded with the unceremonious removal of Desai as Finance Minister in July 1969. Sanghvi delineates in different parts of the book how the culture of cliques and arbitrariness, more or less officially founded in 1969, continued in the Congress through the tenures of Rajiv Gandhi, P.V. Narasimha Rao and Sitaram Kesri. The continuation of this culture in the Sonia Gandhi regime has also been highlighted.
The book points out that the preponderance of political games during the Indira Gandhi period created a situation where political strategies and economic initiatives were guided by a Nehruvian ideological balance. Sanghvi contends that the "Garibi Hatao" slogan and the "Leftist steps" that Indira Gandhi advanced after the inner-party coup of 1969 were motivated by the sheer drive to win over target constituents, which included the poor and the lower middle class.
Sanghvi records that in a pre-1969 interaction with the physicist Fritjof Capra, Indira Gandhi herself admitted that she did not agree with the socialist model of industrialisation and development. But in 1969 she turned to an aggressive socialist agenda and pushed her "rightist" opponents in the party on the back foot. Whatever her motivations, it inspired a large number of Indians, including established leaders from other parties such as Chandra Shekhar (Praja Socialist Party) and Mohan Kumaramangalam (Communist Party of India), to join the Congress.
Sanghvi also records that Indira Gandhi even made bold to ask Chandra Shekhar why he wanted to join the Congress when he knew that the Congress was not a socialist organisation. Apparently, Chandra Shekhar's response was that he intended to convert the Congress into a socialist organisation. The very same Chandra Shekhar left her when the authoritarian tendencies in Indira Gandhi rose to their pinnacle with the proclamation of the Emergency in 1975. Sanghvi terms Indira Gandhi's overall tenure as an exercise in cynical gamesmanship.
The book states that the Rajiv Gandhi period was marked by "over-exuberant attempts to dismantle the [Congress] edifice that had slowly lost touch with the masses". But, Sanghvi comments, these were "a half-baked response to a first rate crisis". He points out: "The party organisation had been eroded so deeply that it dare not question either the mother or the son. The party was no longer a springboard for chalking up ideas and schemes - the ubiquitous Congressman had left the process of thinking entirely to one leader."
The book affirms that this abdication of a creative political role by most of the party's hierarchy was instrumental in the Congress' failure to recognise - in the late 1980s and early 1990s - the growing `politics of assertion' of the intermediary Other Backward Classes and Dalits and their departure from the party's organisational fold. Since the late 1980s, the book contends, the Congress has failed to evolve long-term political strategies but resorted to "fire fighting operations when bush fires catch the party". The long-term political observer of the Congress is emphatic that the path of the party is still muddled, though its leadership has found reasons to pat itself on the back by citing some of the initiatives of the Manmohan Singh government.
According to Sanghvi, the only hope for the Congress is to harness the younger generation by espousing their causes rather than by clinging to conservative ideas depending on the family and dynasty, which has remained the central thought of the party since the Indira Gandhi era.
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