Ramachandra Guha: How the Gandhi family is actively
facilitating Hindutva authoritarianism
scroll.in/article/1019295/ramachandra-guha-how-the-gandhi-family-are-actively-facilitating-hindutva-
authoritarianism
Ramachandra Guha
Every electoral contest is a story of winners and losers.
Rahul and Priyanka
While much of the commentary on the results of the recent Gandhi at a Congress
assembly elections will inevitably highlight their major rally in Delhi. | PTI
winners, this column shall instead focus on the principal
loser. For, beyond the comfortable re-election of Adityanath and the Bharatiya
Janata Party in Uttar Pradesh and the impressive victory of the Aam Aadmi Party
in Punjab, this latest series of assembly elections confirms – yet again – the steady
and possibly irreversible decline of the Congress Party.
Consider, to begin with, India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh, which sends as many
as 80 MPs to the Lok Sabha. In colonial times, this state was an epicentre of the
Congress-led freedom movement. After Independence, it provided India with its
first three prime ministers. However, in the late 1960s, the Congress’s hold on the
politics of Uttar Pradesh began to visibly weaken, and for at least 30 years now it
has been a marginal player in the state.
This time, the latest Nehru-Gandhi to enter politics, Priyanka Gandhi, took it upon
herself to seek to revive the party’s fortunes in Uttar Pradesh. Although she
declined to shift her home base from Delhi to Lucknow and refused to fight an
assembly seat herself, Priyanka Gandhi made regular trips to the state. These were
met with breathless excitement by those sections of the media (and social media)
that still haven’t stopped seeing the Nehru-Gandhis as an Indian version of the
House of Windsor.
Every visit, every press conference, every announcement was reported by these
dynasty-worshippers as presaging an electoral resurgence of the party in Uttar
Pradesh. In the event, the Congress under Priyanka Gandhi obtained a vote share
of just over 2% and won even fewer seats than it had in the last assembly elections.
A sudden replacement
In Uttar Pradesh, Priyanka Gandhi at least got some marks for effort, if none for
impact. In Punjab, where the Congress was in power, her brother, Rahul, threw
away his party’s chances of re-election through the capricious replacement of the
incumbent chief minister less than a year before the polls. Although he was not
popular with a section of the MLAs, Amarinder Singh had wide experience in
politics, and, more importantly, had taken a strong stand in favour of the farmers’
movement.
A year ago, the Congress and the AAP both had equal chances of winning Punjab.
But then Amarinder’s replacement by the relatively unknown Charanjit Singh
Channi, and Channi’s undermining by Rahul Gandhi’s indulgence of the
destructive Navjot Singh Sidhu, threw the entire state unit in disarray. In the event,
the Congress was comprehensively defeated by the AAP in Punjab.
Turn next to Goa and Uttarakhand. In both states, the BJP was in power but its
governments were deeply unpopular, seen as corrupt and unfeeling. In
Uttarakhand, the BJP changed two chief ministers in a bid to stem discontent. In
both states, the Congress was the principal Opposition party; yet in each case, it
was not able to mount a strong enough challenge to regain power. Nor, finally,
could the Congress make a significant impact in Manipur, once a state where it was
the natural party of governance, and where it won 23 fewer seats than last time.
The latest round of elections confirms, yet again, what some of us have known for
a long time – that at least under its current leadership, the Congress is incapable of
ever again becoming a major player in national politics. After leading the party to
a humiliating loss in the 2019 general election, Rahul Gandhi resigned as Congress
president. His mother, Sonia Gandhi, then became ‘acting’ president of the party;
two-and-a-half-years on, the party still hasn’t taken any steps to choose a successor.
The Congress has remained under the de facto control of the Family; with the
results that we are now seeing.
Back in 2019, the Congress had a chance to reinvent itself; it threw it away. What
might it do now? I believe that for the good of the party, as well as for the good of
Indian democracy, the Gandhis must not just exit from the party’s leadership but
retire from politics altogether. For it is not merely that Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi
have shown themselves markedly incapable of making the party a competitive
force in state and national elections. It is also that their very presence in the
Congress makes it easy for Narendra Modi and the BJP to deflect attention from the
government’s failures in the present by resorting to debates about the past.
Thus, charges of corruption in defence deals are answered with reference to Rajiv
Gandhi and Bofors; charges of suppressing the media and incarcerating activists
are met with references to Indira Gandhi and the Emergency; charges of losing
Indian land and soldiers to the Chinese army with reference to Jawaharlal Nehru
and the war of 1962 and so on.
Modi’s underwhelming record
In its eight years in power, the Modi government has made many boasts and
offered many promises. Yet, when reckoned by objective criteria, its record in
office has been underwhelming. It has overseen a decline in growth rates (visible
even before the pandemic set in) and a surge in unemployment; it has savagely set
Hindus against Muslims; it has allowed our status to decline in the neighbourhood
and in the world; it has corrupted and corroded our most important institutions; it
has ravaged the natural environment. In sum, the actions of the Modi government
have damaged India economically, socially, institutionally, internationally,
ecologically, and morally.
Despite all these failures, if Narendra Modi and the BJP remain in pole position to
win re-election in 2024, a key reason is that it still has as its principal “national”
Opposition the Congress under the Nehru-Gandhis. Parties such as the Trinamool
Congress, the Biju Janata Dal, the Yuvajana Shramika Rythu Congress Party, the
Telangana Rashtra Samithi, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the Communist
Party of India (Marxist) and the Aam Aadmi Party can mount an effective electoral
challenge to the BJP in areas where they are the main Opposition to it.
This the Congress cannot really do – as the latest results from Goa, Manipur, and
Uttarakhand once again show. The weaknesses of a Congress led by the Nehru-
Gandhis are particularly visible during general elections. For instance, in the 191
seats in the 2019 elections when they were in a head-to-head fight with the BJP, the
Congress won just 16. With Rahul Gandhi posited as its prime ministerial
alternative to Narendra Modi, the Congress’s strike rate was a mere 8%.
So far as the BJP is concerned, the Gandhis are a gift that keeps on giving. On the
one hand, they do not remotely represent an effective electoral challenge to it. On
the other hand, the Gandhis allow and encourage the BJP to dictate the terms of the
national political debate – by locating it in the past rather than in the present.
In an India that is becoming less feudalistic by the day, having fifth-generation
dynasts at the head of India’s most storied party is a problem. What is a serious
disadvantage becomes a crippling one once we juxtapose with unearned privilege
a lack of political intelligence. Living as they do in the closed circle of their
sycophants, the Gandhis have little understanding of how Indians in the 21st
century actually think.
In the harsh but depressingly accurate characterisation by Aatish Taseer, Rahul
Gandhi is an “unteachable mediocrity”, his utter unsuitability to the politics of the
present manifest in his repeated references to his father, grandmother, and great-
grandfather.
Whether they know it or not, whether they sense it or not, the Gandhi family has
become active facilitators of Hindutvaauthoritarianism. If they depart, even if the
Congress disintegrates, someone or something else with more political credibility
shall take their place. Then those of us who oppose Hindutva will be better placed
to think of, and struggle for, a future for India beyond the awful present.
Ramachandra Guha’s new book, Rebels Against the Raj, is now in stores. His email
address is [email protected].
This article first appeared in The Telegraph.
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