A new tryst with Destiny

The Congress has shown little sign of reviving its organisation, or cultivating a fresh set of leaders who combine energy with ideas. Its pro-poor measures seem to be no match for the harsh winds of a market-driven economy. India, it seems, has moved on and the Congress is still struggling to catch up

Raghav Sharma Delhi

Jawaharlal Nehru spoke of a 'tryst with destiny' on that memorable day in August 1947. He had in mind the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finally discovering its long forgotten voice. Nehru, with the soon to be martyred Mahatma Gandhi, symbolised more than victory in a struggle for freedom. Both men had spent a lifetime at the helm of a great and vast organisation that had spearheaded the campaign for freedom.

Six decades on, the Congress continues to stand out as a rare political entity that has enjoyed power for all but a dozen of the last 60 years. Nehru is seen as a foundational period in reshaping what was a party of disorder into a party of order. But as we shall see, his daughter's era was more critical to creating the party as it exists today.

This process began in the election campaign in the British ruled provinces in 1937, and was to be resumed in 1946 when he became vice chair of the Viceroy's Executive Council. Yet, what was remarkable about the era when Nehru was prime minister for 17 long years was the way in which the party converted adversity into opportunity. Few now realise quite how badly the Congress fared among Muslim voters in the 1946 elections. The 'Depressed Classes' were relatively more firmly with the Congress than with the great Bhimrao Ambedkar, but the challenge there was a formidable one.

Yet, by the time of the first general elections of 1952, the Congress had rallied together most of the religious minorities no doubt in part by its resolute refusal to kowtow to any kind of sectarian sentiment whatever. Among the Scheduled Castes as they are now rechristened, enfranchisement and positive discrimination laid the seeds of a vast but peaceful transformation and the creation for the first time in history of a new middle class from the ranks of those once excluded.

The Nehru years were to see political empowerment backed by the drive to create the artifices of economic growth. The Congress shaped and was profoundly remade by these enterprises. Pratap Singh Kairon's Punjab government was instrumental in building the Bhakra dam. Kamaraj Nadar in the south oversaw the coming of age of the social reform movements and the early industrialisation of the south. In the east, Bidhan Chandra Roy allocated the land of an old British jail in Kharagpur for an institution that would symbolise and still stands for a renaissance: the IIT.

The Nehru era was vibrant at the start but the party was already in the throes of crisis by 1962 well before the Chinese crossed the border. The Kamraj Plan was a last ditch bid to reinvigorate a political formation that stood at the centre of Indian political debate. The demise of Nehru and his successor Lal Bahadur Shastri soon after did not mark an end to the power struggle that simmered under the surface.

The long Congress history of a paramount leader had made him much more than first among equals. Mahatma Gandhi faced down Subhas Chandra Bose after the Tripuri contest where Bose was elected president of the Congress party. Sardar Patel never really took on Nehru. The latter easily routed Purushottam Das Tandon. It was only when a 48-year-old woman prime minister found the cabal of regional chieftains and the Congress president out to undermine her power that the party veered from friction to fratricide.