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.

More than any single political event, the Congress of the 21st century is heir to the era that followed that great divide of 1969. Indira Gandhi worsted her opponents, first with the electrifying Leftwing slogan of banishing poverty, then with the lightning campaign of winter 1971 that led to the birth of Bangladesh. By the next summer, she had dissolved most state legislative assemblies and established her own imprimatur on a party that was Nehru's or Gandhi's but only in name.

This remaking was more than just a personalisation of the party. It marked an end to the vibrant cultures of internal debate that had marked it through its history. It also paved the way three years later for the first ever lineage based succession at the helm of affairs of the Congress. For a time India seemed set to follow the East Asian model of authoritarian government. The Emergency of 1975-77 seemed to be tailor-made for the dynasty.

Its end was as much an affirmation of Indira Gandhi's own deeper democratic instincts as of the country's own resilience. But even more than this brief interlude of 'civil martial law' as David Anthony Low correctly called it, the Indira era -- taken as a whole -- changed the Congress forever.

The political crisis was masked by positive economic trends. Underpinning all these was the full force impact of the Green Revolution that made India a food surplus country. Bank nationalisation made credit easily available for a growing middle class. Through the entire 1980s, irrigation coverage grew at over a million hectares a year. Rural-urban disparity shrank as farm jobs expanded.

Though this process continued till the end of the 1980s, the party lost the dexterity to debate and stay abreast of change. This had not always been the case. Garibi hatao and the Leftwing turn had taken the wind out of the sails of Leftwing currents of opposition in the early 1970s.

As late as 1971, the party could count on stalwarts into its ranks. By 1980, this ceased to be the case at the national level. Many leaders had gained state level platforms in the early Indira era. Devaraj Urs transformed the face of Karnataka politics. Sanjay Gandhi continued the process. In the north, 1980 saw VP Singh and Arjun Singh displace the old Brahmin led effete leaderships in their respective states. It was only under Indira Gandhi that states like Maharashtra and Bihar had Muslim chief ministers and Gujarat a backward class Kshatriya, Madhavsinh Solanki.

But no one should forget the way in which the early 1980s saw the party play the saffron card. First, there was Punjab where it milked Khalistani militancy to undermine the Akalis. Then followed the far more dangerous game of soft Hindutva to under-cut backward class assertion. These were to rebound on it. By the end of the 1980s, its much vaunted social alliance had begun to come undone. The process was completed once the Dalit-led BSP began to make inroads in the Dalit intelligentsia.

The Congress then is in 2007 an heir to the Indira era in three ways and not just one. The 1969 split destroyed the party organisation, never rebuilt by any of her successors for fear of internal dissent. In 1975 and again in 1980, by choosing her sons in succession, she also closed off the top spot in the hierarchy for any aspirant not from one clan. Sonia Gandhi's accession has showed clan ties could extend beyond lineage, but no further.

Finally, the social alliance came undone when the poor began to move away in batches in the late 1980s and in droves ever since. 2004 gave the party a lease of life. Due to polling of votes with other pluralist groups, it got another crack at ruling the country.

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

The country has outgrown the party. Congress still has a chance but time never stands still. The tryst continues but destiny may find another maker.