Congress has seen the exit of many heavyweights over the decades — and survived. It lost the Socialists in 1948, with Acharya Narendra Deva, Jayaprakash Narayan, and Ram Manohar Lohia walking out to form the Socialist Party. It saw vertical splits in 1969 when Indira Gandhi got the better of the “Syndicate” and in 1978 when she worsted the old guard — but it remained the real Congress. However, more recently, when Mamata Banerjee broke away to form the Trinamool Congress in 1998, Sharad Pawar his Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in 1999, and Jaganmohan Reddy his YSR Congress in 2010 — replacing Congress in West Bengal, Maharashtra or Andhra Pradesh, respectively — the party was hugely weakened. In the last months, many more have left Congress for greener pastures to join the BJP — Himanta Biswa Sarma, Jyotiraditya Scindia, RPN Singh and Jitin Prasada, among others.
Since the resignation of leaders is not new to Congress, some hope the party will also weather Ghulam Nabi Azad’s resignation. Though Azad may have had a 50-year innings, under the Indira Gandhi, Sanjay Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, PV Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh–Sonia Gandhi regimes, he was, after all, not a mass leader. And the party leadership may feel that his exit — and earlier, of those like Kapil Sibal — may ease the situation by weakening the dissidents in the party (G-23) who have been particularly critical of Rahul Gandhi’s leadership.
But Azad’s exit is different. For he has shown the mirror to the party, choosing his timing carefully to inflict the maximum possible damage to the Congress — before Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra. It is also possible that Azad may not have quit the Congress if he had been brought into the Rajya Sabha again; surely there is nothing wrong with a politician aspiring to retain a seat in the Upper House.
It’s not as if he is going to get a Rajya Sabha on the other side. He is set to launch a new party and if it takes off — though it is early days — he could come to be supported by Farooq Abdullah and the BJP, to lead a government. The journey is littered with imponderables, but he has chosen to walk that path.
Azad’s exit is not just about a Rajya Sabha seat; it is also about the “izzat” that was not shown to him, when he, a member of the national political affairs committee was made a mere member of the state committee.
More than power and izzat, people are leaving the party because the Gandhis are no longer able to win elections, and Azad has pointed out, the party has lost 39 out of 49 assembly elections in the last eight years. Though Rahul Gandhi has spoken forthrightly on issues — Rafale, demonetisation, inflation, joblessness, lockdown — the party has not been able to slow down the Modi juggernaut, though undoubtedly that is a Herculean task, given the control the BJP exercises on institutions. But the Congress attitude now seems to be,“Jisko jana hai jaye, rehna hai rahe” (Those who want to leave may leave, those who wish to remain may do so).
That Congress is dying is widely acknowledged. But this is the first time that a senior leader has spoken so openly — and brutally — about what partymen and women discuss privately — that Rahul is childish and immature but he is the one who wields real power. And the party is losing under his leadership. And Sonia is only a “nominal figurehead”.
The question that can no longer be wished away is this: Is Congress at the cusp of disintegrating as an entity? Today an Azad is set to form his regional party. Will Bhupinder Singh Hooda, who still has a mass following in Haryana, do likewise, nearer election time if he gets a sense that he is not going to get his way in the ticket distribution? What about Siddaramaiah in Karnataka, where elections are due in 2023? And what will Sachin Pilot do? If given the reins of power he might have put up a fight to retrieve some of the lost ground.
Rahul is a boon to Narendra Modi not only because he is no match for the PM as a communicator. He is Modi’s biggest bet because more than anyone else, he epitomises entitlement today. And an aspirational India is moving in the opposite direction.
For the Grand Old Party not to have a full-time president for three and a quarter years — remember, it is not three and a quarter months — when the opponent is as formidable as Modi, should be unthinkable in a democracy. Whatever the reasons trotted out publicly for the delay in holding organisational elections, the truth is that the party has really been waiting for Rahul Gandhi to decide whether he wants to take over as Congress President again. Nothing illustrates entitlement more than this.
When Modi declared from the Red Fort this year that his party will flag two issues — corruption and dynastic rule — he put his finger on the people’s pulse about the growing aversion to the right by birth.
If push comes to shove, there are regional parties which can survive without a member of the family to lead them. Not so the Congress. It will break up without the Gandhi family. And, as things stand today, it could disintegrate with the family at its helm — unless the family willingly relinquishes power to someone else.
Rahul Gandhi has also put forward a new political model — he takes all the decisions, but without taking responsibility for them. By all accounts, he is not going to contest for the Party presidency. If Ashok Gehlot, Meira Kumar, Mallikarjun Kharge or Mukul Wasnik take over as Congress chief he or she will be filling in for the role that Sonia Gandhi has been playing as a “nominal figurehead”.
That Sonia should strongly urge Gehlot to shift to Delhi and he should express reluctance also shows the extent to which the high command’s writ runs today — further weakening the party.
Azad’s exit then is not about the exit of yet another individual leader from Congress. It is symbolic of the wider, and worrying, processes at work to move India towards one-party rule — and the Grand Old Party, representing the only counter force nationally, is unwilling to take the steps it should. Unless there is a dramatic turnaround, Congress will be reduced to a mere symbol — and the owner of properties — and cease to be a party. I hope I am proved wrong.
The writer is a senior journalist