For Sonia Gandhi, history repeated itself as she returned as the President of the Congress party on August 10. There are two reasons for this: one, having led the party as its chief for a record number of 19 years, she finds herself at the helm once again and secondly she has landed once again in a familiar terrain—that of leading the party at a time when it faces an existential crisis following the humiliating loss in this year’s parliamentary elections. The scenario was no different for the Congress when Sonia had become the Congress President for the first time in 1998 when the party was in tatters.
For the Congress Working Committee (CWC), the party’s supreme policy-making forum, Sonia was the natural choice to lead the party after her son Rahul Gandhi, who had taken over the reins from his mother on December 16, 2017, steadfastly refused to take back his resignation tendered on May 25 taking responsibility for the drubbing in recent national polls. The 54-member CWC meeting on August 10 met for 12 hours in two separate spells before zeroing on Sonia. But a lot of drama preceded Sonia’s return to head the party.
The meeting divided itself in five sub-committees to elicit the views of the top leaders of the Congress’ units in different states on who should replace Rahul. Sonia and Rahul too were listed in the sub-committees but both opted out saying they did not want their presence to influence the consultation process.
When the sub-committees were done with the exercising of eliciting the views, the feedback overwhelming favoured the continuance of Rahul as party chief. But the 49-year-old scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family refused to budge from his stand of stepping down as Congress President. A few CWC members tried to impress on Rahul’s sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra to take charge of the party but she too declined. By that time, it was clear that there was no consensus in the party on anyone outside the Gandhi clan to become the party chief.
In fact, the general feeling in the CWC was that the party would disintegrate if any leader other than a Gandhi family member was appointed Congress President. Therefore, the party had little option other than requesting Sonia to take over as interim President till the organizational poll leading to the election of a new regular President. The development brought to fore once again how the Congress failed to settle on someone from outside the Gandhi dynasty to head the party for which the dynasty remains the only powerful glue. Also, Rahul’s bold assertion on May 25 that no Gandhi family member would succeed him as the party President lay in tatters.
According to the CWC decision, Sonia is an interim President till elections are held for a full-time President. Interestingly, the CWC did not set a timeline for the organizational elections, indicating that the whole process may take a longer time than expected because the party may not like to get bogged down by internal matters especially when crucial state elections in Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Haryana and Delhi are just months away.
The Congress needs to do something more than
having a member of the Gandhi family as its top leader in
the changing political milieu of India in order to regain its credibility
as a potent force and an acceptable alternative to the BJP
The build-up to the CWC meeting of August 10 had witnessed some leaders including Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and party lawmaker Shashi Tharoor, making a strong pitch for a young leader as Congress President. But the party’s old guard was clearly uncomfortable with the idea. In fact, the battle between in the Congress between the old guard and the younger leaders broke out as soon as the prolonged suspense on the top leadership issue ended with the announcement of the August 10 meeting. 72-year-old Sonia’s selection as the interim may have ended the old-versus-young debate within the Congress at least for the time being.
Congress’ chief spokesman Randeep Singh Surjewala defended Sonia as interim President citing the “difficult time” India is passing through and her experience as a leader. After all, in her 19-month tenure as Congress President from 1998 to 2017, she displayed skill in handling party intrigues and judgements that handed the party victory in two successive parliamentary polls in 2004 and 2009. That was something stupendous for a person once considered an unlikely heir to the political legacy of the Nehru-Gandhi clan. As party chief, Sonia had also shown the skill to unite political parties across different regions of India, often with competing agendas, under one banner to keep the BJP out of power for a decade from 2004.
Today, as Sonia embarks on a fresh journey as Congress chief, she faces the challenge of pulling the party out of the morass caused by electoral defeat, desertion in ranks and demoralized party workers, a much more fragmented opposition than ever before and an aggressive Bharatiya Janata Party under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah who are reshaping India’s policies and priorities under a more pronounced nationalist rubric. Another stern test for Sonia would be to cope with the emerging political landscape in which coalition politics has been made virtually toothless by the BJP’s emphatic victory in national elections. There is hardly any opposition party which has not been hit by defections and the switch to the BJP, post-elections. The desertion of 14 legislators in Karnataka cost the party dearly as its coalition government in the southern state collapsed and paved the way for the return of the BJP in power there.
In the two and half months since Rahul Gandhi's decision to quit, the Congress has become rudderless. The inability of the party to quickly fill the top leadership void saw the Congress putting up a lacklustre performance in the first half of the new parliament's first session recently. The sense of disarray in the party was most pronounced when it failed to come up with a cogent and coherent response to Narendra Modi government's bold decision to revoke the special status to Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 of the Constitution and split it into two territories. Voices of dissent on the issue came out loud and clear as a number of senior and young Congress leaders went against the party's official line on the Kashmir issue and backed the government's actions.
The Congress needs to do something more than having a member of the Gandhi family as its top leader in the changing political milieu of India in order to regain its credibility as a potent force and an acceptable alternative to the BJP. The large constituency of young voters today does not have any emotional chord with dynasty charisma but would like the Congress to come out with a fresh thinking on major national issues. Charity begins at home and the Congress should put a stop to its leadership selection culture and go for honest organizational election in order to draw the youth who are looking for an opportunity to probe themselves and not be content with just entitlement to powers and privileges. This is the changed political landscape of India today.
Pallab Bhattacharya is a journalist based in India
