How Congress is chained to the myth of Dynasty

“No way,” he said. “Pawar and others like him are all regional satraps. If any of them becomes powerful, they will weaken the empire in Delhi. This is how the Mughal empire got destroyed, paving the way for the British to come and rule India. India can be ruled by the Nehru family alone. Otherwise, India will disintegrate.”

The reply revealed to me how the Nehru family has brainwashed many Congressmen into thinking that nobody in the party, except a member of the ‘Dynasty’, deserves to head the party or the party’s government at the centre. Even when an ‘outsider’ became the Congress president, as happened in the case of Devkant Barooah (of the ‘India is Indira, and Indira and India’ fame) or Sitaram Kesri, the real power still vested with the family.

Similarly, even when P.V. Narasimha Rao and Dr Manmohan Singh became prime ministers, no one was left in any doubt that they were simply nominees of 10 Janpath, the supreme seat of power. To his credit, Rao did try to carve out some autonomous place for himself, but he incurred the family’s wrath for it.

After the party’s defeat in the 1996 parliamentary elections, Rao was unceremoniously sacked from Congress presidentship. A worse fate awaited his successor, Sitaram Kesri, when the Congress lost the 1998 Lok Sabha polls. Kesri was manhandled by his own partymen and physically evicted from the Congress headquarters on March 14, 1998, when Sonia Gandhi was hurriedly elected party president.

I have recalled this past because Sonia Gandhi was profusely praised by her partymen on Friday, on the occasion of her completion of 10 years as Congress president. Party spokesman Manu Sanghvi has said, “Ms Gandhi is, and will remain, the chief mascot for the party. Her leadership helped the party have a pan-Indian footprint after the dark days of 1997-98.” Only those who have no knowledge of even India’s recent political history will be influenced by this eulogy. What was the size of the Congress party’s footprint when Rajiv Gandhi became the prime minister and the Congress president at the end of 1984, and what is it today? And how much has it expanded even after Sonia Gandhi took the reins of the party in her hands? Congressmen are free to indulge in sycophancy, but any claim that her leadership has dramatically revived and rejuvenated the Congress party flies in the face of facts.

If Sonia Gandhi can be given credit for anything, it is that she, a foreign-born person with no record of public service or political experience prior to 1998, has shown how today’s generation of Congress leaders is utterly lacking in courage, self-respect and self-confidence. She has been able to reinforce the fear and myth in their minds that the Congress party cannot survive without a person from the ‘Dynasty’ at the top. It is a myth because the Congress party did indeed survive and grew without dynastic domination for most parts of its hoary history of 123 years.

As a result of this myth, no Congress leader from outside the family, however talented and capable he may be, will ever try to aspire to lead the country. Without aspiration, there can be no determination. And without determination to achieve something big in life, a person wilts, withers and falls short of realising his full potential. If such a person still wishes to remain active in the organisation, he can do so only by becoming a sycophant. In any case, if any satraps in the party show the least sign of ambition, the Congress high-command, which is a euphemism for the coterie around the king or the queen, knows how to cut them to size.

The Congress party’s enslavement to the myth of dynasticism began during the Emergency rule (1975-77) imposed by Indira Gandhi. Sonia Gandhi has taken this process far ahead by unabashedly projecting her son Rahul, untested by any challenge in his life and undistinguished by any achievement to his credit so far, as the next supreme leader of her party. And all the stalwarts of the Congress, some of whom are far more talented, knowledgeable and experienced than both the mother-son duo, have uncritically accepted Rahul as the prince-in-waiting.

Therefore, Sonia Gandhi’s ten years as Congress president are an affront to the democratic beliefs and sensibilities of the Indian people. The notion that birth is the chief determinant of the eligibility to lead this great nation of ours is a relic of the past. Future-focused India must discard this relic.