Not even in its worst moments of past defeats has the Congress party looked as vulnerable and desperate as it has done since Italy ki beti took a direct hit from the Gujarat election results. Even as someone who implacably opposes Sonia Gandhi’s aspirations to become prime minister of India I found myself feeling almost sorry for her last week as I watched the pathetic parade of has-beens that constitute her inner circle.Aging, inarticulate, television-unfriendly men and women who she sent as observers to the capitals of Congress-ruled states in what seemed like an exercise in proving that despite the defeat in Gujarat the party was still in business and still determined to come to power after next year’s general election. If the sight of her ‘‘observers’’ was not bad enough there was then the spectacle of the chief ministers of Maharashtra and Rajasthan going to Delhi to grovel at the feet of the ‘‘high command’’. When will Sonia realise that these men, pathetic flunkeys though they may be, represent the honour and dignity of major Indian states and it is sickening to see them grovel before anyone. They have no business to be seen coming in and out, of the fortified entrance of Sonia’s Delhi mansion, like naughty schoolboys called in for a spanking. Narendra Modi’s landslide victory in Gujarat has exposed Sonia’s weaknesses as a politician more than any other event since that long ago day when she went before television cameras outside Rashtrapati Bhawan to announce that she had ‘‘272 MPs and many more coming’’. It was that unfortunate moment that became one of the main reasons for Congress faring worse in the 1999 Lok Sabha election than it had ever done before. And, now Gujarat is making even her supporters doubt her ability to lead the party to victory next year. Whisperers from inside her supposedly innermost circles nowadays spread the word that she is perhaps not so much a national leader as just someone who likes to get her picture in the newspapers. Just another memsahib from the salons of Delhi who would never have been in politics if she had not married the right man. Unfortunately for her it is also being openly said that the best thing she can do for Congress now is to renounce her prime ministerial ambitions. Gujarat proved that the Italian thing matters. No matter how loudly she shrieked about her mother-in-law having been the one who defended India against Pakistan it was Modi’s jibes about Italy and daughters of Italy that appealed to the crowd. But, it’s more than just about foreign origins, the problem with her leadership goes deeper still. What Gujarat also exposed was her inability to rebuild the Congress party. Not only did she have to find the leader of the party in that state from what Modi memorably described as the ‘‘BJP’s scrap yard’’ but at no time, during the months of terrible violence that followed Godhra, did anyone see Congress workers in the streets or in the camps. Then, when it came to election time, instead of coming forward with a new idea, with a reassertion of the party’s commitment to secularism, we saw Sonia try to play a feeble sort of Hindutva card. Why did she think beginning her election campaign from a Hindu temple would be good for the secular cause? How she hoped to defeat the BJP at a game they invented will remain one of the lasting puzzles of Indian politics. Inevitably, no sooner were the Gujarat results known than a strange new mood became perceptible in the political air. No longer does anyone talk about Congress revival or the possibility of a Congress victory next time round, the only thing there is any serious speculation about these days is if the BJP is going to be able to win the next general election on its own. This is worrying even for those of us (like your humble columnist) who do not believe that Modi’s victory in Gujarat signifies the end of India as we know it. As in Gujarat, the only political party capable of taking on the BJP at the national level is Congress and it is important that it be rebuilt into some kind of fighting machine before the end of next year. This will not happen by shuffling chief ministers around or by shuffling the tired pack of ageing senior leaders that surround Sonia but by articulating a political programme that will attract younger, more dynamic people. This has to happen not just in the English-speaking circles of Delhi and Mumbai but in the villages from where Congress once drew its entire strength. The problem for Sonia is that despite having become leader of the Opposition and the second most important national leader in India, she continues to rule from the zenana. And, as we know, the only people traditionally allowed into the zenana in India were eunuchs and very old men. If Sonia wants to continue nurturing her prime ministerial ambitions she needs to get out of the zenana as fast as she can and needs to look at her party objectively to see just how shaky its foundations have become. If she cannot to do this it really is time for her to look for a career outside politics. In any case for the Congress this could be the best thing to happen.
