The wheel comes full circle

Twenty-Eight years after the First War of Indian Independence in 1857, as the country still moaned and writhed in imperial labour, the fledg...

Twenty-Eight years after the First War of Indian Independence in 1857, as the country still moaned and writhed in imperial labour, the fledging Indian National Congress was born out of a typically miscegenous congress. A. O. Hume, who had taken time off from bird-watching, fathered it. To the British the Congress was to be be a 8220;safety-valve8221; and to the Indians, Hume was to be a quot;lightning conductorquot;. And if it weren8217;t for either of these two reasons, this 8220;civilising mission8221; was the White Man8217;s burden anyway.

Before long Hume lost track of things and the inexperienced members were left holding the baby. One of the first things they realised was the pointlessness of the infant taking on the might of the Raj. If the sun could never set on the British Empire, it would only end up burning its fingers, they reasoned. Instead, for proper grooming, they chose to imbibe culture and conversion, learn debate and deliberation.

They did that with elan. But, other than scoring a few brownie points in theAssembly, the browns achieved little. The Congress, nevertheless, grew to form India8217;s first political family.

In the first litter it gave birth to a more obstreperous and defiant lot, chief among whom was Tilak. When Tilak and his associates proposed passive resistance and non-cooperation they sounded blasphemous. To involve the common man and take an interest in his causes was still more heretical. A split took care of these extremists8217;, who sank into the debris of history.

About a decade and a half later precisely these issues and methods were realised to be the need of the hour. Mahatma Gandhi, the new pilot, had taken off. Others, fired by new enthusiasm and powered by hitherto untapped patriotism, were also swept off their feet. The common man couldn8217;t have had it better. From then on till 1947 Gandhiji, with Nehru close on his heels, took the Congress from strength to strength and the country to freedom and, inevitably, partition.

The rest, many believe, is mystery. Long ago, Gandhiji hadprophesied of Nehru: 8220;When I am no more he will speak my language.8221; In the first years of Independence, even before Nehru donned the mantle of leadership, he unleashed his own lexicon. Gandhi8217;s ashes and ideas were given a quiet burial. But most of what the Congress had stood for was still in place. With his death, these died too.

The Syndicate came in to fill the leadership vacuum but played only king-makers. It installed Nehru8217;s daughter, hoping hers would be an easy shoulder to fire shots from. The plan backfired. The doll wasn8217;t that pliable after all. Nay, she had ideas of her own. The party was systematically cleansed. Tradition was thrown to the winds. Elections to the party8217;s top post suffered first. The party was rechristened the CongressI.

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Which actually meant Congress 8212; that is, I. Dynasty subordinated deed. The political lingo underwent another change, an irreversible one. High Command and Family were now the buzzwords, often interchangeable. Intrigue, in and out of the palace, definedthe prevailing zeitgeist. Corruption had become universal and on this ideologically barren soil of the Congress it was the weeds that grew the fastest.

Today, more than a hundred years after it came into existence, the party seems to beover. Without the glue of power, cohesion is a clear casualty. The organisation, whose membership was once coveted, is now forcing people to look for the exit. The superstructure has collapsed in a heap.

From the rubble has risen Sonia Gandhi. With her, the wheel has come full circle. It8217;s the White Woman8217;s burden now to pack some stuffing into things. To stem the efflux she must now be the safety valve. Curiously, she8217;s also the lightning conductor. For, should things still not click, the refrain could always be: 8220;We told you, she8217;s after all8230;8221;