The exit of Jyotiraditya Scindia from the Congress party is a momentous event that was foretold. Scindia may not be a mass leader — he isn’t. He may have only a sub-regional support base which would not even save his own seat in parliamentary polls — it didn’t. But his exit packs a punch strong enough to send the Kamal Nath government in Madhya Pradesh scurrying for survival. He was handpicked by Rahul Gandhi, then party president, to lead the charge, alongside Priyanka Gandhi, in the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh in the 2019 election. He has been a prominent face of the Congress’s next gen, commanding a high visibility and profile. But Scindia’s exit sends ripples larger than his own political weight merits — because of the state of the Congress party. It affirms the sense of unchecked drift, which has only sharpened and deepened since Rahul Gandhi stepped down as president and no one has taken his place. The Congress seems gripped, simultaneously, by crises of organisation, leadership and ideology that continue to fester and grow, unaddressed. In such a party, it is not surprising that the young and the ambitious — Scindia seems ambitious, if not-so young — should chafe and become impatient. In such a party, the future seems blurry or, worse, held hostage to the discretion and whim of the high command, which itself seems lacklustre and disengaged. From such a party, exits such as Scindia’s are foretold.
At the same time, the Congress predicament that Scindia’s exit points to, is also made of the fact that leaders like Scindia occupy its upper echelons. The political trajectory of Jyotiraditya Scindia is one of entitlement, privilege, family legacy and name — more than the hard labour and pay-your-dues long haul of politics. Part of the crisis that has overtaken the Congress today, part of the affliction that has been thrown into sharp relief by the BJP’s rise and rise, is that the Congress has become a collection of leaders who have not earned their spurs by long and hard work at ground level, but have become famous for being famous, or for being loyal. It is telling that Scindia quits the party he has belonged to for 18 long years at an extraordinary moment for the party and polity. He crosses over to the BJP at a time when, even though the Congress seems unable to hold up its end, ideological polarisation is at its sharpest, when the BJP is weaponising its mandate to bring in its core agenda, and when that agenda, as illustrated in the divisive citizenship law, is sparking protests, resistance and even communal violence.
That a prominent leader of the Congress does not just exit the party at a moment such as this one, but does so to join the BJP, is a vote of no-confidence in the party that it would do well to seriously reflect on in more ways than are immediately obvious. And as for Scindia in the BJP, he will soon have to defend what he just weeks ago called the indefensible. That’s between him and his conscience — or, to be precise, his most recent conscience.
