Journalism of Courage
In the summer of 1977, when Ghulam Nabi Azad first came to Delhi after being appointed as a general secretary of the Youth Congress by Sanjay Gandhi, he could not withstand the torrid summer. His nose bled for several weeks and he told his colleagues that he is going back. Forty-five years later, he has severed his association with the party which is bleeding because of repeated electoral defeats and constant exodus of leaders.
Azad is an unlikely rebel. His decision to leave the party after launching one of the sharpest ever attacks on the Gandhi family was much as a surprise as his decision to lead a band of leaders to write to Sonia Gandhi calling for changes in 2020. In fact, he was one of those leaders who have always been seen as having sided with the establishment and without interruption held key posts both in the organisation and governments.
Despite his closeness to the leadership and perhaps because of it, he spoke his mind, too, at times. And the leadership invariably listened, which is perhaps missing now. And that is his single biggest grouse.
For instance, when Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi renamed the education ministry as Human Resource Development Ministry and asked P V Narasimha Rao to head it in September 1985, Azad went to Gandhi and told him that asking a veteran like Rao to head a ministry, the name of which no one can relate to, is a demotion.
Gandhi asked whether Rao, too, thinks so. Azad later reported to Gandhi that Rao too was not very happy. He immediately did not change but added Health and Family Welfare to Rao’s portfolio a year later before eventually making him the External Affairs Minister in 1988. Azad believes Gandhi, at least, listened.
But such interventions are rare as Azad always sided with the power centre in the party. From being the blue-eyed boy of Sanjay Gandhi to a confidante of Sonia Gandhi till some time ago, he has never rubbed the leader the wrong way before 2020. He has been a minister in all Congress governments since the 1980s (the ones headed by Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, P V Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh), when he entered Lok Sabha from Washim in Maharashtra.
He had been in the Congress Working Committee for 37 years and he had been AICC in-charge of almost every state, a feat that has no parallel in the party. He began his political career in the mid 1970s and became the president of the J&K Youth Congress in 1975-76. He moved to Delhi in 1977 and became one of the close associates of Sanjay Gandhi with the likes of Kamal Nath and Ambika Soni. He became the national president of the Youth Congress in 1980.
And as he wrote in resignation letter, he was a member of the Congress Parliamentary board headed by Rajiv Gandhi as Congress president and later P V Narasimha Rao. His stints as state Congress president of Jammu and Kashmir in the early 2000s, Chief Minister of the state from 2005 to 2008 and Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha from 2014 to 2021 is recent history.
His decision to lead a group of leaders seeking change in the party — an euphemism for opposition to Rahul Gandhi — was surprising as he has been fiercely loyal to the Gandhis. He sided with Rao when the prime minister took on the likes of Arjun Singh. He was close to Sitaram Kesri as well when the veteran was president of the party but sided with Sonia Gandhi when she decided to take the political plunge. Kesri was booted out.
Under Sonia, Azad became more powerful. In the two decades of Sonia stewardship, Azad became PCC president, Chief Minister, Union minister and leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha before he rebelled as a new coterie took shape around Rahul Gandhi. And today curtains came down on the two-year war of nerves with the Gandhis with an explosive, devastating letter of attack which surely will now be part of the Congress folklore.
