SONIA GANDHI’S unopposed re-election as Congress president was a foregone conclusion from the word go. So the completion of the formality is neither here nor there though it makes her the longest serving party chief in its 125-year history. What the whole episode does do, however, is to raise gnawing questions about the functioning of the Congress that once used to be India’s Grand Old Party and still is both the principal mainstream party and the core of the ruling United Progressive Alliance. Sadly, this is not all. Since nothing is more contagious than a bad example, most other political parties — big, small or marginal — have become, like the Congress, family-controlled. Also in each, the incumbent of the top party post either holds it for life or, at a suitable stage, passes the baton to his or her progeny.
To be sure, there are a few exceptions to this rule but these have shortcomings of a different kind. For instance, by no stretch of the imagination can the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the only other mainstream party, be said to be a part of the prevailing dynastic pattern. But then right from the start it has been under the control of the Rashtriya Swayemsevak Sangh (RSS), the karta of the Sangh Parivar. Nitin Gadkari is the RSS’ appointee as the BJP president; the party cadre had no option but to formally elect him. There is no point saying much about the regional parties, be they the fiefdom of M. Karunanidhi’s extended family in Tamil Nadu, Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh, Lalu Prasad Yadav’s husband-and-wife diarchy in Rashtriya Janata Dal, Balasaheb Thackeray’s brood running Shiv Sena’s rival branches in Maharashtra or the Abdullahs and Muftis of Jammu and Kashmir or whatever.
The main point therefore is that if India, especially its much-frayed political system, is to escape this depressing and manifestly undemocratic milieu, the Congress would have to set an example for all others. It can do so only by returning to the party’s fine traditions of the past that have been discarded and perhaps forgotten by the present-day members of the party that would celebrate its 125th anniversary in December.
Even in the era when the Mahatma’s magic held the Indian National Congress in thrall, there was no dearth of dissent and democratic contest for leadership. Subhash Chandra Bose decisively defeated Gandhiji’s candidate for the party presidency, Pattabhi Sitaramayya, in 1938. In May 1939, because of continued opposition to him by the Congress Right, Bose was forced to resign and replaced by Rajendra Prasad.
On becoming Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru set the wholesome norm that someone else should hold the office of Congress president. He departed from this sound principle but briefly and under rather extraordinary circumstances. In 1949, Nehru had suffered the kind of defeat in the party presidential poll that the Mahatma had 11 years earlier. In a bitterly fought election Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s nominee Purushottam Das Tandon easily vanquished the Prime Minister’s candidate, Acharya Kripalani. Since no two men could be so unlike in ideology and social outlook as Nehru and Tandon, the struggle between them continued until 1951, when shortly after Patel’s death, Nehru got rid of Tandon. However, he did so through the perfectly democratic method of a vote in the All-India Congress Committee.
At that time there appeared to be no alternative to the Prime Minister taking over the post of Congress president, too. By 1955, however, Nehru absolutely insisted on giving up the party job and U.N. Dhebar was elected. There were several Congress presidents after Dhebar, including Indira Gandhi herself. The last of the line in Nehru’s time was K. Kamraj, who masterminded Lal Bahadur Shastri’s succession to Nehru and Indira’s to Shastri. Kamraj’s successor, S. Nijalingappa, though at loggerheads with the Prime Minister, continued to head the party right up to the Congress split of 1969. Afterwards, Jagjivan Ram and Shankar Dayal Sharma served as Congress(I) presidents, with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi reigning supreme. Even during the Emergency Dev Kanta Borooah held the top party post.
The pernicious practice of the Congress Prime Minister holding both the offices began with Indira Gandhi’s return to power in 1980. Rajiv Gandhi inherited this from his mother, and P.V. Narasimha Rao excelled both in this respect. He not only stuck to both jobs for as long he was at 7, Race Course Road but also after the humiliating Congress defeat in the 1996 general election. He clung to both the Congress presidency and the leadership of the Congress parliamentary party. But his position became untenable when he faced criminal charges. Sitaram Kesri, not an ideal choice, replaced Rao as Congress president.
All this while Mrs Sonia Gandhi had stayed aloof from developments within the Congress. But she evidently changed her mind after the Congress suffered a second shattering defeat in 1998 and the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance rose to power. At its hurriedly summoned meeting on March 14, 1998, the Congress Working Committee summarily sacked Kesri and elected Mrs Sonia Gandhi as Congress president. The operation bore all the signs of a coup. Two years later when the time came for her re-election, quite a few party members felt that there ought to at least a token contest even if her landslide victory was certain. Jitendra Prasad offered himself as the alternative candidate. For his “effrontery” the sycophantic Congress Party so harassed, hounded and humiliated him that no one else has dared to ask for a token contest ever since.
Admittedly, the situation did become complicated because of Mrs Sonia Gandhi’s decision in 2004 not to accept the office of Prime Minister. But if she can retain her overriding power with someone else as Prime Minister, can’t she do so with someone else as Congress president? Indeed, she should encourage him/her to bring back the vanished electoral process in the party organisation down the line.
If this were not done, India would earn permanently the dubious distinction of being the world’s largest democracy that is propped by a clutch of political parties totally bereft of democracy within themselves.