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Sonia breathes new life into
Congress
By Sultan Shahin
 NEW DELHI - After years of
dithering, Sonia Gandhi has finally moved decisively to
make the Indian National Congress party capable of
ruling India again.
Swallowing its pride, if not
arrogance, a legacy of its almost uninterrupted
47-year-rule since India's independence in 1947, the
main opposition Congress party has now accepted the
possibility of leading a coalition rather than its own
government after the next general elections likely to be
held early next year. It is already part of coalition
governments in several states, including Kerala,
Maharashtra, Bihar and Jammu and Kashmir, both as a
dominant and a minority partner.
With a slew of
assembly elections around the corner, leading up to the
general elections, the decision has not come a day too
soon. The last Congress resolution taken at its
Panchmarhi Conclave in 1998, calling for eschewing
coalitions and trying to go alone, virtually crippled
the party's attempt to bounce back into power in
Delhi.
The decision now to accept being part of a
coalition has definitely brightened the prospects for
Congress, forcing the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP)
president Venkaiah Naidu to criticize it as a move
showing the party's lack of confidence. However, the BJP
itself has become a ruling party by virtue of being the
lead of a 25-party coalition. The first BJP government
in 1997 lasted just 13 days for want of a majority in
parliament.
Fifty-five years of election-based
democracy has given such a great fillip to divisive
tendencies and communal and caste politics that it has
become virtually impossible for any political party to
represent the clashing interests of a sufficient number
of groups to be able to provide a stable government at
the center on its own. The BJP learned with experience
that it can't do it. Now the Congress, too, has come to
the same conclusion.
There is one important
difference in the approach of the two main parties,
though, to coalitions. The BJP has made a virtue out of
necessity. It talks of pursuing a coalition
dharma (religion or way of life). The Congress is
accepting coalitions reluctantly. Its heart is not yet
fully in the idea. Many of its leaders still do not
accept it wholeheartedly, though they are not saying so
publicly. They feel that once the Congress accepts
coalitions, it will lose its pre-eminence in Indian
politics forever, so it should continue to fight to
retrieve lost ground and not make common cause with its
rivals. This ambivalence puts it at a disadvantage
vis-a-vis the BJP.
Party president Sonia Gandhi
has also decided to revive the moribund Congress
ideology of secularism to give a fight to its main rival
BJP's ideology of aggressive Hindutva (Hindu domination
of the subcontinent). Since the death of independent
India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru in 1964,
the Congress party has followed a communal ideology in
the name of secularism that has been described as soft
Hindutva.
The Congress party's so-called soft
Hindutva, however, was harder than the BJP's aggressive
Hindutva. As pursued by Sonia's late husband Rajiv
Gandhi and mother-in-law Indira Gandhi, both former
prime ministers, this led to tens of thousands of
Muslims and Sikhs being killed in hundreds of massacres
across the country. On the other hand, the BJP is
accused of organizing just one series of anti-Muslim
massacres in the state of Gujarat last year. Admittedly,
the BJP has not had the opportunities the Congress had
in its long reign. So one cannot be sure that the BJP's
hard Hindutva is actually softer than the Congress
party's soft Hindutva.
The voters of Gujarat
recently rejected the Congress party's soft Hindutva
campaign led by former BJP leader Shankarsinh Waghela
and instead elected his former protege and BJP leader
Narendra Modi, the alleged mastermind behind the last
year's massacres. It is this that seems to have led to a
rethink in the Congress party's higher echelons. If the
choice is between hypocritical and honest Hindutva, the
Indian voter will probably go now for the real thing,
honest Hindutva. The Congress masquerade will no longer
work, it is felt.
Following the proclivities of
the Indian voter, Italian-born Sonia, too, seems to have
decided to go back to the real thing, the Congress
party's original ideology, secularism as practiced by
Nehru, her grandfather-in-law. But Sonia is taking a
more cautious, professional approach to politics, rather
than depending entirely on her own or her advisors'
instincts.
Before announcing a reversal of
Congress ideology, she experimented with it in the state
of Rajasthan. Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot was given the
green signal to arrest Hindutva rabble-rouser Pravin
Togadia for distributing trishuls (tridents),
once Hindu religious symbols, now dangerous weapons, to
the BJP cadre in Rajasthan. The experiment was
successful. Heavens did not fall down. Togadia remained
in jail for several weeks before a local court granted
him bail on condition that he stopped his activities.
The program to distribute millions of trishuls
throughout the country has in fact unraveled and no
Congress functionary has complained of any negative
Hindu reaction from anywhere.
It may, however,
be premature to conclude that the Congress has indeed
decided to go back to its original ideology of Nehruvian
secularism. Congress governments in Maharashtra, Kerala
and Delhi, for instance, have not clamped down on
potentially incendiary Hindutva activities.
Maharashtra's redoubtable Hindutva icon Shiv Sena
(Shiva's Army) chief Bal Thackeray keeps calling for the
"inevitable" civil war and the Hindutva cadres there are
being given training in firearms, girls are being taught
to fight with swords and so on, but the Congress
government is silent. Muslims voted for the Congress in
that state after a promise that it would implement the
Justice Sri Krishna Commission report into Mumbai's
anti-Muslim massacres in 1992-93 in the wake of the
demolition of the famous Babri mosque in Uttar Pradesh.
But nothing has been done in the three years the party
has been in power.
Sonia's new-found policy is
in evidence in other ways. Like the BJP, the Congress,
has always been basically a party that upholds
upper-caste Hindu interests. But it would never come out
openly and follow policies benefiting them. Now for the
first time, and again in Rajasthan, which is turning out
to be a veritable laboratory for trying out new Congress
policies, as was Gujarat for the BJP, the party has
announced 14 percent reservations in jobs and education
for the upper-caste poor.
This amounts to
turning the constitutional policy of affirmative action
for the traditionally oppressed sections of the Hindu
community on its head. It has so upset the BJP that it
announced on Thursday a new policy of reservations for
several other castes, hitherto considered non-backward,
"promoting" them to backward status so that they too can
benefit from reservation in jobs and education.
Surprisingly, this includes some backward Muslim
professional groups as well.
Thus right or
wrong, it is Sonia's Congress now that is in many ways
setting the national agenda and forcing the more astute
and experienced leaders of the ruling coalition to react
- and potentially make mistakes.
Sonia's
statesmanship has been most evident in her dealings with
the issue of Jammu and Kashmir. It was Sonia's
predecessors in the Congress, from her
grandfather-in-law Nehru to her mother-in-law Indira
Gandhi to her husband Rajiv, who had mistreated and
humiliated Kashmiri Muslims into turning against India.
But with a little help from Prime Minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee, who allowed a free and fair election in the
state last year, she is doing her best to wipe the tears
off Kashmiri cheeks and once again link them to India as
full citizens of India.
To begin with, she
allowed a Kashmiri from the Valley, belonging to an
alliance partner, to come to power in the state, even
though the Congress had emerged as the single largest
party after the elections. She organized her party's
recent conclave in the state's capital city Srinagar,
thus bringing focus on the state and promoting local
tourism. She is also supporting her alliance partner's
"healing touch" policy, which includes seeking to find
the whereabouts of thousands of missing persons who have
been picked up by security forces and since disappeared.
Now she has ordered all 16 state governments run
by her party to help find jobs for unemployed Kashmiris.
This one edict, if implemented sincerely, may go a long
way toward helping resolve the Kashmir issue, much more
than all the parleys with Pakistan. After all,
ill-intentioned neighbors can only fish when waters at
home are troubled. She has also extended full support to
Vajpayee's attempts at normalization of relations with
Pakistan, while criticizing and bringing attention to
his constant flip-flops.
Another Sonia
innovation reminiscent of Nehru's days is the
downgrading of the so-called high command. Since the
time Indira Gandhi took over in the 1960s, the Congress
chief ministers and state-level leaders had lost
functional autonomy. Every little detail had to be
cleared by the high command. Indira and her son Rajiv
felt so insecure, despite their massive majorities in
parliament and unquestioned leadership status in the
party, that they would not allow any Congress leader at
any level to acquire any clout of his or her own. Anyone
appearing to be gaining popularity in a state would be
promptly thrown out. Only buffoons with little support
in the party were promoted to celebrity status.
But Sonia has changed things. Most
Congress-ruled states have leaders who are gaining in
stature as the high command rarely interferes with their
functional autonomy. Indeed, they are even allowed to
follow policies contrary to declared national policies,
if they think the latter do not suit their own regional
requirements. While the Congress opposed the
distribution of tridents by the Hindutva forces in
Rajasthan, for instance, it allowed its government in
Kerala not to make a big issue out of the same, as the
Kerala chief minister felt that in his largely secular
state this would only help the forces of Hindutva, who
have very little influence at present.
Policies
and strategies, however, cannot be implemented by a
party made moribund by decades of neglect. Since Indira
Gandhi's time, the Congress practice has been to depend
on the leader's charisma or an emotionally charged
slogan to pull in votes. Sonia is recycling some of the
old slogans, but at the same time restructuring the
entire party apparatus under a new plan of action, thus
infusing a new life into the party.
Her slogan
Congress ka Haath gharibon ke saath (Congress's
hand [its election symbol] is with the poor of the land)
is nothing but a rehash of the old Indira slogan of
gharibi hatao (remove poverty). One hopes that it
does not leave the same impact on India's poor as the
older slogan did. Having won a massive victory with the
gharibi hatao campaign, Indira removed the poor
themselves from the center of the cities to the
periphery to make them somewhat invisible to prying
foreign eyes.
But Sonia's action plan is nothing
if not innovative. It is based largely on US-based
telecom wizard and family friend Sam Pitroda's omnibus
proposal to recharge the Congress batteries. Pitroda
approached Sonia last December with an updated version
of his "Congress rejuvenation plan" that he had first
prepared in 1986 and presented to her husband. The plan
seeks to bridge the gap between "the leader - clean,
honest, hardworking, modern, dedicated, focused" - and
the large number of people who "want to overcome the
hurdle of vested interests, and party brokers who
resisted change". The plan was inspired by Rajiv's
seminal speech at the Congress's centenary celebrations
in Mumbai in 1985 in which he talked of the filth and
squalor of politics, promised to end the rule of power
brokers in the party and said he wanted to make the
party "a movement to modernize India".
As a
first step, Pitroda recommended the setting-up of
professionally managed information-technology-enabled
party offices across India - 631 in all, including one
at the central level, 30 at the state level and 600 at
the district level - to draw the youth. In the recent
Srinagar conclave, Congress leaders felt that the party
should use its focused and unrivaled leadership to its
advantage, ruling as it already is in 16 states.
With further inputs from several party bigwigs,
Pitroda's rejuvenation plan has metamorphosed into the
Congress plan of action. As Salman Khurshid, who is in
charge of program implementation in northern India,
says, Pitroda is "just one cog" in the vast precepts
that have been made available to the Congress president.
Sonia has developed a particular preference for
Pitroda's emphasis on building a strong and sustainable
organization at the grassroots level. The plan of action
may indeed be a godsend for the Congress to revive the
moribund organization for the coming electoral battles
at state and central level.
In accordance with
the action plan, six committees have been set up to draw
up roadmaps for implementing the modernization plan and
the division heads have been given a mid-June deadline
to submit their reports. The six panels include audit,
to be headed by Pranab Mukherjee, vision (Manmohan
Singh), alliances (Ghulam Nabi Azad), organization
(Motilal Vora), training (Ram Niwas Mirdha) and
communications and information technology (Margaret
Alva). The audit panel, for instance, will examine
whether a third-party audit of the party's
accomplishments, membership drive and public image would
be acceptable to the Congress.
The
unconventional plan is already being put into action at
the block and district levels, thus infusing a new
spirit at the grassroots levels in the party. Sonia has
ordered a one-day workers' convention for all block,
district and state members before June 15. The emphasis
is on the formation of local panchayat committees
to ensure the presence of the Congress in every village.
It is not without reason, therefore, that the
Congress chief ministers and senior party leaders who
met in Srinagar for the two-day conclave this week
exuded more confidence than they had done six months ago
at Mount Abu. They have fine-tuned election strategies
for the four key states going to the polls this year and
expect to win in at least three of them. The choice of
Srinagar as a venue was symbolic of this new-found
confidence. It helped the Congress stress the point that
it is a national party running governments from the deep
southern state of Kerala to northwestern Kashmir. With
Sonia addressing press conferences ex tempore,
without help from either her aides or notes, a
rejuvenated Congress can indeed look to the future with
some confidence.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times
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