I spent several days in Gujarat last month, arriving in the state the day that polling for the assembly elections ended. The journalists and writers I spoke to all thought that Narendra Modi would win, if no one quite expected him to win with such a resounding margin. They felt that the Congress had not run the most intelligent of campaigns. There were many things working against Modi — the growing disparities of income in Gujarat, the defection from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party of many legislators and leaders (including two former chief ministers), and of course the ‘anti-incumbency’ factor. But the Congress bosses in Delhi had sent the wrong people to the state. Sonia Gandhi came accompanied by Margaret Alva, who can’t speak Gujarati and whose Hindi is that of a convent-school-educated Indian. Sonia Gandhi would have been better off sharing the dais with Sam Pitroda, a Gujarati whose own life-story showcases the virtues of entrepreneurship and innovation. Pitroda could have told his fellow Gujaratis that economic success — at home or abroad — is completely separable from (and in the long run antithetical to) Hindutva politics.

Where assets such as Pitroda were kept away, the Congress high command had encouraged left-wing cultural activists from outside Gujarat to come campaign. I was told that one such group went about speaking of the greatness of Bhagat Singh — a man mostly unknown in this western state, or known only as an adversary of the Gujarati Mahatma, Gandhi. Then there was Sonia Gandhi’s own ‘maut ka saudagar’ speech. Her accusation allowed Narendra Modi to stoke regional sentiment, to claim that the Congress president had maligned all Gujaratis as merchants of death. Communities expected to vote against Modi, districts believed to be immune to his charisma, now rallied around the upholder of Gujarati pride against an overweening Centre as represented in the person of the Congress president.

These conversations were fresh in my memory when, a week later, I sat at home in Bangalore watching the results being reported on television. The outcome was known by lunch on Sunday, December 23. That same evening the Congress headquarters in New Delhi issued a statement saying that the party’s humiliating defeat in Gujarat was not the responsibility of Sonia Gandhi, but of the local leadership in the state.

It is now more than 30 years since Indira Gandhi appointed Sanjay Gandhi as her chosen political heir, and so converted India’s oldest political party into a family firm. In this time we have become accustomed to displays of servility by Congressmen (and, not to forget, Congresswomen). The wording of that statement on Gujarat, as well as the haste with which it was issued, were in keeping with what we now know and understand as ‘Congress tradition’. One can be certain that if the results had been reversed, and that the Congress had won in Gujarat, the victory would have been attributed solely and wholly to Sonia Gandhi.

One should, I suppose, treat this latest display of Congress chamchagiri with cynicism or, even better, indifference. If I am still dismayed, it must be, in part, because I am a historian by profession. And for much of the party’s history, ‘Congress tradition’ meant something else altogether. This was a party built upwards from the grassroots, taluk and district committees feeding into provincial committees, which in turn fed into the All India Congress Committee. The leaders at the Centre could not impose their will (and whim) on those lower down. As Bengalis so well know, Mahatma Gandhi could not always get his man elected as Congress president. After Independence, Jawaharlal Nehru could not nominate Congress chief ministers of his preference; these were chosen by the state units and their elected legislators.

The major Congress leaders of the past — K. Kamaraj, S. Nijalingappa, N. Sanjiva Reddy, Y.B. Chavan et al — became chief ministers and Union ministers by dint of their ability and enterprise alone. They worked hard for the party at district and state levels, knowing that diligence would find its reward. The drive and energy which these (and other) Congressmen manifested would, in the present context, be wholly pointless. Now, when the Congress wins a majority in a state election, the choice of chief minister devolves on Sonia Gandhi alone, as, before her, it devolved on Rajiv Gandhi, and, before him, on Indira Gandhi.

The destruction of inner-party democracy initiated by Indira Gandhi has meant a radical reorientation in the mindset of the ambitious young Congressman. Once, he sought to nurture his party and thus also to build a solid base for himself. Now, he seeks rather to flatter and please the First Family. In other political parties, one can make a name by dealing directly with voters and impressing them, or by efficiently running party units. On the other hand, in the Congress what matters is your closeness to the party president. Obviously, Sonia Gandhi does not know all party workers or even legislators. Thus, if you are a Congressman, you seek to minimize the number of handshakes that separate you from her. If you are a chamcha of someone who is a chamcha of someone in the inner circle, then you might get a ticket to fight the next assembly election. If you can leapfrog one link in this chain you might have a shot at becoming a member of parliament. If you can leapfrog two you might even end up as a Union minister.

As an example of how the Congress functions — or malfunctions —consider the constitution of the Union cabinet after the general elections of 2004. The lesser parties of the United Progressive Alliance nominated ministers who were less than 50 years of age. This was a radical move, in view of the fact that 70 has traditionally counted as ‘young’ in Indian politics. It was also a sensible move, dictated by the fact that some 65 per cent of Indian voters are under the age of thirty-five. The Congress, on the other hand, gave the plum portfolios to the most elderly members in their party. The education minister, the foreign minister, the home minister, were all well past the biblical limit of three score and ten years. Admittedly, the new finance minister was a mere stripling of sixty; but he was there only because (so it is said) the prime minister had insisted on him.

Among the Congress MPs in the 14th Lok Sabha are some intelligent and talented young men. But none of them were given even a junior ministership. Why? Because another young Congress MP was not prepared to assume ministerial responsibility. And if Rahul Gandhi did not want (yet) to become a minister a mere Scindia or Pilot or Prasad could not.

The corrosion of the Congress by the dynastic principle is bad for the Congress. By so severely discounting talent and aptitude, the party has undermined the capability and credibility of its state-level leaders, and so lost more assembly and Lok Sabha elections than it otherwise might have. But the degradation of the Congress is bad for the country, too. For much of the 20th century, the liberal and plural traditions fostered by the party and its leaders helped to hold India and Indians together. But as the Congress has declined in influence, the space it vacated has been filled by parties based on the narrow, and divisive, identities of caste and religion.

One knows that an ambitious man like Narendra Modi could never have become chief minister of Gujarat had he been a member of the Congress. Nor, by the same token, would Mayavati have become chief minister of Uttar Pradesh had she chosen to throw in her lot with Rajiv Gandhi instead of Kanshi Ram. But these two leaders are united by more than ambition and energy. Their beliefs and practices — based on chauvinism in the one case, on casteism in the other — are fundamentally at odds with the ideals of the Indian Constitution. This Constitution was drafted under the close supervision of the Congress, a party that — in all but name — has passed into history.