The world in its childhood greatly valued professions of loyalty. Knights-at-arms flying the colours of their lord or lady, the devoted mafia member with his eyes trained on his boss, the trainee scholar fetching and carrying for his guru in the depths of the inhospitable forest — for all of them and more, loyalty was their USP. But certain traditions die hard. No greater proof is needed of this than the sudden excitement generated within the Congress by Arjun Singh’s remarks to the effect that the party lacks in inner-party democracy. Senior leaders let loose a flood of damning comments against him, picking his argument to shreds and blaming him for making negative remarks about the party in public with the Lok Sabha elections a few months away and the Karnataka assembly elections in progress. Worse, Sonia Gandhi ignored Mr Singh at a public meet, where they actually shared the dais. Mr Singh ended up proclaiming his undying loyalty to the Nehru-Gandhi family through the decades. Whatever discontent he might have felt at being rather left out of things in recent times in spite of his loyalty professed in word and deed has now been drowned in the verbal flood of his expiation.

Since loyalty alone is the issue, as Mr Singh himself is so eager to underline, democracy was never the true subject of his discontent. It was a question of rewards and incentives for the ever-faithful. The culture of the party has never really moved on from that of personal loyalty to the Nehru-Gandhi family. That is a pity, not only from the point of view of the strengthening, broadening and sharpening of the Congress as a political party, but also from the point of view of the people it wishes to govern. The Congress high command changes its composition according to the rise in and fall from the grace of the personality at the centre. A change in culture could have been expected with Ms Gandhi coming to occupy this space. But the Arjun Singh episode shows that the most important Congress leaders abide by the old rules of loyalty and jealous cliquishness. Rahul Gandhi too seemed to have perceived the problem of the lack of democracy. With the coming of fresh blood into the party, a change in the age-old tradition of rewards for loyalty could be hoped for, bringing in a tradition of rewards for merit instead. But Mr Gandhi himself is a beneficiary of the lack of democracy; the identity of the party hinges on it.