E.M. Forster opens A Passage to India with a description of the town of Chandrapore. He calls it a “low but indestructible form of life”.
If Forster had inverted the adjectives and said ‘indestructible but low’, he would have pronounced Chandrapore doomed forever to a pathetic condition. He has not done that and, so, like many puzzles in the novel, Chandrapore remains suspended between being ‘low’ and a self-destruction that never happens. Chandrapore is seriously ill but can revive, like a weakening pulse or a comatose brain. Can, but will it? Not despite but because of that image, I have long thought of Chandrapore, the novel in which it lives and its novelist with a mix of despair and faltering hope. And with total admiration.
Also, ever since I read Forster’s description of Chandrapore, I have thought it fits something that could be called Congresspore — the Indian National Congress. It fits it like a cap. And because of that reason, I have, ever since that image transposition, thought of the Congress with a mix of relentless anxiety and persistent hope. And a habituated ‘forever’ admiration. I have thought of its massive geographical presence co-extensive with India’s own subcontinental sprawl as well as of its history of great ideas, inspiring movements, galvanising proceedings as being in trouble, deep trouble, one out of which it manages to emerge if only to slide back into its crisis.
So, has the Congress got addicted to playing with risk?
The pre-independence Congress of Naoroji, Tilak, Gokhale, C.R. Das, Annie Besant, Gandhi, Subhas Bose, Patel and Nehru was in danger, at grave risk — but at the hands of the British raj. Not at its own hands. The Congress administrations post-Independence led by great leaders occupying office with sagacity and energy — Nehru, Patel, Rajaji, Sarojini Naidu and Azad in the late 1940s — were also at risk, of failure and public ire in the face of acute shortages of administrative experience and expertise and plain and simple wherewithal of governance. But again, not failure by its own doing or misdoing. Still later, the Congress led by Nehru almost single-handedly, in the 1950s and the early 1960s, though supported by regional leaders like G.B. Pant in Lucknow, B.C. Roy in Calcutta, Kamaraj in Madras, also ran risks at the hands of new regional forces and parties emerging swiftly in an anti-incumbency curve. Once again, not on account of its own follies. Leaders of epic vintage and voltage, like Jayaprakash Narayan, Acharya Kripalani, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, Rajaji and Prakasam, disillusioned with Nehru and the Congress’s one-leader and one-party rule (did they know what was coming after some decades?), left it in considerable danger. But the party managed to face those challenges. It was not placing risks on its own path, at least not in great number.
But ever since Nehru died in 1964, barring a few months of hope provided by Lal Bahadur Shastri’s tragically brief prime ministership, the Congress has been caught in a string of ‘lows’. It has been without the height of example, the depth of experience, the width of an examined vision for service to India. It has come to look and to be debilitated if in the manner of Chandrapore it is also deathless.
To be sure, sudden and sometimes spectacular revivings in elections at the national and state levels have given it spurts of status as in the prime ministerships of Nehru’s charismatic heirs, Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, and of that noble man, Manmohan Singh, but they have been compromised by events and setbacks too well-known to need recounting. The bitter fact is that for more than half a century now, the Congress has become an edifice that has seen its day, a mural that has crumbled in large part, a book that has lost its front and back.
True, the low days of the Congress have been waterboarded to stay low and sink lower by the party’s adversaries devoid of scruple. True, Herculean efforts have been and are being made by its leadership comprising the Nehru-Gandhis — Sonia Gandhi, Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi — and diligent Congressmen like the current Congress president, Mallikarjun Kharge, and Jairam Ramesh to bring it up for air. But the party’s systoles and diastoles beat ‘low’. Very low.
I say this knowing its stunning victory in the just-concluded elections to the Kerala assembly must bring it relief, as would its sideways entry into office through a post-election tie-up with the victorious C. Joseph Vijay in Tamil Nadu. Is there anything to those two events beyond the obvious success for the Congress? Alas, there is.
The Congress has a genius for ruining its moments and spans of triumphs. It is almost as if something in the DNA of its leaders spites its successes among the public. The delays over the choice of a leader in Kerala had to and did give Prime Minister Narendra Modi material to scoff at it. The ten-day tussle among three contenders for the chief ministership was unedifying and just about averted a total embarrassment by what is said to be Sonia Gandhi’s intercession. The chronic debate on whether Karnataka’s chief minister, Siddaramaiah, will or will not yield place to D.K. Shivakumar is now the GOP’s next big internal challenge. How much this clash of two self-projections will hurt the party in the elections due is anybody’s guess.
In Tamil Nadu, the Congress’s decision to add its small but crucial numbers to Vijay’s precarious list of supporters was politically intelligent at a time when Vijay’s massive mandate was being put through the coffee grinder of dubious maths. But even coffee berries dropping into the machine do so in some order, some discipline. They do not hop skip and jump. Opportunism and politics are old partners but the frenzy for office-holding hurts norms of political dignity. As I write this, I do not know if one or more of the five Congress MLAs are to become ministers under Vijay. I hope the opening will not make the five competitive inter se.
Two other allies of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu that joined up with Vijay did so after observing what may be called the protocol of alliances. They informed the outgoing chief minister, M.K. Stalin, of their intention in the interests of electoral democracy and ‘to prevent president’s rule’. They did more. They said to him they were not leaving the DMK-led alliance, an arrangement which does not seem to trouble Vijay. Not surprisingly, Stalin appreciated the courtesy. And could not but comment on the Congress, which won five seats as part of its alliance with the DMK, not so much as contacting him after the results to express solidarity but crossing over to Vijay as easily as one might a sidewalk. Politics sees strange things and who can tell of the future, but Stalin is not going to forget too fast the Congress’s manoeuvre described by The Hindu as “opportunistic”.
In West Bengal, the Congress and the Trinamool Congress were not going to fight together. But was the shrill pitch of criticism of Mamata Banerjee in the Congress campaign wise? Was it right? Rahul Gandhi led the charge in the party’s campaign with Mamata Banerjee being its polemical target no less than the Bharatiya Janata Party. And so, when, post-results, Rahul Gandhi advised the state Congress to “rise above petty politics” in its attitude to the defeated Mamata Banerjee, the victorious BJP enjoyed the contradiction. The state Congress must have been hurt by the observation, for it had striven very hard in the campaign and it was not the author of pettiness. But the Congress leader’s referring to pettiness was absolutely the right thing to say to the party as a whole, not just to the party in West Bengal. Self-criticism has not been the Congress’s strong point in recent years and the party needs to reflect on the ‘pettiness’ point seriously and urgently.
Is there any hope for the Congress coming out of the Chandrapore syndrome?
Yes, there is. But only if the Congress will regain its tikhnota (acuity) and shed all ksudrata (pettiness).
