The Congress could have attempted two things with its foregrounding of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel at the All India Congress Committee session in Ahmedabad — posting a rebuttal to the criticism that the party is a Nehru-Gandhi concern that puts other leading lights in the shadow and, in the immediate context, seeking to wrest the Sardar’s legacy from rampant appropriation by the Bharatiya Janata Party in the run-up to the assembly elections in Gujarat. But the message the Congress leadership may have sent out with its Sardar chant is rather at a tangent: is the party so devoid of a plan that it can do no better than attempt to reclaim an eminence from its deep past? It is true that the so-called ‘Patel resolution’ of the AICC sets the framework for what the Congress sees as the major political challenge — to fight the Narendra Modi regime which it likens to imperial British rule — but this is not the first time the Congress has put out such a template. It is the same cry, differently christened — a clash of civilisations, war of ideas, battle of ideologies.

The radical differences between the visions of the Congress Party and the sangh-Modi establishment barely need restating. The former remains deeply aligned to the ideals and the principles of the Constitution, the latter, while appearing to pay lip-service to the Constitution, is busy crafting ‘New India’ — bluntly put, a de facto majoritarian India. But the job of India’s chief Opposition party does not get done by spelling out its deep differences with the well-entrenched Modi regime and sounding the alarm every now and then over perils that secular, pluralist India faces. Countering the threat the Congress articulates rather well needs feet on the ground and muscle for a punch-up. Once again, at Ahmedabad, Congress leaders have resolved to revitalise the organisation. Such resolutions have begun to sound tired and repetitive. Rahul Gandhi had promised, publicly, to learn lessons from the whopping assembly defeats of 2013 — including the loss of Delhi to Arvind Kejriwal’s fledgling Aam Aadmi Party — and revive and revitalise the Congress and restore its political virility. The decline since then — in the face of repeated resolutions to return to robust health — has been steady. The summer of 2024, when the Congress doubled its Lok Sabha tally, could have been a moment for the party to pivot. The opportunity was not grabbed. The AICC meet at Ahmedabad offers little clue that anything has changed.