The real question about the drama unfolding in Madhya Pradesh is not the ethics of how a dynast has treated a feudal lord, or whether Jyotiraditya Scindia betrayed the Congress, or whether the Congress failed him. These questions invite us to be vicarious participants in the durbar intrigues and make us lose perspective.
There is little to debate about the young Maharaja’s motives of shifting from the Congress to possibly the BJP. The calculus of political opportunism explains it fully. It would be a waste of time to expose Scindia’s hypocrisy. Similarly, it is pointless to ask if the Congress handled the situation well. Something has to be wrong with a party that manages to lose key assets at a time when it desperately needs to conserve and rebuild. The BJP’s role in this sordid game needs no interpretation: the regime is out to decimate any opposition at any cost and would not allow any compunction, convention or the Constitution to come in the way.
Make no mistake about it: the Congress is imploding and everyone inside seems to be a spectator. When party leaders take to media editorials to make suggestions to their own party, you know that the party is in a free fall. The question we should be asking is this: is the unravelling of the Congress party something to worry about for those who are not party insiders? If yes, what is to be done?
Also read: Jyotiraditya Scindia — Congress loyalist & friend of Gandhis, until he felt betrayed by them
Party, space, concept
After the Lok Sabha election, I had argued that the Congress must die. As is the fate of such one-liners, everyone remembered it, yet no one bothered to read what I meant by it and why I said what I did. My point was fairly simple: Congress had failed to perform its historic duty to be the bulwark against the possible dismantling of our republic by the current Narendra Modi regime. Rather, it stood in the way of anyone trying to create an alternative to reclaim the republic. An instant and brilliant response by professor Suhas Palshikar had warned me against a literal and over-enthusiastic reading of wishing death to the Congress. Revisiting that argument might be a response to the big question that we should be asking today.
The Congress could mean three different things: a party, a space, a concept.
It could mean the Indian National Congress party registered with the Election Commission. Like a majority of political parties in India, it appears to be a family-run enterprise. The ruling Nehru-Gandhi family may well be benevolent in its intent. The late Jaipal Reddy said this to me about the Gandhi family: “They are truly liberal in outlook, but feudal by temperament”. Something similar could be said about many Congress leaders. There is no reason why a republican should be bothered about the fate of this dynasty or the health of its political enterprise. In a political market, firms take birth and they die. Creative destruction should be welcomed in politics, just as in business. We should not mourn the death of a political enterprise.
Also read: Inside story of how Rahul Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi forced Jyotiraditya Scindia to dump Congress
Congress also happens to symbolise a space, that of a nation-wide, mainstream opposition party that is needed more than ever before to take on the BJP’s hegemony. After the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP’s hegemonic hold over national politics has got tighter. While regional parties have managed to match or defeat the BJP in state assembly elections, they simply don’t have the will or the capacity to take on the BJP’s project of dismantling the Indian republic, brick by brick. The republic needs a nation-wide political force that can resist this onslaught and match the BJP’s electoral and political machine. At this moment, the Congress is the only candidate for this slot. Hence, its coming apart is a cause for worry, even for those who wish to have nothing to do with this party.
Finally, the Congress also is a concept. It stands for the idea of a centrist coalition of social groups, classes and regions. It stands for a political arrangement that accommodates all conflicting visions of India without giving in to any extreme. Above all, it stands for a non-majoritarian way of creating electoral majority. This concept is not optional. This is the only way the BJP’s hegemony can be countered. This is the only concept that can hold India together. Every Indian must grieve the loss of this concept.
Also read: Those asking if BJP will suit Jyotiraditya Scindia are barking up the wrong tree. This is why
A mahagathbandhan inside
The crisis today is not that Jyotiraditya Scindia has betrayed the Congress, or that Congress failed to give him his due space. The real crisis is that Congress leadership has betrayed this concept of Congress, that Congress party has failed to develop the capacity to occupy the space that was its own. The crisis is not just the loss of a useful leader in one region of a state, or even the impending loss of a state government in Madhya Pradesh. The real crisis is that the party does not seem to have a centre of gravity that can hold it together. For quite some time, the Congress has had no vision, no strategy, no message, no messenger. Now, there is an absence of political judgement and a loss of nerves as well. This is not merely the crisis of one party. This crisis can deepen the crisis of Indian democracy.
The latest episode shows that the Congress has exhausted its internal resources for dealing with this crisis. To be sure, the party still has brilliant thinkers, smart managers, crafty communicators, leaders with solid mass base, moneybags, and so on. But these are individual leaders and political entrepreneurs. There is no person or process to gather it all together and turn it into a collective strength that could be deployed to save the republic.
Sooner than later, the Congress must face it: the party needs outsiders to rescue the space and the concept that it named. There was a time when the Congress fed and sustained non-Congress parties. We may have reached the moment for a reversal of this flow. The vision that the Congress once stood for is articulated more coherently outside the party today. The party has no organisation and cadre to speak of. But a large number of movements aligned to the same vision have greater organisational depth. The answer is not merely a mahagathbandhan of the Congress with all anti-BJP parties. The Congress must itself become a mahagathbandhan to reclaim the republic. Or face death.
The author is the national president of Swaraj India. Views are personal.