Beyond Binaries: From the Gandhis to the crisis of secularism, the woes of the Congress are many

Academic Ramachandra Guha has said the Nehru-Gandhi family needs to go. He isn't wrong, but there are multiple reasons for the unprecedented decline of the Congress.

While accepting that the family is organisationally indispensable but electorally a liability, it is important to look at the various causes of the unprecedented decline of the party.

One reason why the Congress is finding it difficult to take off is the re-politicisation of a large segment of Indian society about a decade back.

Since the days of globalisation, urban youth—particularly in larger cities—had little interest in politics. Cities like Mumbai and Delhi posted very low voting percentages. This began to change with the Lokpal agitation of Anna Hazare, which was covered round the clock by television channels. Add to this damning CAG reports about the allotment of 2G spectrum and coal blocks, and corruption seemed to be the prime concern of the day.

As scores of people gathered at Jantar Mantar and also Ramlila Maidan in the national capital—and these congregations were covered by the media with a rare sense of focus—the Congress acquired the image of a party that was synonymous with corruption. Repeated attacks by a clutch of activists—often left-of-centre—and the BJP reinforced this image.

Social media played a crucial role, with the BJP stealing a march over the Congress in the virtual world. Rahul Gandhi was repeatedly panned by social media as an incompetent dynast, something that gave him a non-serious image in the early days of his political career. One recalls a social media message that went viral in those days: “If the opposite of pro is con, what is the opposite of Congress?”

It seems that the result of the massive anti-Congress campaigns of close to a decade back—it is important to note that vote percentage even in cities like Delhi started climbing around 2013—is that the Congress has become the other for a large chunk of people, particularly those who are skilled and tech-savvy.

Apart from a sustained anti-Congress campaign on the social media, a large chunk of the recently politicised youth takes the notion that the Congress is responsible for all of India’s ills as a Biblical truth of sorts. It is a different matter that the UPA government seems to have done a better job than the Modi government on the economic front if one looks at the GDP, poverty reduction and employment patterns. But statistics have little chance of standing in front of deeply held beliefs. The latter requires no evidence, as they are cross-validated by large chunks of the middle class.

What should worry the Congress is historical evidence that waves of fresh politicisation leave a lasting impact on the minds of the newly politicised. An early wave of Gandhian politicisation since the 1920s had an impact that lasted several decades. Even the socialists and the right-wing Jana Sangh had to forge alliances to be able to come to power in 1967, as no single party was any match for the Congress.

The second wave of politicisation came with the JP movement of the 1970s. While Indira Gandhi could claw back to power after the 1977 setback, this wave did have a lasting impact in the sense that many, if not most, leaders of north Indian regional parties as well as the BJP till date are products of the JP movement.

The question is: when will the deep prejudice vis-à-vis the Congress that the Lokpal agitation and the Nirbhaya protests set in motion wane? Casual conversations with common citizens suggest that even those who are not convinced by the Modi government say they won’t vote for the Congress.

One discernible pattern is that the BJP performs much better in the Lok Sabha elections than in Vidhan Sabha elections, where the Congress sometimes does well.

The pattern is too clear to be missed. The BJP got 38.5-percent votes in the last Delhi assembly polls but had secured 56-percent votes in Delhi in the Lok Sabha polls held earlier in 2019. Other states showed similar trends: the BJP got 36-percent and 33-percent votes in the Haryana and Jharkhand assembly polls, respectively, but secured well above 50-percent votes in the Lok Sabha in both states. In Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and MP, the BJP secured between 33 and 41-percent votes in the assembly polls but polled between 51 and 59-percent votes in the Lok Sabha elections held soon after.

The Congress generally does reasonably well in state assembly polls in those states where it has credible regional leadership. The examples of Punjab and Rajasthan under Captain Amarinder Singh and Ashok Gehlot, respectively, stand out.

However, the voting patterns reverse in most states in the Lok Sabha polls, when the contest seems, in the minds of the people, to be one between Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi, and the BJP sweeps most states where it has a good presence. In 2019, Rahul Gandhi himself lost from Amethi, a constituency that has been seen as the pocket borough of the Gandhis.

Any keen observer can discern from these patterns that while Modi bolsters the electoral prospects of the BJP, the Gandhis actually pull the Congress down. Yet, they stay at the helm because of a party culture—constructed in the time of Indira Gandhi—where it is believed that the family is the fulcrum of the party, which will come apart in its absence. Why it should be so no Congress leader is willing to explain, but this is a belief that holds sway.

There are multiple reasons for the collapse of the Nehru-Gandhi brand. One is a sustained, targeted, campaign against the family by the BJP. This campaign draws strength from the fact that members of the family have consistently been Prime Ministers or party presidents. The charge that the party is dynastically run, thus, sticks. And in times when democracy is measured not in terms of freedoms but in terms of symbolic possibilities of individual mobility, the Congress comes across as a hub of privilege. Modi, on the contrary, comes across as someone who rose from scratch.

The centrality of the Nehru-Gandhi family in the Congress has allowed the BJP to claim the legacy of almost all Congress freedom fighters except Nehru, which the party is happy not to claim. It doesn’t matter to people that these figures were dyed-in-the-wool Congressmen. The Congress could do nothing when the BJP claimed its freedom-struggle stalwart Sardar Patel, as the party culture focuses more on the family than the wide and rich legacy the party can claim as its own.

What often surprised me while driving past the AICC office in Delhi on October 31st—Indira Gandhi’s death anniversary and Sardar Patel’s birth anniversary—was the fact that placards put up by Congress workers celebrating the late PM far outnumbered placards recalling Patel. Few will be able to accept that Sardar Patel should not be feted the way Indira Gandhi or her son Rajiv Gandhi have been. But, despite warning signs and serious reversals, the Congress shows no signs of rethinking this family-first culture, a recent, abortive, show of dissent by some leaders notwithstanding.

This apart, secularism, the prime distinguishing factor between the Congress and the BJP, is in crisis. It has few takers today. One reason for this is that opportunistic alliances of most regional parties—which became secular when in alliance with the Congress but shed it when they allied with the BJP for a share of power—made the idea look like one of convenience.

To succeed, secularism requires constant reaffirmation. The Congress had no cadre for decades on end to perform the task. Official textbooks tried to do it, but in a society where technological and managerial education alone are a default middle-class aspiration, it was impossible for constitutional values to take root. The investment of the youth in the values of the Republic is far below their investment in coaching for admission to a good engineering college. And we shouldn’t forget that even our Republic Day celebrations have never focused on the core values of the constitution but are a spectacular display of the might of the state, choosing to showcase just regional diversity as a sideshow.

Unlike Hindutva, which appeals more to passions and the unconscious as a claimant to the world of the faith of one’s ancestors, secularism lives in the realm of reason. It lacks the passion that Hindutva has. And the Congress also lacks the cadre that the RSS has at its disposal for spreading its worldview.

With the “war on terror” led by the US after 9/11, the belief that the west is growing ‘Islamophobic’ also provided a sense of global resonance for Hindutva. It was no longer seen as a backward idea but as one that resonated with the biases of developed nations. With its multi-religious leadership—the BJP left no stone unturned to underline that Sonia Gandhi was an Italian-born Christian—the Congress proved to be a loser vis-à-vis a Hindu-dominated BJP in times of a turn to the cultural right in India. Attempts by Congress leaders to project Rahul Gandhi as a ‘janeu-dhari Hindu’ have only invited ridicule and reinforced the BJP’s point.

Lastly, the long-term success of a political project depends on how committed the workers of a party are. Congress workers have gone dormant within six years of the party losing power. The BJP and the erstwhile Jana Sangh took decades to come to power, but this never dampened the morale of party workers. The present Congress seems more like a web of transactional relationships than a party with an organic body of workers committed to a vision of the world. One reason, of course, is that centrist politics seldom has the passion that right-wing and left-wing politics have. It isn’t ranged against anything passionately enough to charge up its workers.

The biggest success of the BJP is that secularism isn’t discussed any longer and even opposition to it is voiced in identitarian terms. Some talk of a Dalit-Muslim alliance; sections of Muslims are willing to vote for AIMIM in areas of high Muslim population. The Congress has no chance when the debate is between majority and marginal identities.

The present farm agitation may benefit the Congress in Punjab and Haryana. However, the overall woes of the party may not end anytime soon, as the odds are stacked against it in more ways than one.

—Vikas Pathak has been a political journalist for a decade-and-a-half and teaches at Asian College of Journalism, Chennai. The views expressed are personal