The hardliners in the Congress headed by Mr. Y.B. Chavan cannot be surprised either by the exit of 15 Rajasthan MLAs (out of 30) within 24 hours of the adoption of the go-it-alone resolution by the two-day political convention in New Delhi or by the interpretation the Maharashtra chief minister, Mr. Vasantrao Patil, has given to it. For the Rajasthan legislators had let it be known in advance that they would leave the organization if the convention opposed merger with the Congress (I) and Mr. Patil is not the kind of person who easily gives up his views which in this case favour ‘unity’ with Mrs. Gandhi’s party. But the two developments – the exodus in Rajasthan and the Maharashtra chief minister’s continued commitment to work for cooperation with the Congress (I) – should leave Mr. Chavan and his supporters in no doubt that the New Delhi conference has not settled anything. Indeed, they themselves could not have expected it to do so. They have been too long in the political game to have believed that a resolution, even a unanimous one, could suffice to persuade Congressmen to resist the pull of the sister organization in the context of the party’s poor performance in the recent vidhan sabha poll in Karnataka, Andhra and Maharashtra and the forfeiture of the security deposits of its nominees in Karnal and in Azamgarh by-elections. They apparently organised the conference because they felt that they needed what could be called a mandate to keep away from the Congress (I), that they could secure it and that this would strengthen their moral claim to continue to speak for the party even as its ranks continue to deplete.
Mr. Chavan has spoken of the “long, hard and lonely journey” ahead. So it will be for those who stick to the go-it-alone policy. Not many may and those who do may reach nowhere. Their task, already extremely difficult, can become virtually impossible if the Janata government decides to prosecute Mrs. Gandhi on the various charges of abuse of authority during the emergency which the Shah Commission has listed, or to disfranchise her as it is being urged to do by Mr. Jyotirmoy Basu and others who do not understand the simple proposition that there is a limit beyond which laws and courts cannot protect democracy. But all this – Mrs. Gandhi’s pull with the people, the consequent inference that the revulsion against the emergency has turned out to be rather short-lived and the blunders the Janata leadership has committed and decides to commit – cannot be cited as an argument in favour of surrender to Mrs. Gandhi on the part of men who are no longer prepared to take orders from her.
There should be no confusion on this issue. If the Congress seeks merger or “unity” with the Congress (I), it has to be on her terms which is only a different way of saying that they have to accept her as the supreme leader as in the past. Whatever Mr. Vasantrao Patil may say or believe, she has not changed her style of functioning. In fact she cannot change. Figures who consider themselves charismatic do not as a rule share leadership with others except to some extent with the designated successor. Mr. Chavan and others of his persuasion will, if they are honest to themselves, have to recognise two additional points. First, theirs is more of a moral and personal protest – moral because they espouse certain values and personal because they are reacting belatedly to the humiliations Mrs. Gandhi heaped upon them during the emergency and even earlier – than a political struggle which they largely lost in the elections last February. As such they have to be prepared to be reduced to a small rump. Secondly, they cannot fight on two fronts – against the Congress (I) as well as the Janata. They would be quixotic.