It is pointless to apportion blame for the failure of unity talks between the two Congress parties. Mrs. Gandhi’s share of responsibility may be greater than that of Mr. Swaran Singh and his colleagues because she was in a stronger position to make concessions by virtue of her standing both in the country and in her own party. But she has her own compulsions. While she could have stepped aside in favour of some mutually acceptable person as president of a reunited Congress, her present aides would have found it difficult, if not impossible, to accept the change. Rightly or wrongly, they are convinced that she alone can lead them back to power and that to fulfil that role she has to hold the top position. It would have been easier for her partymen to reconcile themselves to another leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha in place of Mr. Stephen even if they think that he has done a splendid job of harassing the government. But so long as Mrs Gandhi feels, as she clearly does, that the Janata leadership is determined to get her and regards defence of herself as the principal task of her party, whether in its present form or after reunification with the other Congress, she could not have accepted the change unless she was reassured that the new opposition leader would be equally loyal to her personally. And there could be no such assurance. Finally, after a period of wavering she apparently felt that it would be neither fair nor politically expedient for her to accept a three-man committee headed by Mr. Swaran Singh to organise the provincial committees of the reunited Congress and with it the possibility that a number of men and women who had stood by her in her worst days in 1977 and 1978 would be required to make way for those who had been critical of her. Since she could not possibly have been unaware of these difficulties from the very beginning of the unity talks, it can legitimately be argued that she should not have held out the hope of unity to the other side for so long. But that kind of behaviour is not peculiar to Mrs Gandhi and it is not necessary to conclude that Mr. Sanjay Gandhi and his cronies have queered the pitch for her. They may or may not have been opposed to the unity efforts. No one has produced conclusive evidence in that regard either way. The pertinent point is that it is possible to understand Mrs. Gandhi’s reluctance to go in for unity strictly from her own point of view.
As for Mr. Swaran Singh and other pro-unity leaders in the Congress, it is hardly necessary to say that they have not spared any effort to come to terms with Mrs. Gandhi. Their attitude has been specially commendable in view of the fact that there has been considerable criticism of, and opposition to, their moves within their own party, that among the opponents have been Mr YB Chavan and Mr AK Antony who continue to command considerable influence in their respective states of Maharashtra and Kerala and that the impression has persisted, rightly or wrongly, that Mr. Sanjay Gandhi continues to influence his mother’s decisions and that Mrs. Gandhi herself is more interested in building a Praetorian guard than a party. In their anxiety for unity some of the Congress leaders might well have been influenced by the results of the Vidhan Sabha elections in February 1978 and a number of by-elections which showed that their party had fallen well behind the Congress (I) mainly because it no longer possessed the advantage of having Mrs. Gandhi as its leader. But it would be unfair to them as a group to suggest that they were guided solely or even primarily by considerations of expediency. If that was so, they could have easily gone over to her side and not insisted on what they regard as fair terms. These are honourable men who sincerely believe that the country needs a reunited Congress and who have taken the risk of making themselves look ridiculous in order to achieve that objective. They have not been insensitive to the widespread apprehension that Mrs. Gandhi has an authoritarian streak in her character and that she listens to Mr. Sanjay Gandhi’s advice. But they have felt confident of ensuring that a reunited Congress would never again be reduced to a rubber stamp. Thus the charge of their wanting to surrender to Mrs. Gandhi and the so-called caucus has never been justified. They have failed but they can have the satisfaction that they have tried their best.
It will be idle to pretend in the new context that all acrimony can be completely avoided between the two parties. The Congress leaders will inevitably emphasise their opposition to the “cult of personality”, a euphemism for the charge that Mrs. Gandhi places herself above the party, if not the country, and adherence to “inner party democracy”, a phrase which has crept into Indian politics from the post-Stalin debates in the Soviet Union and the world communist movement. For, while the pro-unity leaders in the Congress will be tempted to do so because they have to convince their rank and file that they never intended to deviate from these principles, the anti-unity ones would naturally wish to derive the maximum political advantage from the collapse of the talks at the cost of both their colleagues and Mrs. Gandhi. But this acrimony should not be pushed too far. For the entire Indian political scene is in turmoil so much so that no one can predict who may need to align with whom and how soon. As such the door for the resumption of unity efforts should be kept open by men of goodwill on both sides. This plea can in fact be extended to cover men like Mr. Jagjivan Ram who have spent their lifetime in the Congress and still regard a reunified Congress party as an ideal instrument for managing the political affairs of the country. But that is a different proposition which is not
under discussion at present. The pertinent points right now are that there is much in common between the two Congress parties, that their leaders should not foul the atmosphere unnecessarily and that, in any case, their first task is to maintain unity in their own parties. The last statement may not apply as much to the Congress (1) as it does to the Congress which has been badly divided on the question of the unity talks. But Mrs. Gandhi must know as well as anyone else that hers is by no means a united party and that she cannot run it the way she could run the undivided Congress when she was the prime minister.
An attempt to preserve unity in the Congress by any reckoning must mean not only the continued presence of Mr YB Chavan in its top leadership but also the return to the party of his adherents in Maharashtra who had left it at least with his acquiescence. This is, of course, easier said than done because considerable bitterness exists between the two groups in Maharashtra. Mr. Vasantrao Patil and his supporters, for example, remain highly aggrieved over the manner in which Mr. Sharad Pawar and his aides brought down the Congress-Congress (I) coalition last year. But the task in Maharashtra is urgent and must be accomplished. Without that Mr. Chavan cannot play the role of a major national figure which he, above all others in the Congress, is best qualified to play. He has not been sufficiently active since the beginning of the unity talks, perhaps because he has not been quite clear about the desirable course of action, though he has been in no doubt that he himself could not return to Mrs. Gandhi’s camp ever again. But now that his line has won out, he owes it to himself to get busy boosting the morale of his partymen. An effort should also be made to heal other wounds in the Congress. Mr. Swaran Singh was obviously rash in accepting the resignations from the working committee of Dr Karan Singh and Mr. Chandrajit Yadav. He should now bring them back, perhaps to begin with as permanent invitees. He himself is said to be toying with the idea of resigning. He will be ill-advised to do so at this stage.
The Times of India, 14 March 1979