Mr. Sanjay Gandhi is back in active politics. Last Saturday’s decision of the Congress (I) Working Committee to grant financial autonomy to its youth wing clearly points in that direction. The C(I)WC’s resolution does not say that the Youth Congress (I) is to be restored to the status it enjoyed vis-à-vis the parent organisation during the emergency. On the contrary, a committee has been set up to make recommendations regarding the future of the Youth Congress (1). But this is a mere formality which is also designed to secure Mr. Devraj Urs’s and Mr. Chenna Reddy’s endorsement of a decision which has in fact already been taken. For, Mr. A. R. Antulay has said that the Congress (I) leadership has decided to “strengthen” Youth Congress (I) so that it can counter the “evil influence of communal organisations like the RSS”. And since the Youth Congress (I) has been and remains synonymous with Mr. Gandhi, implicit in this move is the decision to project him in a prominent role once again. As during the emergency, he need not formally head the Youth Congress (I) in order to be its effective boss.
It is open to question whether Mrs. Gandhi has initiated the move or merely acquiesced in it. This issue has been debated in the past at great length to no advantage because no one outside the former Prime Minister’s family has been in a position to cite conclusive evidence either way. Since that is still the case, it is pointless to raise the question. But whoever is responsible for the present decision, it does provide confirmation for the view that Mr. Gandhi has all along been advising Mrs. Gandhi from behind the scene and that his influence accounts for the fluctuations in her attitude to the talks for unity of the two Congress parties and the final collapse of those efforts. This view has been widespread in the Congress (S) and it is no longer easy even for Mrs. Gandhi’s well wishers to reject it. Some among them may not object to it. But that is a different proposition.
On the face of it at least, the timing of the decision to strengthen the Youth Congress (1) under Mr. Gandhi’s de facto leadership is not accidental. It comes in the wake of the end of the unity talks on the one hand and the subsequent approval by the Rajya Sabha of the Special Courts Bill on the other. Two conclusions follow. First, that when Mrs. Gandhi finally decided, or felt obliged, to reverse her stance on the issue of Congress unity, she had either already made up her mind to bring Mr. Sanjay Gandhi back into active politics or yielded to his pressure and let him come out into the open. And secondly, that she plans to launch an agitation against the Special Courts Bill so that her every appearance in the proposed court can be converted into a political event. While the first inference is deductive, the second is confirmed by her own address to the Congress (I) parliamentary party last Tuesday and last Saturday’s resolution of the C(I)WC. These two conclusions lead to a third which is that members of Mrs. Gandhi’s praetorian guard will become more important in the Congress (I) than the other leaders, that the “cult of personality” will become even more pronounced in it than it is already and that the more militant Youth Congress (I) will once again command her support as it did during the emergency. This may not unduly weaken her hold among her present supporters, though.
The Times of India, 29 March 1979