The Kamlapati Tripathi affair is closed! So we are told by those who speak in the name of the Congress president, Mr. Rajiv Gandhi. On the face of it the claim is justified. On Monday Mr. Gandhi summoned the great captains of the organisation collectively known as the Congress working committee or the Congress high-command. They duly met and fired their verbal salvos at the 82-year-old man; by way of explanation he repeated what he had already said more than once, which is that he had written the letter to Mr. Gandhi on April 22 in fulfillment of his duty as an old soldier of the party and the Nehru family, that he had not authorized its publication in newspapers and indeed that it had been stolen and released to the press by those who wanted to harm him and the party; otherwise he accepted the criticism in good spirit and even voted for the resolution which is a point-by-point reply to his letter. And if the old man behaved as a disciplined soldier is expected to behave, the great captains were not wanting in camaraderie. Those who had earlier demanded that Mr. Tripathi should either be made to resign his nominal office of working president or sent packing dropped their plea. Finally, if there could be any doubt that the matter had in fact been disposed of, it was effectively removed. After the great gathering the chiefs even produced Mr. Tripathi before waiting newspapermen flanked by such heavyweights as Mr. Arjun Singh and Mr. P.V. Narasimha Rao so that he could repeat his set piece and finally exorcise the evil spirit he might have unleashed.
But there is a little catch in all this. The catch is the leadership’s inability to make up its mind whether Mr. Tripathi’s letter represented a major challenge or an insignificant one. The resolution adopted by the working committee betrays this confusion. It speaks of a “discredited rump bereft of any support” apparently in both the party and the country and of “the shameful activities of a few individuals”. There is more than semantic confusion here. The “rump” is what is left behind after an unsuccessful battle; a small attacking force cannot be called a “rump”. But that is a small issue which need not detain us. We are concerned with two points. First, the comparison with Mrs. Indira Gandhi and secondly, the ostentatious display of power. The resolution says: “Accusations were flung at her at every step that her policies and actions were destroying the philosophy of Nehru… Now, Rajiv Gandhi has to bear the brunt of the same kind of malice”. The aptness or otherwise of the comparison is not pertinent to the issue under discussion, the relevant point being that the opposition to Mrs. Indira Gandhi did not come from a “handful of men”. A majority of organizational bosses were ranged against her in the party in both 1969 and 1978 and a significant section of the intelligentsia refused to reconcile itself to her rule from 1973 till the time of her death on October 31, 1984. As it happens, the impression created by the ferocity of the formulation in the resolution is reinforced by the decision to summon a meeting of the working committee to deal with the matter. The two together provide incontrovertible evidence that Mr. Rajiv Gandhi has taken the Tripathi challenge seriously.
This raises the question as to why Mr. Gandhi does so. In a sense, the answer is obvious. Mr. Gandhi’s leadership style to which Mr. Tripathi drew pointed attention has caused widespread concern in the Congress party and the country. If this can be dismissed as a subjective proposition, the virtual collapse of the Punjab accord cannot be similarly disposed of. The Akalis who were to lead the struggle for restoration of normalcy in the state have split; Mr. Barnala remains in office, courtesy the Congress party; many of the men he released on assuming office have participated in acts of terrorism and have had to be rearrested; he is principally concerned with the struggle in the Akali party and is, therefore, unable to act with the necessary determination and firmness. The list can go on but that is not necessary. By raising this issue, Mr. Tripathi hit Mr. Gandhi’s Achilles heel. But this is not a Congress party issue and as such it cannot be settled either by the resolution the working committee had adopted or by Mr. Tripathi’s statements affirming his satisfaction with Mr. Gandhi’s leadership. The Congress ceased to be a party long ago; it is wholly dependent on the leader for its survival and therefore incapable of either challenging him or coming to his rescue. The country, however, is a different matter. And that is where Mr. Gandhi’s leadership is being tested and will be tested in months and years to come.