As was only to be expected, the party’s crushing defeat in Haryana has caused deep concern in the Congress leadership all over the country. The Working Committee has met and accepted the need for corrective measures. Understandably these measures will take some time to be worked out.
Meanwhile, three propositions are self-evident. First, the Congress organisation has been a shambles for years and needs to be restored to some measure of health. Secondly, the framework Mr Rajiv Gandhi adopted soon after taking over as Prime Minister in respect of both domestic and foreign policies has not helped shore up either his own or his party’s position and requires to be reviewed and overhauled. Finally, the euphoria for the Prime Minister himself, especially among the middle classes, is by and large over. Indeed, it would not be much of an exaggeration to say that he faces a crisis of confidence in his leadership.
Two other points are equally obvious. The Congress leadership will need to attend to all three problems if the party is to have a reasonable chance to rescue its fortunes. There cannot be much doubt that otherwise these are almost certain to decline seriously. Haryana may not provide a clue to the mood in the rest of the Hindi-speaking belt which is vital to the future of the Congress. But there cannot be much doubt that the mood is generally sour and anti-Congress.
Incarnation Theory
The reception Mr VP Singh has received wherever he has gone is an expression of that mood even if he himself is still a Congressman. That, however, only emphasises the second point I wish to make, which is that the Congress cannot have much of a chance to regain its popularity if the credibility of the leader is not restored. The process of renewal has to begin with Mr Rajiv Gandhi himself. Popular confidence in his leadership must be restored if the fortunes of the Congress party are to be rescued. It should hardly be necessary to make this point for students of Indian politics. Whether we like it or not, Indian politics is personality oriented. Facts speak for themselves. It is impossible to think of the Congress without Gandhiji from 1918 to 1948, without Mr Nehru from 1928 to 1964 and without Mrs Indira Gandhi from 1969 to 1984.
By way of explanation for this phenomenon, it may be useful to recall a well-known sloka from the Gita. Roughly translated, it would read thus: “Whenever dharma is in trouble, I appear to uphold it.” “I”, of course, stands for Lord Krishna. In scriptural terms, it is a statement of the incarnation theory: the Hindus regard Lord Rama and Lord Krishna as incarnations of Vishnu, one of the three Hindu supreme gods. It is, however, the sloka’s sociological implications which interest us.
Transliterated in those terms it means that whenever there is disorder in society, the Hindu must look for a heroic personality to restore order, though that is impossible. Gandhiji was without doubt such a personality. He was a hero, though not in the godmen tradition. Mr Nehru and Mrs Gandhi did not command a similar stature but in their own way, they too, held out hope, especially among the weak, the meek and the dispossessed.
It is not generally realised that under the thin crust of continuing brahminical hold, the Hindu society was in disarray by the time Gandhiji arrived on the political scene and was desperately, though unconsciously, looking for an avtar. It needs to be emphasised that it was looking for a secular avtar. It was looking for a secular avtar because the secular realm had come to be dominant under the British rule. A proper godman could not fulfil the role he played in holding out hopes that, incidentally, should explain why no godman could compete with Gandhiji in popular appeal and why Gandhiji has not been elevated to the status of a hero-god.
Nehru’s Role
Gandhiji’s appeal was above all to the poor people of India. The upper crust accepted him because the poor rushed to him. Most of the Indian people then were poor; the upper crust was rather thin compared with today. Above all else, Gandhiji’s mass appeal bore testimony to the rise of a mass society which was beginning to replace the ritualistically graded Hindu social order.
Mr Nehru was, of course, cast in a very different mould. But he, too, carved a place for himself as a champion of the down-trodden. He spoke the language of modern socialism which appealed to the generally propertyless intelligentsia. But the common people were not moved by his socialist jargon; they were moved by his transparent sincerity and his abiding concern for the poor and the oppressed. He too held out the hope of the reign of righteousness where the rich and the powerful would not prevail.
The latter, of course, prevailed; they were bound to, if economic growth and not distributive justice was to be independent India’s first priority, as it had to be, regardless of the model of development. But there were always others – other Congress leaders, bureaucrats and businessmen of all sizes and descriptions – whom the people could blame. They gave him the benefit of the doubt.
Mrs Indira Gandhi was as different from Mr Nehru as the latter was from Gandhiji. But she too was most effective as the champion of the poor. She owed her grand victories in 1971 to the “Garibi Hatao” slogan which her earlier actions such as the nationalisation of leading commercial banks and alliance with the CPI had made credible. A great deal has been written about India’s military victory over Pakistan in December 1971 leading to the creation of an independent Bangladesh. This achievement inevitably appealed to the middle classes and the intelligentsia. But they began to desert her soon afterwards. The JP movement in 1974-75 could not have acquired the appeal it did without the desertion of these people. The poor again restored her to office in 1980, but as a measure of desperation rather than of hope. They were just fed up with the Janata rule. The Janata leaders squabbled; that divested them of prestige. The Janata government fell because the constituents could not hold together. But it also meant the rule in the north Indian countryside of middle peasant castes which sit heavy on the landless.
Mr Sanjay Gandhi was the tower of strength for Mrs Indira Gandhi from June 12, 1975, when the Allahabad high court held her election to parliament null and void till the time of his death five years later. But he was also the single most important architect of her misfortune. His Maruti project attracted a lot of adverse publicity and sullied Mrs Gandhi’s image both as a ruler and champion of the poor, the first because its sanctioning and implementation involved grave irregularities and the latter because it showed that the Gandhi family was interested in business which, as is well known, comes third in the Hindu social and value hierarchies. And Mr Sanjay Gandhi completed her ruin by his anti-communist and pro-business stance, his arbitrariness and abuse of authority during the emergency and finally by his decision to collect funds from business houses directly.
Mr Sanjay Gandhi represented the very anti-thesis of what the old brahminical and the new neo-brahminical elite, the former with its dharmasastras and the latter with its constitution (a modern dharmasastra) stood for. Marxist writers have sought to dismiss Mr Sanjay Gandhi’s supporters as lumpens. In reality, he was trying to establish a new power grouping based on the upwardly mobile (often badly educated young men determined to make it) and the scions of the so-called princely order who had gradually moved into the Congress.
Mr Rajiv Gandhi’s personality is very different from his younger brothers. Unlike the latter, he is suave, soft-spoken and tolerant of criticism even if not particularly receptive to it. But while Mr Sanjay Gandhi could at least keep company with a cycle repairer, Mr Rajiv Gandhi has felt comfortable by and large in the company of the members of the jet set. And his natural preferences in respect of economic and foreign policies have not been very different from the deceased brother’s.
Unfamiliar Path
He could not have sustained his popularity on that basis even if the Fairfax affair and the German submarine and Bofors gun deal scandals had not broken into the open. He abandoned the platform on which he sought and secured his mandate in December 1984 within months. It is not possible to say when his constituents began to feel disheartened. But unsubstantiated charges could not have endangered his position to such an extent if disillusionment had not already spread and taken hold of the mass mind.
Only the naive can believe that ready-made solutions are available to him. But the broad direction in which he needs to traverse is obvious enough. The path is unfamiliar to him and it is not as straight as the above statements might suggest on a surface view. Mr Gandhi has undergone his political yajnopavit (thread ceremony) in the last three months. Hopefully he has come of age and is ready for the endless battle ahead. But, quite frankly, he will have to provide the evidence that he is so ready. Great offices like his make contradictory demands. There is, however, no escape from them.
The Times of India, 24 June 1987