A fortnight after the AICC session in Bombay, it is still not quite clear why Mrs Gandhi ordered the show. Perhaps this is a false search – the search for a specific purpose. After all, the AICC had not met for three years; if only for the sake of form, it had to meet sometime somewhere; and so it met in Bombay last month.
But once it had been decided to hold an AICC session, even if for the sake of form, some purpose should have been put into it. In a sense, it was, as was reflected in the resolutions which the AICC adopted. But any party strategist should have known in advance that this approach of crying wolf and holding others responsible for its appearance (or presence) was not viable and that it would not work.
Since Mrs Gandhi has no worthwhile advisers, she should have taken certain precautions herself. She should have seen to it that no speaker would praise either her or Mr Rajiv Gandhi, especially the latter, in extravagant terms. This would not have cost her anything. On the contrary, it would have helped her, perhaps considerably.
Her hold on the party is complete, not because Congressmen are so fond of her and her style of functioning but because they are wholly dependent on her for their survival in power. They profess loyalty to her, her son and indeed her family and prostrate themselves before her and even Mr Rajiv Gandhi, not because they are genuinely loyal and feel beholden, but because they wish to retain or gain some office. In the process they demean themselves but they also gain some advantage. What does she gain? She in fact loses. For the impression spreads that she surrounds herself only with sycophants and that loses her some of her popularity, which is her greatest asset.
No Critical Review
It would, of course, have been unrealistic to expect that the belated AICC session in Bombay could have served as an occasion for promoting a genuine debate in the party. But even a show of a debate would have been useful. Mrs Gandhi and the party (in that order) would have risen in popular esteem if a couple of speakers had been put up to give expression to popular feelings and grievances. It was not for nothing that Mr Nehru often functioned as opposition leader to his own government and allowed partymen to criticize the functioning of Congress governments not only in the states but also at the Centre. He knew, almost instinctively, that this helped him deny the opposition an effective platform.
Mrs Gandhi is only too well aware that for almost a decade the people in India have been deeply concerned over the question of declining standards of morality in public life, especially in the ruling party. She must also know that while today there is no Jayaprakash Narayan who can whip up a powerful movement on this issue, the Congress (I) continues to lose support, especially among the urban intelligentsia, on this account. So she should have utilized the AICC session to send the message that she intended to enforce certain standards and norms on her partymen.
As it happened, she sent out a very different message. By including Mr AR Antulay among the special invitees to the meeting of the Working Committee she created the impression that it does not really matter, as far as she is concerned, if a Congress (I) chief minister is caught trading official favours for hard cash, or if the charge is endorsed by two judges of a high court, or if he is forced to resign on that count, or if the governor sanctions his prosecution on criminal charges, or if he attempts to blackmail her by holding out not-so-veiled threats of exposing her own alleged involvement in his deals. This might have been a demonstration of generosity on her part. But it has been seen, as it was bound to be, as a demonstration of indifference to the issue of public morality or of succumbing to blackmail.
Placating Antulay
It can be argued that Mr Antulay’s crimes were no worse than those of other chief ministers who have been removed by Mrs Gandhi – Mr Chenna Reddy, Mr Jagannath Pahadia and Dr Jagannath Mishra – or are still in office, and that if they can continue to be regarded as Congress (I) leaders, so can he. But there is a difference. The charges against the others have not been established in a court of law. So, in Mr Antulay’s case, even expediency demanded a certain measure of caution.
Mrs Gandhi is too shrewd not to have known that Mr Antulay would utilize the invitation to create the impression that he was on the come-back trail and that it was only a matter of time before he would either return to the office of chief minister in Bombay or join the Union cabinet. In any case, he did precisely that. Witness the number of news “reports” on the ‘significance’ of the invitation to him. At least this should have served as a warning. But it did not. Mr Antulay was invited to second the motion on communal riots.
This as well as the invitation is privately explained by Congress (I) leaders and supporters in terms of Mrs Gandhi’s concern for the supposed loss of support among Muslims, the recent resignation of Syed Mir Qasim from the party and Dr Farooq Abdullah’s attempt to project himself as an all-India figure. One wonders whether they realize the implications of what they are saying – which is that Mrs Gandhi has come to be critically dependent on Mr Antulay’s goodwill.
It would have almost certainly produced grave consequences if it had been true. But it is not. The Muslims do not regard Mr Antulay as their leader. They never did. The Muslim community will, as it has done in the past, extend support to the Congress (I) or withhold it on the basis of its appreciation of Mrs Gandhi’s own approach towards it. By appearing to be weak and therefore anxious to placate individuals such as Mr Antulay, she can only hurt her prospects of retaining, or winning back, Muslim support. And she should know, if she does not, that a number of so-called leaders in her own party, if not yet in her entourage, have seen in the invitation to Mr Antulay a move to rehabilitate him and have begun to behave accordingly. Some of the “enemies” of yesterday have begun to discover virtues in him.
Outside Bombay and Maharashtra, it might appear that I have paid too much attention to Mr Antulay. If I have, I have done so because I am persuaded that Mrs Gandhi has sent out a very wrong signal which she could ill afford at this stage, regardless of whether or not she is planning an early election.
Mrs Gandhi has often criticized the press for raising the issue of public morality in relation only to her party. This is a just complaint in a sense. Opposition parties are full of individuals who attracted a lot of adverse attention when they held important offices in the Union and state governments as Congressmen. By and large, the press turns a blind eye to their past. On a surface view, this is patently unfair. But implicit in this special attention to the Congress (I) by the press are several unstated, indeed often unconscious, assumptions which are rather flattering to the party and its leader.
The press assumes that the future of the nation is critically dependent on the survival in good shape of the Congress (I), that its survival can be assured only if it sheds the bad elements that have crept into it, and that it has in Mrs Gandhi a leader who commands the necessary authority to so purge the party. Whoever expected Mr Morarji Desai as Prime Minister to impose any kind of discipline on his cabinet colleagues?
Moral Standards
This is, however, an issue at best of peripheral importance. The health of the Congress (I) will not improve if the press is to be kinder to it. And so long as its health does not improve, its image cannot and will not. This has been the central issue in India’s public life since the early seventies and it remains the central issue even today.
In purely rational terms, it may not be fair for many of us to ask for high standards of morality in public life. Many of us do not mind cutting corners, evading taxes, making illicit gains and bending the rules to our advantage. But we do expect public men to observe certain moral standards.
Finally, there can be genuine differences of opinion on whether Mrs Gandhi has been exaggerating, deliberately or otherwise, the external dangers the country faces – the US arms supply to Pakistan, the increasing instability in the region as a result of a variety of factors such as the intensification of the Soviet-US competition, the Iran-Iraq war, and the continuing tensions in Lebanon and elsewhere in West Asia, the recent anti-Tamil pogroms in Sri Lanka and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Bangladesh – and the possible consequences of the rise of regional parties within the country. But there can be no differences of opinion on how she can best respond to these challenges. She can do so by activating the party and convincing the people that she is both anxious and able to give them not only “a government that works” but also a government that works honestly. The AICC session, well organized though it was, cannot be said to have served the purpose of sending out such a message.
The Times of India, 2 November 1983