Irony was writ large when the successors of Jawaharlal Nehru, whose 60th death anniversary will be observed on 27 May, cast their votes for the 18th Lok Sabha elections on Saturday. Registered as voters in New Delhi constituency, Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Vadra and her children voted in a seat where there is no Congress candidate—New Delhi having been conceded by the Grand Old Party(GOP) to Aam Aadmi Party(AAP) as part of an alliance, which Narendra Modi recently referred to as “panjey mein jhadoo” (broom in hand—reference to the two party symbols). Nehru, or for that matter Indira Gandhi or Rajiv Gandhi, would not have envisioned a scenario when their family would perhaps be voting not for Indian National Congress but for a party which was born in the womb of anti-Congressism.
Congress is contesting the smallest number of seats, 328, in this general election. It had put up 330 candidates, but in Surat and Indore the party’s nominees withdrew at the eleventh hour, conceding walkovers to Bharatiya Janata Party. In Puri, the Congress candidate quit the race citing pecuniary reasons. The campaign has seen an open spat between Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and its West Bengal Pradesh president Adhir Ranjan Choudhury on the question of the party central leadership’s softness towards the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress. Apart from their respective organisational positions Kharge and Chudhury are the leaders of the Congress Parliamentary Party in Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha respectively. Kharge’s posters were defiled outside Congress office in Kolkata after the spat, which Kharge later tried to reconcile by praising Choudhury’s organisational skills.
The Sonia Gandhi family, which has been at the helm of the GOP since 1998 prides itself as heirs to the traditions of Nehru and Indira Gandhi. They are somewhat wary of the legacy of Feroze Gandhi. While seeking votes for Rahul Gandhi in Rae Bareli they refer to the constituency as karmabhoomi of Indira and Sonia—the fact that Feroze was the MP for two terms, winning in 1952 and 1957, is papered over.
At a time when BJP’s entire effort is aimed at running down the Congress era, finding fault is almost all decisions of Nehru, Indira and Rajiv, the Sonia family mulls over achievements which it could highlight to the GOP’s advantage. For example, 18 May was the 40th anniversary of “Buddha Smiles”, the code name of India’s first successful nuclear test, when a nuclear fission type device was detonated at Pokhran. That explosion was termed a “Peaceful Nuclear Experment (PNE)”, but in real terms it catapulted India into the nuclear club. After BJP came to power in 1998, Atal Behari Vajpayee’s government went in for further blasts at Pokhran, heralding India as a formal nuclear weapon power.
Nuclear weapon-powered India was in BJP’s manifestos year after year. Given the first opportunity, this promise was executed. Ditto for the abrogation of Article 370 and imposition of the Citizenship Amendment Act(CAA). BJP implements its agenda with alacrity. Congress shies away from mentioning its positive actions.
In the midst of the election campaign, to buttress his position as Mr Right, Rahul Gandhi has come up with a gem which may have interesting corollaries. Speaking at a panel discussion in Panchkula in Haryana on the outskirts of Chandigarh on 23 May he said “I have been sitting inside the system since birth. I understand the system from inside. You cannot hide the system from me. How it works, who it favours, how it favours, who it protects, who it attacks, I know everything; I can see it as I have come from inside it. At the Prime Minister’s house, when my grandmother (Indira Gandhi) was the PM, Papa (Rajiv Gandhi) was there, Manmohan Singh ji was there, I used to go… I know the system from inside. And I am telling you, the system is aligned against lower castes, in a terrifying manner (bhayankar tareeke), at every level. Look at the corporate system, media system, bureaucracy, judiciary, education system, military, wherever you look, there is no participation of 90 per cent. And an argument is raised about merit. How is it possible that 90 per cent don’t have merit? It is just not possible. There has to be some flaw in the system.”
This attracted a retort from Himanta Biswa Sarma, BJP’s Assam Chief Minister, who had been part of the Congress “system” till a few years back. The questions Himanta posed to Rahul Gandhi were: Former Railway Minister Lalit Narain Mishra was killed in a mysterious bomb blast after he had differences with Indira Gandhi in January 1975, who was behind the blast? Bihar’s former Chief Minister K.B. Sahay, who abolished the zamindari system in 1952, died in a mysterious car accident in 1974 after he fell out with Indira Gandhi. Why was his death not investigated? Who made the telephone call from Delhi to allow Warren Anderson, chairman of Union Carbide, to escape out of India in December 1985 after the Bhopal gas disaster? On whose instructions did Dr Manmohan Singh give a clean chit to Pakistan in Sharm-El-Sheikh? (The declaration signed by Dr Singh with his Pakistan counterpart Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani was seen as legitimisation of the Pakistani charge that India was encouraging terrorism in Balochistan.)
Himanta’s questions may not be dismissed as poll rhetoric. The family of Lalit Narain Mishra has been seeking proper investigation of the case which has been probed by CBI past five decades. Mishra was killed in 1975—two years later when Janata Party came to power in 1977 Bihar Chief Minister Karpoori Thakur asked civil liberties icon, Justice V.M. Tarkunde, to investigate the case. Justice Tarkunde’s report created an arrow of suspicion on members within the Congress “system”.
The CBI had put the blame on Ananda Margis, which Justice Tarkunde questioned. The Mishra family has based its petitions to the Supreme Court and Delhi High Court on the premise of Tarkunde report and a book authored by Arun Shourie: “Who killed L.N. Mishra?”
Unrelated to the election time exchanges between Rahul and Himanta, Delhi High Court has fixed 29 July for hearing the matter—whether the investigation of the murder case be reopened. The court has asked Mishra’s grandson, Vaibhav Mishra, an Advocate on Record in the Supreme Court, to assist the matter. It will be India’s own J.F. Kennedy moment. Assassination of the US President in Texas in 1963 is yet to find a closure.
Rahul Gandhi’s claim of being an “insider” of the system may create some interesting corollaries which may make political reporting interesting in the days to come.