Post Rajasthan, rift between Old Guard and Gen Next widens.
New Delhi: Sonia Gandhi’s tenure as the interim president of the Congress will complete one year on 10 August. As of now, there is nothing to indicate that status quo will not continue. Rahul Gandhi still has not indicated that he is ready to resume office and the Congress will not opt for a non-Gandhi, despite any pretension to the contrary. But there has been one noticeable change. Suddenly we see a couple of Gen Next leaders, all of whom belong to Team Rahul, speaking up at inner party fora. Whether it’s a CWC meet or a meeting of the party’s Rajya Sabha leaders, the likes of Rajeev Satav, K.C. Venugopal, Sushmita Dev and Randeep Surjewala are speaking up, and more often than not taking on the Old Guard. At a recent Working Committee meet, this lot supported Rahul Gandhi on his stand that the party needed to take on the Prime Minister on China, while some of the older lot advised a more nuanced approach. And a few days ago, at the meeting of the Rajya Sabha MPs (called by Sonia Gandhi), both K.C. Venugopal and Rajeev Satav again took on the Old Guard, with Satav claiming that much of the Congress party’s problems stemmed from the UPA years. He is said to have blamed UPA 2 for the 2014 Lok Sabha defeat. While we are being told that Dr Manmohan Singh, who was present at this meeting, is said to be upset at the allegations, what about Sonia Gandhi? She was the UPA chairperson during the said period, and even now retains this title. Won’t any attack on the UPA government’s functioning also reverberate on her?
Interestingly, this shifting of the blame to the UPA has divided the Congress party. Manish Tewari, who has been a former Union Minister in the UPA government and also someone who bridges the gap between the Sonia and Rahul eras, was the first to react. He tweeted that “BJP was out of power for 10 years 2004-14 but not once did they ever blame Vajpayee or his Govt for their predicament. In the Congress some ill-informed would rather take swipes at Dr Manmohan Singh led UPA government than fight NDA/BJP.” Manish was soon joined by other voices including Milind Deora, Anand Sharma and Shashi Tharoor. As Deora said, “Well said Manish, When demitting office Dr Manmohan Singh said history will be kinder to me; Could he have imagined that some from his own party would dismiss his years of service to the nation and seek to destroy his legacy, that too, in his presence.” Like Manish the rest were part of the UPA, as was K.C. Venugopal too.
And so, grappling with the civil war within the Congress is losing precious time to not just take on the BJP but also articulate its own identity and credibility with both the voters and the workers. Take for instance the construction of the Ram Janmabhumi temple at Ayodhya. As the BJP goes full speed ahead with the bhumi-pujan, the Congress is confused as to whether visit Ayodhya or not. It still has to formulate its response to the temple construction. The issue was brought up recently at a meeting of the party’s Rajya Sabha members, where a newly minted member, Deepender Hooda, cautioned against speaking against the bhumi-pujan, for, as he reminded the others, the party had already welcomed the Supreme Court judgement on Ayodhya last year. A course correction of sorts has already begun, with the party leadership suddenly rediscovering former PM Narasimha Rao. When Rao’s birth anniversary came and went (end June) it was Prime Minister Narendra Modi who paid tributes to the Congressman. However, last week, at an event organised by the Telangana Congress Committee, both Sonia and Rahul Gandhi paid tribute to Rao’s legacy. This is the same Rao who had earlier been shunned by the party, blamed for the Babri Masjid demolition in order to woo the minority vote. Ironically, now with the temple fast becoming a reality, it appears that the Congress has decided to embrace him for the very same actions.
Anyhow, while the party figures out its line of thought, individual leaders such as former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath are voicing their individual stands. Nath has tweeted a short video, with a picture of Lord Hanuman in the background, extending his support for the Ram Mandir bhumi-pujan.
What is interesting here is that individuals are now speaking up without waiting for the party’s high command to tell them what stand to take. This is a phenomenon that has been gaining ground ever since the 2014 defeat, but gained momentum after the BJP’s surprise win in Uttar Pradesh in 2017. Since then, whether it was the surgical strike against Pakistan, the revocation of Article 370 in the Valley, the SC case on Ram Janmabhumi temple, individual voices are speaking up and not waiting for the “party line”. Some like Shashi Tharoor and Salman Khurshid have even asked for elections to the Working Committee, others like Jyotiraditya Scindia, Janardhan Dwivedi, Deepender Hooda and Milind Deora had welcomed the abrogation of 370. Some of these leaders have quit the party, a few have been sidelined, others just about survive. We recently had the case of Sanjay Jha being suspended for voicing his concerns about the future of the party. As he told me a few days before he was suspended, “I am with the Congress though am not sure if the Congress is with me.” And now we have another spokesperson, Khushboo Sunder tweeting that her stand on the New Education Policy drafted by the Modi government differs from her party but she adds, “I would rather speak the fact than be a head nodding robot or a puppet. Everything is and cannot be about agreeing with your leader.”
There it is: “Everything cannot be about agreeing with your leader.” The confused syntax aside it does send out a very clear message about the state of affairs within the Congress. If the leadership doesn’t come out with a clear line of thought, and one that is in keeping with the mood of the nation, then sundry and senior Congress leaders are going to form their own view, and go public with it.
And so as the Congress remains a house divided, with Sonia Gandhi and the Old Guard holding firm (the Sachin Pilot vs Ashok Gehlot fight being a case in point), one is not quite sure as to when Rahul and his team will be given another chance at the top slot. In the end, maybe Rahul can take a cue from a WhatsApp joke that’s doing the rounds, which has Prince Charles commenting wryly that he wants to make a will, leaving everything to his mother!