Editor’s Note: The rot runs deep in the Congress

Can the party reclaim its democratic space by shedding its white elephants and rogue commanders?

The BJP quickly realised that Hindutva and Modi, while formidable, would not be enough, and it shamelessly adopted the much-reviled social welfare schemes that Narendra Modi once mocked as revadi. | Photo Credit: Stringer/AFP

One reason for the demise of the once invincible Mughal army was the mansabdar or army commander, the intermediary between soldier and emperor. As the centre weakened, each mansabdar slowly converted the troops under his charge into a personal fief, more interested in his own immediate enrichment than in winning battles for the king. That the Congress party got around 40 per cent votes in three States but still lost each can be largely attributed to the arrogance, myopia, and hubris of its regional nabobs.

The word hubris is associated with power and to have to use it in the context of a party that has now been out of the Centre for a decade and rules in just three States shows how deep the rot runs in the Congress. Its weak central leadership was unable to rein in the satraps, who not only scorned the campaign strategies that won the party Karnataka just months ago but also elbowed out local alliances, launched petty intra-party feuds, and finally bit the dust. It was also pitiful to see a party that mouths platitudes about secularism allow a tainted Kamal Nath to front Madhya Pradesh and its State units to fall back on soft Hindutva, both of which might not necessarily have borne an electoral cost, but which make its overall message credibility that of a jellybean. The Congress can ill afford to underestimate voter resistance to a party offering nothing more than recycled bromides.

In that sense it is easier for the Congress in Telangana (and Karnataka), where voters are more ready to reject blatantly divisive, regressive, and communal politics. These States are long beneficiaries of governments that focus more on administration and less on sectarian politics, as evidenced from their economic and development indices. In the cow-belt States, where Hindutva gets a more visceral response, the BJP has kept up the communal messaging, whether fielding four Hindu seers in Rajasthan, including one Balak Nath who is called the “Yogi of Rajasthan”, or mounting strong anti-conversion campaigns in the tribal belts of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.

The loss in Madhya Pradesh is perhaps the most disconcerting for the Congress, given there was little doubt, even in the ranks of the BJP, about the sentiment against Shivraj Singh Chouhan. That the Congress could not capitalise on this does it little credit. This is where its organisational slips begin to show. Unlike the BJP, which showed no hesitation in sidelining Chouhan (and Vasundhara Raje in Rajasthan) the Congress finds it hard to get rid of dead weights.

If, however, despite this and despite a pliant Enforcement Directorate and Election Commission and a servile media, the BJP could not prevent the Congress from retaining its vote share in the three States, there is clearly something else at work. Sensing this, the BJP quickly realised that Hindutva and Modi, while formidable, would not be enough, and it shamelessly adopted the much-reviled social welfare schemes that Narendra Modi once mocked as revadi.

This is a sign of vulnerability, and makes the party as ideologically suspect as its opponent. It is in this messy compromise, unavoidable in the great cocktail that is India, that one sees a vein opening up that an assiduous opposition could mine. To do so, the Congress has to first rid itself of its white elephants and rogue commanders. It also needs a serious commitment to self-critique its compromised past and a deeper hunger to reclaim the challenged democratic space. If it can reset, as it has shown tiny signs of doing, it need not be dismissed as a pushover in 2024 just yet.