For those familiar with the political landscape of the capital, Ghulam Nabi Azad was synonymous with the Congress. Once a permanent shadow of Rajiv Gandhi at party functions, he, along with the likes of the late Ahmed Patel and Motilal Vora, was the pillar on which the Congress organisation rested at the national level. Even when he moved to Srinagar as chief minister and then occupied the front bench of the party in the Rajya Sabha, the affable Azad played a big role in the party. His resignation from the Congress last week must, therefore, count as one of the biggest shocks for a party that is still reeling from the devastating effects of two consecutive defeats at the hands of the Bharatiya Janata Party since 2014.
For political parties that were in government, coping with the after-effects of electoral debacles isn’t always easy. The BJP, now riding high, was in a state of crisis after the shock defeat of 2004 and its second failure in 2009. There were two issues that provoked internal uncertainty.
First, the assessment of what caused the defeat in 2004 — when Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s popularity was at its height — led to the conclusion that the party had strayed from its core agenda and alienated its support base, particularly in the urban areas. But this understanding of the defeat created its own problems of future action. If the party was to abandon the consensual politics of coalition politics and revert to its Hindu nationalist comfort zone, it would risk losing its allies. That, in turn, would be electorally damaging because the BJP wasn’t in any position to win a majority on its own.
Secondly, there was a leadership question after Vajpayee, who had an appeal well beyond loyalty to the BJP, bowed out on health considerations in 2005. Within the party, L.K. Advani exercised clear political authority but that position was severely undermined following his heretical comments during a trip to Pakistan on the innate ‘secularism’ of Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Alas for the BJP, there appeared no alternative to the damaged Advani. The grassroots were pitching for the then Gujarat chief minister, Narendra Modi, but the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh leadership was wary. It decided to experiment with Rajnath Singh, a safe pair of hands who, alas, didn’t quite have the same mass appeal of Vajpayee.
It was this twin uncertainty that led to a dispirited BJP going into battle against the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance in 2009 and losing badly. Yet, it took another three years before all the stakeholders in the wider saffron parivar decided that the grassroots pressure for Modi had become irresistible. The problem of allies remained — recall that the choice of Modi coincided with Nitish Kumar’s first somersault — but it was decided that the BJP wouldn’t eschew its Hindutva agenda. Instead, it would be subordinated to the wider issues of anti-corruption and good governance, issues that would draw the anti-incumbency vote. It worked.
For the Congress, the present political muddle it confronts isn’t dissimilar. While it entered the 2014 election campaign expecting reverses, there was an expectation that there would be a fractured mandate and that after a short spell of political uncertainty, it would be back at the helm. However, the results proved more damaging on two counts. Not only did the BJP win but it also broke a 25-year jinx and secured an absolute majority on its own. The Congress lost so badly that its numbers in the Lok Sabha fell below the 10 per cent mark necessary to secure the status of the official Opposition. What was more damaging was the erosion of faith in the potentiality of Rahul Gandhi as the future leader. Rahul Gandhi failed to make any mark as a campaigner and, indeed, became somewhat of a joke after a disastrous television interview.
The scenario was repeated in the 2019 election when, once again, the Congress failed to secure recognition as the official Opposition. Worse, Rahul Gandhi was defeated in the family bastion of Amethi and made it back to the Lok Sabha courtesy a seat in Kerala. The faith in Priyanka Gandhi emerging as another Indira Gandhi was also dashed as she cut no ice among the voters of Uttar Pradesh.
The larger issue that dogged the Congress was the uncertainty over what it now represented. With the Modi government becoming increasingly purposeful in creating a welfare architecture, the Congress claim that it alone represented the interests of the poor and vulnerable stood exposed. The BJP secured such a major slice of the vote among the low-income that, in effect, the Congress could only count on the assured support of Muslim voters. This, in turn, fuelled majoritarian impulses and pushed the party further into a corner.
What should have concerned the Congress was the steady erosion of its support in Middle India, both geographically and socially. A strategy to regain influence in that sphere, not least by patiently waiting for the BJP to make mistakes, was called for. Instead, with Rahul Gandhi exercising de-facto control but without assuming direct responsibility, the Congress ended up moving further and further to the left. In many ways, the party sought to reinvent itself in the image of the left-wing of the Democratic Party in the United States of America. It allowed the BJP to monopolise the nationalist agenda by vacating that ground altogether and instead focusing on the fringes. The Congress disengaged from mainstream Hindu opinion on crucial issues such as the abrogation of Article 370, the tit-for-tat approach to Pakistani aggression, and temple construction in Ayodhya. To this was added Rahul Gandhi’s erratic and whimsical style of leadership that left many important leaders convinced that they had no future in the Congress.
For the Congress, there was an additional complication. While the dynastic leadership was clearly wanting, the average party foot soldier still felt that it was not worth risking the future on a leadership that was chosen from outside the Nehru-Gandhi family. The belief that only the dynasty can hold the Congress together and safeguard its future means that the scope for the party evolving a more democratic future is limited.