What cannot be doubted is the ideological indispensability of the Congress party, especially its current dominant strain represented by Rahul Gandhi, in the contest against Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has hegemonised the national public space for a decade through disturbing religious mobilisations of the majority against the most significant minority community in the country.
But it is the results of the crucial state assembly elections, which kicked off on November 7, that will determine the extent to which the Congress’s undoubted strength on the ideas platform can be matched by the electoral and political force and momentum the party can generate.
Uttar Pradesh’s Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Akhilesh Yadav’s renewed broadside against the Congress this week – after failing to extract seats from it to contest in Madhya Pradesh where the Congress’s contest against the BJP is said to be very tight – going all the way to equate it with the BJP even in the foul ideological atmosphere of today could be an early pointer to the worsening dynamics within the INDIA bloc.
Can the rift be repaired in time for the Lok Sabha poll? If so, what would this take? Does the Congress need to fare worse than expected in the assembly elections, or better, in order to placate or satisfy some of its presumed allies?
The foundational Patna meeting of the opposition alliance of over two dozen parties in June, which the Samajwadi Party attended, could materialise only after the Congress bested the BJP in straight fights in Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka earlier this year, and wrested power from Modi’s party in both states. Since then, however, the INDIA bloc has encountered choppy waters.
And here is the contradiction, or the dialectic. If the Congress had lost in Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka, the regional parties that are afraid of the BJP would have simply cast it aside in their calculations as being of no practical use. So, a demonstrably strong or reasonably capable Congress is needed from their perspective too. But the question is, how strong? Regional parties, generally, are wary of a strong or even a resurgent Congress, thinking they might be upstaged by it in their own backyard, although this cannot be said to be a realistic anxiety at present.
Also read: Rahul Gandhi Confident About Cong Winning Assembly Elections and Strength of INDIA Bloc
In the past 12 months, the Congress not only beat the BJP comprehensively in two state elections – it did one better, something many thought unthinkable. The party held democratic internal polls after nearly a quarter century and elected as president the stalwart Karnataka Congressman Mallikarjun Kharge, whose stature and abilities had remained obscured principally on account of the politics of dynastic sycophancy that had plagued the Congress in recent decades.
Rahul Gandhi’s hand in helping bring about the change is undeniable, although to begin with few took him seriously when he declared that no one from his family was in the race for party chief. But the former Congress president – and dynasty beneficiary – played his role of disruptor to near perfection and in doing so triggered urges among the common people that were earlier far from discernible.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge. Photo: X (Twitter)/@kharge
These urges especially brought out by the Bharat Jodo Yatra lay buried under bushels of communal propaganda fortified by the authoritarian agendas of the ruling dispensation, which talks up the leader all the time. Train and plane passengers are also not spared. The Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka voters were won over in spite of the communal and “the leader shows the way” propaganda.
Combined with the nationwide churning and mobilisation, the channelling of dissent and anti-regime sentiment produced by Gandhi’s Kanyakumari to Kashmir march, and the election of Kharge – whose political articulations and organisational clarity are widely credited for giving the Congress ballast as the party geared-up for state elections – can be said to be the high points of the year 2023, which has turned out to be an extraordinary one for the Congress.
But the point is, how is the year going to end? Channelling protests is all very well, but what will be the score-line on December 3 when results become available for the three key Hindi-speaking heartland states of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, besides Telangana and Mizoram? The social and cultural profile of North India can be said to be different from Karnataka where aggressive propagation of communal politics by Prime Minister Modi himself failed to sway the voter last April-May.
Also read: INDIA Alliance Passes First By-Poll Test Well, But Needs to Sort Out Differences in Key States
Akhilesh Yadav appears now to have put the Congress in the camp of an adversary rather than an ally. He is unhappy for not getting Congress backing for his party in Madhya Pradesh, where it has a marginal presence. The same is the case with the Aam Admi Party (AAP) of Arvind Kejriwal. Both SP and AAP are fighting in many seats in Madhya Pradesh.
The Janata Dal (United) of Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar – who in the early stages was instrumental in drumming up support for the INDIA bloc by bringing the regional parties in step (or so it seemed) with the Congress – too has candidates in a handful of seats in Madhya Pradesh.
Nitish Kumar. Photo: X/@NitishKumar
Nevertheless, speaking in Patna recently, he blamed the Congress for paying insufficient attention to the organisational aspects of the opposition alliance and focusing only on the five state elections.
Among the five states where assembly elections are being held, Madhya Pradesh is a different category from the rest. Here, the BJP risks losing power, the same way as it did in Himachal and Karnataka. A gain for the Congress here can boost the opposition for the Lok Sabha polls, for which preparations will commence shortly.
It is interesting that SP, AAP, and to an extent the JD(U), did not keep this in view. It is noteworthy in this context that the CPI and the CPI (M), whose request for accommodation in the three North Indian states, were also not considered by the Congress, have taken the situation stoically. Perhaps they have a different appreciation of the ideological stakes.
Whether the Congress – and more broadly INDIA in its extant shape at the end of the day – prepares the platform well for Lok Sabha 2024 will depend in good measure on the result of the five state polls. If the opposition goes below par, it can cease to entertain any hopes for the parliament election while the BJP can still hope to live to fight another day if it slides toward defeat in the ongoing state polls.
To that extent, it can be asserted that INDIA – the opposition alliance – was not conceived only for the Lok Sabha poll, although in his hubris – and a display of deplorable diplomacy toward a presumed ally – this is what the Congress leader Kamal Nath asserted while dismissing Akhilesh Yadav with a wave of the hand.
At various points in the post-Rajiv Gandhi era, the Congress has pondered its relationship with other opposition parties. The view at times has been to go it alone while at other times the value of teaming up with other parties has been considered. With the coming together of INDIA, it was felt that the grand old party was persuaded that taking on the gargantuan BJP of the Modi era would call for the widest possible mobilisation of opposition forces. Indeed, this seemed the message of Rahul Gandhi’s yatra.
While certain regional parties in the opposition alliance may be playing their games, and some may even be acting under remote guidance of the establishment since they may have been pressured by the coercive agencies, it is the Congress – rather than any other party – that may be called upon to summon the wisest moves once the state polls are done.
It has the most at stake in the survival of the constitutional system that we have. It must not lose sight of the fact that while regional parties fight the BJP politically to guard their turf, the Congress, for its survival and the survival of India’s constitutional democracy, has to take on the BJP both politically and ideologically.
Anand K. Sahay is a political commentator in New Delhi.
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