Mr. Kamlapati Tripathi’s retirement/dismissal as working president of the Congress organisation had been a foregone conclusion for over six months. Indeed, Mr. Rajiv Gandhi has had no use for him ever since he took over as Prime Minister and Congress president on the assassination of Mrs. Indira Gandhi on October 31,1984 and would have been glad if the octogenarian leader had voluntarily stepped aside. This is not to suggest that Mrs. Gandhi had held Mr. Tripathi in great esteem and invested real power in him; she had created this “office” for him after she had removed him from her cabinet. But she was willing to let him be there so long as he accepted that he possessed no genuine authority in organisational matters. Mr. Rajiv Gandhi, on the other hand, created the office of Congress vice-president and appointed Mr. Arjun Singh to it last year apparently in the expectation that the old man would realise that his time was up and call it a day. Mr. Tripathi did not oblige and let it be known that he would not take from Rajiv Gandhi what he took from Mrs. Indira Gandhi. So he bided his time for some months and then in April last wrote a letter to Mr. Gandhi which remains one of the most stringent and well-argued criticisms of the Prime Minister. This left Mr. Gandhi no choice but to get rid of the old man. It is difficult to say why it has taken him more than six months to do so. Perhaps he could not make up his mind.
Before virtually dismissing Mr. Tripathi on Wednesday, Mr. Gandhi had taken two decisions. First, he had removed Mr. Arun Nehru, once regarded as the second most powerful man in the country, from his council of ministers. This was a demonstration that the Prime Minister was willing and able to assert himself even against so close a colleague as Mr. Nehru. Secondly, he had accommodated Mr. Arjun Singh in his cabinet and then in his capacity as Congress president accepted Mr. Singh’s resignation as party vice-president. These twin moves in relation to Mr. Singh were clearly intended to convey the message that henceforth Mr. Gandhi would take a more direct and active interest in party affairs. This was also a sop as well as a hint to Mr. Tripathi that he too should resign as working president – a sop because he had publicly criticised Mr. Singh several times on the ground that the latter had ignored him and humiliated him. But Mr. Tripathi refused to take the hint and said more than once that he would resign only if Mr. Gandhi asked him to do so. Mr. Gandhi has now done precisely that and once again demonstrated his capacity to assert himself.
It would be premature to say whether Mr. Gandhi has shown a correct appreciation of the Indian psyche, as his mother did when she defied the organizational bosses in 1969, or whether he has acted recklessly. Only time will settle this issue. Meanwhile three points may be made. First, by eliminating Mr. Arun Nehru from the government, cutting Mr. Arjun Singh down to size and securing Mr. Tripathi’s resignation, Mr. Rajiv Gandhi could have offended both the Brahmin and Rajput communities. A show of even-handedness is less helpful in Indian politics than a carefully calculated tilt which ensures the support of one group without completely alienating the other and leaves the leader free to make a slight tilt in the other direction at a suitable time later. Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s was the politics of such tilts or balancing acts. We are by no means suggesting that Mr. Tripathi and Mr. Nehru would emerge as Brahmin leaders in north India. But we are suggesting that they could, especially if Mr. Rajiv Gandhi fails to take steps to retain the support of the community, and that the Prime Minister could run into heavy weather if they manage to carve out such a position for themselves. Secondly, while it is obvious that Mr. Gandhi has been promoting young men and women of his own generation both in the government and the party, it does not look as if he has a viable plan for reorganising and energising the Congress. He has already “postponed” organisational elections indefinitely and thus returned in the ad hocism of his mother. But while she was a master practitioner of the political game and revelled in it, he is still new to it and he does not seem to love it. Finally, there must be some calculation in Mr. Tripathi’s obvious, even if muted, defiance of Mr. Rajiv Gandhi since last April. And he has been showing a persistence, skill and courage which few believed he possessed. It may, therefore, be unwise to write him off though it may be equally unwise to build him up.