Despite all that happened in it and to it since the great split in 1969, the Congress remains a most valuable political estate. No one can possibly deny that much. It follows that with the sudden disappearance of the chairman-managing director, a bitter struggle for control over it has become unavoidable. This is widely recognised. But it is not equally well appreciated that this struggle can by no means be limited to those already in occupation of it.
Such a struggle for control from within and without is not new in the history of the party. One such struggle, for example, opened with the formation of the Congress Socialist Party within the parent organisation in 1934. It did not end even with the voluntary exit of Congress Socialists led by Jayaprakash Narayan in 1948. For they continued to support Nehru and run down Sardar Patel even after the latter’s death in 1950. They played no small role in helping Nehru consolidate the advantage the office of Prime Minister and Gandhiji’s assassination in 1948 gave him over the Sardar. Jayaprakash Narayan had then gone to the ridiculous length of blaming the Sardar for the Mahatma’s assassination.
We witnessed another similar struggle with the outbreak of the dispute in the Congress between Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and organizational bosses, headed by the party president, Kamraj Nadar, over the selection of the Congress nominee for election to the office of President of the republic in 1969. The Communist Party of India backed Indira Gandhi in this confrontation, helped her candidate, VV Giri, win the poll to presidency against the official Congress nominee, Sanjiva Reddy, provided the necessary support to her government in Parliament after the split in the Congress had deprived it of a majority in the Lok Sabha, and entered into an alliance with her for the crucial elections to the Lok Sabha in 1971.
The CPI-backed Forum for Socialist Action, dominated by former CPI members and their Socialist allies, continued to call the shots in the Congress in ideological terms, though the poll in 1971 had given the party a two-thirds majority of its own in the Lok Sabha and thus placed Indira Gandhi’s authority beyond serious challenge. Indira Gandhi tried to contain the influence of the Forum, especially after the disastrous failure of the grain trade takeover, and inspired the formation of the Nehru Study Forum.
This move gave her the pretext for disallowing factional activities in the party and thereby secure the disbandment of the Forum. But it was only after the declaration of internal emergency in June 1975 and the rise of Sanjay Gandhi as a major force in her set-up that the influence of former Communists and Socialists, aided by the CPI and its supporters from the outside, could be contained.
It would be in order to recall that in 1974-75 CPI leaders and their allies ran a campaign of vilification against Jayaprakash Narayan on account of his movement for the overthrow of Indira Gandhi, so much so that some of them called him a CIA agent in so many words in print. They also supported the decision to impose emergency in the expectation that the termination of the democratic process would enable them to tighten their grip on Indira Gandhi and, through her, on the administrative machinery of the state.
Sanjay Gandhi put paid to that hope. Even so, it would be pertinent to mention that despite all their talk of revolutionary action and mass mobilization, Communists have never given up the theory of “revolution from above”, a euphemism for a coup through infiltration of the existing power structure. The Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia in 1948 was one such case of “revolution from above”. The tactics in India were, of course, different; they had to be different in view of the weakness of the CPI. But the goal was not very different.
Since the story of the complex and prolonged struggle Indira Gandhi had to wage in her bid for power has generally been forgotten, it has been assumed that a fight for control of the Congress would have been avoided if Sonia Gandhi had agreed to step into her deceased husband’s place. This assumption is misplaced. The very fact that leaders with support bases of their own in their home states were not prepared to project her as the party’s candidate for the office of Prime Minister in case it secured a majority, or was able to form a coalition, should suffice to settle this issue.
Many former Congress leaders, who left the party as a result of some problem with Indira Gandhi or Rajiv Gandhi, are understandably wanting to return to the fold in the calculation that they would be able to join the coming battle and carve out a place for themselves in the organisation and the country. Mohan Dharia’s letter to PV Narasimha Rao, Ramakrishna Hegde’s statement that all Congressmen should come together in this hour of national crisis, Devi Lal’s talk of the possibility of a Congress-SJD (Samajvadi Janata Dal) alliance and, above all, VP Singh’s decision to virtually end his criticism of the Congress and concentrate his attacks on the Bharatiya Janata Party speak for themselves. No more comment is necessary.
It is highly doubtful, however, that all this talk will amount to anything much. With the exception of VP Singh and possibly Hedge, former Congress leaders have little bargaining power. Since Hegde is sure to be blocked by those in command of the party apparatus in Bangalore, this leaves only VP Singh worthy of being considered as a serious contender for power in the Congress. But the Raja can neither abandon his present ‘other backward caste’ constituency nor get it accommodated within the Congress. Leading elements in this constituency, it may be recalled, were the first to walk out from under the Congress umbrella in 1967 because it could not provide them the space they felt entitled to by virtue of both their numbers and their growing economic clout resulting from the green revolution.
The Communists alone, in my judgement, are in a position to intervene in the struggle for control of the Congress. This may, on the face of it, appear surprising in view of the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the crisis of enormous proportions in the Soviet Union itself. But even a casual scrutiny will show that they have successfully tied over this ‘little difficulty’. External support has not been particularly important for the CPI(M), by far the bigger of the two Communist parties. This support has been significant for the CPI. But its end has not crippled the party. Indeed, it is now better placed than ever before to put on the nationalist-patriotic garb. EMS Namboodiripad’s letter to PV Narasimha Rao should be viewed in this perspective.
The CPI(M) and the CPI together are making the same calculation now that the CPI did 1971. The CPI’s expectation then was that the Congress would not secure a majority on its own and would be obliged to go in for an alliance with it. This hope went awry in 1971 but the chances of its materializing in the current poll are, on all accounts, much better.
Namboodiripad’s letter has obviously been woefully ill-timed. It is also truly extraordinary that so experienced and shrewd a leader should have asked the Congress to abandon its “hostility towards the CPI(M)-led alliances in Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura, and the National Front” right in the midst of elections. Surely, he should have known that even the brutal assassination of Rajiv Gandhi cannot persuade the Congress to revise its election strategy in Kerala, and Tripura in particular. Polling has already taken place in West Bengal.
Namboodiripad also does not appear to have consulted his colleagues before he shot off the letter. At least so the refusal of Ganashakti, the CPI(M) daily published from Calcutta, to publish the letter, or any reference to it, suggests. Even so, it would be short-sighted to treat the episode as closed. Two points may be made m this regard.
First, Namboodiripad may have spoken in undue haste and in a manner which has embarrassed his colleagues. But his basic approach is not unrepresentative of the thinking in the party. Jyoti Basu and Harkishen Singh Surjeet too have spoken in a refrain not very dissimilar from his. Jyoti Basu has been quoted as having said that in the event of a hung Parliament, his party would support the government on issues for the sake of stability. He, of course, did not name the Congress in this connection but the implication was obvious. Surjeet has gone even farther and spoken of the possibility of his party sharing power with the Congress in New Delhi.
Secondly, Nehru firmly rooted the Congress in a leftist ideology which, despite its vagueness, disposed it favourably towards the Soviet bloc abroad and the Communist-dominated Left at home. Nehru was, of course, not the undisputed leader of the Congress before independence when Gandhiji was around or even after independence up to 1950 when Sardar Patel passed away. But what may be called the Nehruvian framework had no serious competitor after the late twenties when it was formulated and put across. There was an ideological vacuum which Nehru filled. Sardar Patel was an excellent organiser and not an ideologue. His pro-Hindu stance in the wake of partition reflected a personal predilection and not a consistent political ideology. That was one reason why his supporters fell so easily in line behind Nehru after 1950.
Nehru derived considerable strength from the support of the Left-leaning, highly articulate and influential sections of the intelligentsia. This was equally true of Indira Gandhi so much so that when this support was withdrawn in the wake of the emergency, she felt at a loss and continued to look for its restoration. During her tenure of office in the eighties, she went to the length of seeking Brezhnev’s intervention with the CPI to return to her aid.
An undisputed leader such as Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi can doubtless contain the party’s natural impulse resulting from its Nehruvian roots and adopt whatever policies they consider necessary so long as they can hold out the promise of office. For they then tap the Congressman’s other even deeper and stronger love – the love of power. The absence of such a leader in the Congress today clearly provides the Left an opening which it cannot easily forego.
As it happens, both a readymade common enemy and an appropriate slogan is available. The enemy is the BJP and the slogan is secularism and anti-imperialism or anti-hegemonism. The fight for the body and the soul of the Congress has begun, it is going to be interesting to watch. Sonia Gandhi could figure in it.
Sunday Mail, 9 June 1991