It is not particularly useful to pose the question whether Mrs. Gandhi has used the Congress session in Calcutta, the first for over a decade, to launch her party’s campaign for elections to the Lok Sabha. For, it is pointless to speculate on the date of the poll. Since we have no clue to her thinking apart from her public statements which she has every right to set aside, we have to wait for her decision. But there can be little doubt that the theme which dominates her own address and the political resolution the plenary session has adopted, will serve as her election platform whenever she decides to go to the people. The theme is in a sense simple and familiar. The country’s unity, integrity and security are in danger: her Congress alone can defend them. Hostile forces are super-active in the world, in the region and across our borders; other parties are not even capable of grasping their designs, not to speak of coping with them; the Congress alone can do both Communalism and regionalism have come to pose a serious threat to the nation; even organisations claiming to be secular are supporting and lending legitimacy to these dangerous elements; only the Congress can, as in the past, reconcile the legitimate interests of diverse communities and regions with those of the nation as a whole. The record of the Janata was woeful; the performance of non-Congress state governments is terrible even in regard to law and order and respect for the constitutional rights of the people; her government’s achievements have been spectacular. And so the exercise in contrasts between the Congress under her leadership and the others goes on.
Mrs. Gandhi has been hammering away at this theme for quite some time now. But despite all this and her all too frequent references in recent months to unnamed but easily identifiable forces wanting to destabilize India (a euphemism for weakening her and her government’s position) by means which she has never cared to spell out, there is an element of surprise in the political resolution as well as her address. It looks as if we are back in the late sixties when a number of self-proclaimed radicals and Marxists strode the corridors of power in New Delhi. Such individuals are not easy to locate in Mrs. Gandhi’s entourage today. But their ideas and language are in circulation once again. The political resolution, for example, says: “The strategy of neo-imperialism is no different from the classic imperialism which was defeated by the resurgence of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Neo-imperialism aims to create and reactivate through overt and covert interference from outside divisions in developing societies in order to prevent the consolidation of their national unity. The evidence of these activities is strewn all over the pages of post-second world war history”. Similar passages figure in Mrs Gandhi’s own address. And then there is the fraternal delegation from the Soviet Communist Party as if to make it out that India and the Soviet Union are engaged in a joint struggle against “imperialism”, “neo-imperialism” or by whatever similarly pejorative terms the West, especially the United States, may be described.
It is difficult to accept that this claptrap represents Mrs. Gandhi’s true thinking. It is just inconceivable that she has bought the theory of a natural alliance between the third world and the Soviet bloc which Fidel Castro tried unsuccessfully to impose on the non-aligned movement at its Havana summit in 1979. Why then this display of pseudo-radicalism with its implicit risk of unnecessary misunderstanding in the West, particularly the United States? The justification would have been obvious if she was seeking an alliance or adjustment with the CPI or the CPM or both. But that does not appear to be a practical proposition. For one thing she cannot admit that she is not confident of winning on her own. For another, the Congress alone threatens the CPM’s power base in West Bengal and the CPI cannot survive without close understanding with the CPM. This leaves another rather unsatisfactory explanation. Mrs. Gandhi wants to split the CPI. But to what end? The party is not much of a force and if it splits, the ground it will vacate is likely to be occupied by the CPM.
There is a section in the Congress which believes that the radical rhetoric pays in elections. The proposition is of doubtful validity. In any case, the Indian electorate does not understand concepts such as “neo-imperialism” and its alleged designs. Also, while it makes sense for Mrs. Gandhi to concentrate her attack on the so-called rightist parties and regional and communal organisations because they alone are in a position to challenge her effectively at the hustings, she does not need to invoke half-baked formulations for the purpose.
Observers will notice the total absence of introspection on the part of Congress leaders in Calcutta. This is understandable if Mrs. Gandhi takes the view, which is possible, that the organisation is incapable of reforming itself or being reformed. Indeed, the desire to divert attention from the decay of her own organisation may be one reason why she has been lambasting other parties of whatever colour or strength day in and day out. But whatever her calculations and intentions, those who have been looking for some evidence of a move to raise standards of discipline and public morality in the Congress will be sorely disappointed.