With a past to honour
Despite what it has done to itself in recent years, history should still remember the Indian National Congress as one of the great political parties of the modern world. That, says Ramachandra Guha, explains why he is particularly angry with it.
Some months ago, I found myself in a panel discussion with three politicians - a Congress member of parliament, a Bharatiya Janata Party MP and the president of one of the smaller regional parties. In the course of the conversation, I found reason to criticize all three for their partisan stands. As the argument grew more heated, I found myself ignoring the others and turning on the Congressman in particular.
Coming out of the studio, and driving home, I later reflected on this partisanship of my own. Why had I been less harsh on the other fellows? It may have been because from them a historian can expect no better. Despite its occasional disavowal of the Hindutva programme, the BJP is in essence a party of bigots who detest minorities and atheists - as its defence of Varun Gandhi’s hate speech has recently demonstrated. On their part, the smaller, regional and sectarian parties have no ideology to profess - all they stand for is personal advancement.
The case of the Congress is different. This was the party that led the movement for freedom, the party that united India and brought people of different religions and languages into a single political project. Its best leaders had a universalist vision. Its ministers and legislators were once men and women of high personal integrity. When confronted with the Congress of today, an Indian who knows some history cannot but be struck by the chasm between the past and the present. Hence the savagery with which I turned on the Congressman in the television studio. Unlike the BJP man or the lady from a regional party, he should have known better than to defend dynastic rule, duck the question of the massacre of Sikhs in 1984, disregard the growing evidence of corruption in a Congress-led government and so on.
Despite what it has done to itself in recent years, history should still remember the Indian National Congress as one of the great political parties of the modern world. It has a lineage and record of achievement comparable to that of the Labour Party in Great Britain, the Social Democratic Party in Germany and the Democratic Party in the United States of America. From its foundation in 1885, its ambitions were immense, these contained in its very title, with the last, definitive word indicating that it would not be sectarian, but embrace Indians of all kinds.
In the first few decades of its existence, the Indian National Congress built up a network of branches spread across the country. It produced some impressive and very focused leaders - among them those great Bengalis, Surendranath Banerjee and Bipin Chandra Pal. The most intense Congress activity was in eastern as well as in western India, where the stars were Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Gopal Krishna Gokhale. With their sophisticated intellectual cultures, Bengal and Maharashtra were naturally in the vanguard - but the Congress had a reach and presence in north and south India as well.
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By the time Mohandas Gandhi returned home from South Africa, the Congress was a genuinely national organization. Still, it had two major, and interrelated, weaknesses it was active only in the major cities, and its debates and proceedings were conducted only in English. Gandhi quickly and definitively remedied these deficiencies. He encouraged the different branches of the Congress to think, write and act in the major language of the region in which they operated. The Congress organization was itself reconstituted, so that, instead of following the administrative divisions of the British raj, party units were structured on the basis of language - thus, for example, there was one unit for Kannada speakers, another for Marathi speakers, a third for Oriya speakers, and so on.
The encouragement of political debate in the vernacular allowed the Congress to expand its base beyond the middle classes in the Presidency cities. Clerks, workers, lawyers and other residents of small-town British India flocked to the nationalist cause. So did very many unlettered peasants, who were attracted as much to the great leader as to the organization he represented. Dressing simply, living a life of exemplary honesty and integrity, Gandhi carried an extraordinary appeal for the ordinary villager who now joined his urban compatriots in movements of protest against British colonial rule.
Gandhi’s genius lay not merely in his constructing a mass base for the freedom struggle. Far more than other Congress leaders, he alerted the nationalists to the deep fissures and divisions within Indian society. If the Congress sought to represent India, he argued, then it had to work overtime to incorporate Muslims, Christians, Parsis and Sikhs within its ambit. If India was to be fit for self-rule, he went on, then the Hindus in particular had to rid themselves of the execresence of Untouchability. For how could a community that treated its own members so abominably claim deliverance from foreign rule?
It was also Gandhi who did the most to bring women into public life and the nationalist movement. Feminists have taken issue with his ambivalence about women’s work and his eccentric ideas on sex and marriage. Whatever the theory, however, in practice Gandhi did a great deal for women’s emancipation. As Madhu Kishwar once pointed out, many more women participated in the Mahatma’s movements than in the political campaigns led by Mao or Lenin. By bringing women out of purdah into the streets, the Congress under Gandhi’s leadership prepared the way for their later emergence as doctors, teachers, lawyers, and, not least, political leaders.
A unique and very appealing aspect of Congress nationalism was that it did not demonize the foreigner or the alien. Here, Gandhi and his colleagues were acting under the inspiration of Rabindranath Tagore, who made a necessary distinction between the Nation of the West and the Spirit of the West. The former had resulted in pillage and imperial exploitation, and had to be resisted. The latter had promoted freedom of expression, equal rights for all, and the spirit of scientific enquiry - all this had to be made India’s own.
To be sure, there was often a slippage between the ideal and the practice. Dalits and Muslims did not always feel at home in the Gandhian Congress - hence the appeal of rival leaders like B R Ambedkar and M A Jinnah. While emphasizing freedom, the Congress did not lay adequate stress on equality - thus industrial workers and rural labourers did not feature strongly in its programmes. Among the Congress leaders in the Gandhian era were several Hindu conservatives, and even some West-hating xenophobes.
Withal, despite its failures and its inconsistencies, the Congress that brought India freedom was a party of distinction and achievement. It had many imitators - among them the African National Congress. Across the colonized countries of Asia and Africa, the party of Gandhi and Nehru acted as a beacon of hope and inspiration. Even when they did not mimic its name or its methods, anti-colonial nationalists remained in thrall to it (thus a great admirer of Gandhi and company was the gun-toting Marxist revolutionary, Ho Chi Minh). Within India, of course, the Congress did more than lead the independence movement. In a subsequent column, I shall speak of its contributions to the nation in the decades following the British withdrawal from the subcontinent.
Meanwhile, from the history recounted in this column, the reader might get a better sense of why, when confronted with politicians of arguably even more debased formations, I chose to focus my anger on the Congressman instead. For the other parties in the debate had no history to honour, no ideals to live up to or to betray.
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India Together (2009) ‘With a past to honour’, India Together, 12 April 2009. https://indiatogether.org/congress-op-ed/
13 reader responses
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charan gill · 11 April 2009
Really exciting. Congress played the maximum possible nationalist democratic role. If indian communists had not failed to understand the depth underlying the congress movement, the national democratic task would have been completed long ago.
shama zaidi · 20 April 2009
today the congress is simply a monarchial party, with the members outdoing each other trying to curry favour with the ruling family. no leader with a mass base is allowed to rise.everyone has to simply sing the praises of the nehru-gandhi family. on the other hand the b.j.p. is a purely facist party and the c.p.m. is stuck in the stalinist mode. none of our national parties has any sort of internal democracy. and all the regional parties are warlord parties each with a supreme leader and an army of goons and sycophants.
Satdeep Gill · 29 April 2009
Once again we see Indian national congress is fast remodelling itself. Democratic Centralism is being replaced by centralized democracy . The experiment in Punjab youth congress is encouragingly. the emphasis on the ideology of secular democracy in the recent election campaign is the next healthy sign. The great effort by Rahul Gandhi deserves all praise.
vivek Joshi · 4 May 2009
Hi, National parties and leaders needs to have an understanding and vision about a nation that only INC seems to have. Any National partys vision can be seen in its actions specially during the elections. On one hand we have INC who have leader like Shri Rahul Gandhi who are working on grass roots level and on other hand we have BJP which as party only critics or opposes every this the INC does as they do not have the required think tank. Today, we have one more Gandhi working on weaving the country together. BJP leadership needs to understand that You cant win election in creating fear & spreading negative feelings across the country. This is against the Divine vision of Love and brotherhood. At this pace which it is defocusing on issues I feel the party itself may get dissolved or disintegrated in coming years with strong leaders like shri Narinder Modi forming regional parties. Celebrating the stable government that we will get this time also.
Vikram · 10 May 2009
I think there were other (in hindsight perhaps more) significant problems in the ideological makeup of the Congress. 1) The Congress did not really have room for assertive lower caste leaders. They could only rise upto a certain level in the party hierarchy, not anymore. This is why the Congress did not produce a Mayawati in the first few decades after independence. 2) The Congress, though itself decentralized was not committed to decentralization in India's federal framework. Political aspirations in the South, Kashmir and the NE were either suppressed or ignored.
R.Krishna · 10 May 2009
Sir, a very well written article, article which a historian like you can only write. Sychopancy, nepotism and corruption are slowly killing the congress party. It's high time, senior leaders like arjun singh, pranab mukherjee, Dr. Manmohan Singh etc.... start taking independent decisions instead of listening to the high command and bowing to the madam.
pawan gulati · 12 May 2009
A thought provoking article.The congrss needs to rebuilld and reshape its organisation by spearheading ideological campaigns in a populist mode in order to confront communal-fascist ideas which has considerable roots, appeal and following among the middle class. That's why Modi-type politics flourishes .
charan gill · 15 May 2009
We can enumerate the fifth strategy;cooperation with communists(both at international and national level).CPI went to anti congress left unity in 1978.In 1980 Indra Gandhi tried to revive the cooperation but did not succeed.The resulting disunity among nationalists opened many spaces for all round degeneration and for communal forces advance.for regegeneration national forces need an objective review of the recent past.
Laxminarayana Paladi · 17 May 2009
Dear Guhaji, Is there any contitutional bar to become "GUHAJEE" the prime minister of India? Sonia Gandhi was quite away from politics for 8 years after the assasination of her husband Rajev Gandhi. Were you a monor to go to that post? We can have enough journalistic skils, but it is dificult to have an unbiases thinking. Do you want to kep away the Gandhi family from politics/ or you want the security and socioeconomic development of the great country the India? It is not understod why many people like you are ready to forego the future of country but don't stop jelous on certain great family. Simply journalistic skils wil not get any thing to the society but the way you think. Many journalists in India are por thinkers and not bothered about the country. Laxminarayana Paladi
Satdeep Gill · 20 May 2009
sir , my former comment stands vindicated by election results.congress has shifted gear from self destruct to self construct mode.both Sonia and Rahul are using the dynastic opportunity to strengthen the party and are earning the love of indian people.nobody could have stopped Rahul from becoming PM if he himself wanted to.but the mother and son are looking for the ways they can better serve the nation.the reliable cohesive top is always the hub of any dynamic revolutionary party .first Indira's then Rajeev's assassinations has destroyed that top and chances of its constant renewal.after much effort Sonia is successful in building such a top which may be counted rare in the history of great parties.INC is seriously pursuing its goal of democratic nationalism, i do feel.all indications of a glorious future for indian democracy.
MUKUNDARAJAN · 24 May 2009
Excellent article.The recent electoral victory will only strengthen the dynastic orientation of the party.Already, a halo is being built around Rahul, the PM -in -waiting.The success in UP is attributed to his strategy, but the loss in Bihar is on account of Lalu's perfidy.Sonia's strategy is to make it appear that Rahul is building the party and learning the art of governance. The servile congress leaders will do their best to build his image by dedicating all successful policies to Rahul's planning.If one goes by the past history, the arrogance of electoral success will catch up with the Congress sooner or later.It is a pity that a truly national organisation should be tied to the apron strings of a family.
RAJESH PANDEY · 26 May 2009
Mr. Guha deserves kudos for telling us the truth about the systematic destruction of Congress Party and Constitutional Institutions by Indira Gandhi. The youth of today are being led to believe that Indira and Rajiv Gandhi were flawless visionaries, and it is easy for this youth to believe that falsehood when they see the current crop of leaders like Karunanidhi (promoting sons and daughters of his various wives), Prakash Singh Badal (blinded by son-stroke too), Varun Gandhi (almost a hero from a C-grade bollywood film) or the close relatives of Pappu Yadav. But I remember a comment in 'Industrial and Political Weekly' by a worthy columnist, immediately after death of Indira Gandhi - Indira pursued National interest whenever it coincided with National interest and whenever there was conflict between her personal interest and National interest, the National interest suffered. This article opens our eyes to that truth. Despite the desirable objective of freeing Congress of dynasty, it has to be accepted in the medium term that dynastic politics remains acceptable in India. It is due to our deep rooted feudal mind-set that we, the educated individuals of India, also find dynastic politics acceptable. I have frequently heard that second generation politicians should be less corrupt than the new breed (like Mayawati). But we know the truth - children of Badal, Karunanidhi, Deve Gowda, etc. are reportedly achieving newer heights in amassing wealth, after having mastered the art of obtaining the 'Licence to Loot' from the Election Commission of India. When todays electoral politics needs wealthy candidates, it must breed them too. That is the real reason for continuation of the current crop of political leaders. Individuals of integrity and accomplishments like Avinash Dharmadhikari from Pune have always lost their deposits. This trend continues, whether from South Mumbai or the three candidates of Lok Rajniti Manch, in the latest Lok Sabha elections. The educated class believes that the clean honest person has no place in politics. And so we get the relatives of de-barred Pappu Yadav as candidates fielded by Holier than thou Congress, what to talk of BSP and SP. The blame for the legitimacy given to the dynastic politics, despite its inherent anti-democratic nature, has to be taken by the Congress. What Congress does today, is done by minor parties tomorrow. So when Congress takes credit for its achievements, it also has to take the blame for the wrongs institutionalized by it. It is only because of Dynastic politics, and its beneficiaries that even in the (so called National) Advertisements of Prasar Bharti, Sardar Patel, and many other National Leaders like Jayprakash Narayan, Achrya Kriplani, Rajendra Prasad, Dr. Radhakrishnan are omitted, though Rajiv Gandhi is shown as one of the greatest ever national leaders. But then history is written by the rulers. Are you listening Mr. Guha, the Historian?
Sameet · 4 June 2009
Dear Guhaji, thanks for the fantastic piece of witting but i would like to put forth few questions that comes into my mind after going through it. As you have mentioned in one place about the Bhakti culture is it the culture of Indians and if so is it possible that a national party will not be lead by a family or a charismatic leader? if it is true why not the national parties like BJP and the communist are still not a family centric party? will they turn into so in future?