Rahul Gandhi must choose his political path

Critiquing Rahul Gandhi is fashionable. While his opponents in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have caricatured him as an incompetent leader, many of his Congress colleagues, in private, hold him chiefly responsible for the deepening crisis in the grand old party. So let’s cut to the chase and ask the central question. Would a Congress-minus-Rahul Gandhi be in a better position to challenge a Narendra Modi-led BJP?

As the two massive Congress debacles in the 2014 and 2019 general elections have shown, the Gandhi scion is a tailormade foil for the Prime Minister (PM) in any presidential-style leadership contest. His identity as a fifth generation dynast allows Modi to play the naamdar-kaamdar narrative to the hilt, with a populist war cry — would you choose a privileged, untested inheritor of a family legacy or opt for the pulled-up-by-his-bootstraps chaiwallah who has become PM after years of toil? For a new young India, built on a meritocratic ideal, the well-marketed Modi journey is far too compelling compared to the pampered existence of a Lutyens’ elite offspring.

Moreover, the sustained toxic campaign of the BJP in damning Rahul Gandhi as “Pappu” — through a mix of lies, half-truths, self-goals and yes, a complicit media — has influenced voters. Even when Gandhi raises valid questions, as he has done through the pandemic, his image as an unsuitable leader has stuck.

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And yet, it isn’t as if the Congress was doing spectacularly well before Rahul Gandhi entered politics 17 years ago. The party’s decline across the Hindi heartland is a late 1980s phenomenon, with its hollow commitment to secularism and social justice ruthlessly exposed by the rising tide of the Mandir and Mandal forces. Besides, an imperious high-command culture that evolved in the Indira Gandhi years meant that more than a generation of regional leaders within the party was systematically marginalised. The unswerving belief that only the Nehru-Gandhi family could hold the party together weakened its leadership structure and atrophied the party organisation to a point of no return.

Rahul Gandhi cannot be blamed for the organisational decay and his grandmother’s mistakes. What he can be held responsible for is his failure to recognise that the present-day Congress is neither equipped to be an ideological adversary to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) nor is it a well-oiled election machine that can compete with a Modi-led BJP, an election juggernaut with energised cadres, catchy slogans and thirst for new voters.

The Congress, instead, is a loose big tent party of power-hungry leaders, harbouring perennial ambitions for VIP privilege. It cannot be transformed overnight into a revolutionary party of hardened secular activists or a party of like-minded Left-leaning fellow-travellers. Power may be poison for Gandhi, it is tonic for his party. Those who have left the Congress in recent times, including Gandhi’s close aides, mirror the inescapable reality of a political culture that is uneasy with the prospect of being out of power for an extended period. If Gandhi is not seen as a vote-catcher or an astute election strategist, then a large section of the Congress will never fully embrace him.

Which is why if Rahul Gandhi wants to genuinely democratise or reform the Congress, then he must realise that he can’t do it while remaining in the Congress. Sharply competitive and resource-intensive contemporary power politics has little space for a moral revolution, intellectual engagement or soul-stirring wannabe Mahatmas. For example, you cannot claim to be a secular fundamentalist and then compromise for power by allying with the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra or with an Islamic cleric in Bengal. The Congress is weighed down by too much baggage to be seen as a resolute defender of progressive values.

If Rahul Gandhi truly wants to wage an ideological war against the BJP-RSS, then he is leading the wrong army. If he is committed to value-based politics, he must show the courage of his convictions, risk breaking the present Indira-Rajiv-Sonia Congress, and forge his own path with comrades who share his ideals. If he has a vision for a better politics, then he needs to agitate for it, not just by attacking the government on Twitter or interviewing foreign-based academics online but by hitting the streets and connecting with people, replacing the culture of entitlement with that of egalitarianism. Rahul Gandhi must form his own party and lead it according to his principles. That is the only way he can hope to emerge from the dynastic trap and be seen as a formidable challenger to the existing ruling dispensation.

Maybe he can draw a leaf from his dadi’s playbook. Indira Gandhi too was lampooned as a “gungi gudiya”. Yet, by 1969, she determinedly broke with the old guard in the Congress and forged her identity with stunning success. She, though, clearly saw herself as an artful 24x7 practitioner of realpolitik. Rahul Gandhi too needs to finally decide — is he willing to play a lead role in the ruthless pursuit of power or else opt out and operate in a more academic universe of ideas? Staying in a status quoist comfort zone is no longer an option for him or the Congress.

Post-script: Recently, when Mukul Roy rejoined the Trinamool Congress, Mamata Banerjee was asked about taking back someone who betrayed her. She was emphatic that in politics, there are no “closed doors”. It’s a lesson in no-holds-barred powerplay that the Congress once excelled in and perhaps needs to re-learn. Else, it will be reduced to a feeble rump.

Rajdeep Sardesai is a senior journalist and author

The views expressed are personal