The day was 26 January, ‘the new head of state, Rajendra Prasad, took the salute in what was to become an annual and ever more spectacular parade. Three thousand men of the armed forces marched before the President. The artillery fired a thirty one- gun salute while liberator planes of the Indian air force flew overhead. Gandhi’s India was announcing itself as a sovereign nation-state’ (Guha, 127). But there was more hidden than revealed to this splendour and colour, India’s first Prime Minister had suffered his first political defeat, not electorally but within his own Congress party. Nehru wanted the more urbane and cosmopolitan Governor-General Rajagopalachari to retain his job after the presidency came in but Patel got the congress rank and file to support Prasad’s candidature. Annoyed and embarrassed, Nehru gave in but neither the victor nor the loser, the two ideologues of Congress party realized then, this was how the Congress party was to function throughout its existence- a battle between competitive ambitions and ideas.
It is the year 2020, Indian National Congress has become a footnote in many of the states it governed erstwhile and is struggling to stand its ground in those states where it is in power or opposition. Sonia Gandhi, the longest-serving Indian National Congress President is grappling with the same problem as Nehru had in 1947, factions. Political commentators have brushed off the re-emergence of Congress party into prominence and have regarded it as having become highly divided without any coherence in ideology or a will to re-imagine the social justice and economic prosperity for millions of aspirational Indian citizens. Though their observation may be true about the huge chasm within the party leaders when it comes to ideology, their subsequent inferences seem to be highly motivated.
The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man, and we see them everywhere brought into different
degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society.
- James Madison, Federalist Papers 10.
At the outset, Indian National Congress seems to be a party that is always divided across ideologies within themselves. There is no coherence in the ideological thought and when it comes to taking a stand against certain issues there seem to be multiple voices emerging from within. This is one of the attributes which has been severely chastised by political commentators. Across the aisle, many have observed this as something which has not allowed congress to rebuild itself. But I feel this inherent factionalism and the prevalence of multiple voices within an umbrella organization has enabled the survival of the idea of a Congress party. Factions are good for any society. When there are multiple cleavages within society, there is less probability of the society leaning towards one idea significantly. Thus, there are many ideas that are surviving at the same time and competing for relevance this makes it a very unpredictable situation. The opinion of the public can change always and there should be always a medium to allow that. Thus, in the case of Congress, there is always a chance of ideas changing depending on the public mood.
I consider that Congress has just not found the right pitch or the right idea which they have within themselves. But the reason I say with a sense of guarantee that the idea exists within is that the Congress as an idea and party has not obliterated. Yes, it has fallen from its grandeur status but it has not been totally wiped out. Comparing it with the demise of many other political parties is a great pointer towards what I want to stress here. Let us take the example of Hindu Mahasabha, Swaraj Party, Communists, all these parties were promising, they had great ideas about how India should be constituted but they could not stay relevant forever. They have just oozed into oblivion. The reason I feel is that all these parties when they started and when they carried on their mobilization, built their politics on a central idea and wanted to trickle it down to the last block of the party. Thus when that idea was in vogue and acceptable to a significant portion of the population they were able to exist but they got incinerated with the evolution of new ideas. In the case of Congress, they have remained to be in the public’s focus because they have sustained a thought process that is not hegemonizing or enforcing. Thus there is a platform for many different ideas to survive and thus the party to survive.
The current BJP party has few factions within the party in respect to ideology. Thus, the day people’s opinions start changing about it there will be serious repercussions. Either there will be a forceful enforcement of that ideology on the people or a loss of identity among themselves. It would take a long time to recapture another idea which people would accept.
The problem is that Congress has become a confederate, and people are pulling it everywhere, and it remains to see where it goes.