Cradle-Rocked Hands

When they wrote to interim Congress president Sonia Gandhi demanding sweeping organisational changes in the party, the threat that the act posed to their own political careers in the party could not have escaped the 23 letter writers. Through the 135-year history of the Congress there have been many such ‘rebellions’, both nationally and in different states. Invariably, every mutiny that went beyond feuds among state leaders was seen as a challenge to the hegemony of the Nehru-Gandhi family.

Though the triggers for dissent have been varied, the outcome has always been the same. With each uprising, the family’s control over the organisation has only grown. The mutineers have—with very few exceptions—either drawn their one-way ticket into political obscurity or returned to the parent organisation; their hands folded in obeisance to the Nehru-Gandhis. The exceptions who prevailed—be it Sharad Pawar in Maharashtra, Mamata Banerjee in Bengal, the late Mufti Mohammad Sayeed in Kashmir or Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy in Andhra—were electorally confined to their respective home states despite formidable political skills. Undoubtedly, this salami slicing weakened the GOP regionally but it also cemented further, the indispensability of the Nehru-Gandhis to the Congress.

The orchestrated shaming of the 23 signatories at the recent Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting made it clear that the party is in no mood to digress from the formula of crushing dissent that has served the Nehru-Gandhis well for nearly 50 years. “You cannot change the nature of the beast,” one of the signatories tells Outlook, while insisting that “not one word in our letter was a challenge to the leadership but all of us have been branded as traitors.”

Officially, the Congress has maintained that issues raised by the letter writers will be addressed “in due course”. Sonia’s closing remarks at the CWC meet too suggested her willingness to move forward without bitterness. Those demanding reform have also publicly welcomed the CWC resolution endorsing the demand for a “full-time president” to be elected at an AICC session that is likely to be convened within the next six months. “The CWC resolution is very clear and all concerns flagged by the leaders will also be addressed by the party,” says Congress general secretary (organisation) K.C. Venugopal.

However, several signatories of the letter that Outlook spoke to says they would believe the assurances made at the CWC only after these are put into effect. At the CWC, sources say, there was a consensus to constitute a committee to assist Sonia in running the party. There had also been speculation that at least one of the 23 signatories may find a place on this committee. However, this was not reflected in the CWC resolution. A senior CWC member says, “A full-time president will be appointed soon, so there is no hurry to make these changes. Let the full-time president be elected and he can decide to form such a committee.”

Congress sources say Rahul, who is likely to return as party president when the AICC session is finally convened, is still livid over the letter episode and it is his unease with the signatories that is driving the attacks on those seeking leadership reforms. Former Karnataka chief minister Veerappa Moily, who was among the signatories says: “We knew the repercussions for our action, but we went ahead because we have a duty.”

The repercussions didn’t take long to unravel. Soon after, Sonia formed a five-member intra-party committee to formulate the Congress’s stand on key ordinances brought by the Narendra Modi government. The panel includes party leaders P. Chidambaram, Digvijaya Singh, Jairam Ramesh, Amar Singh and Gaurav Gogoi. Next, Sonia reconstituted committees for coordinating the Congress’s parliamentary strategy and named party whips for the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. Those included in these committees were Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, Gogoi (also made deputy leader in LS), Ghulam Nabi Azad, Anand Sharma (leader of opposition and party deputy leader in RS respectively), Jairam Ramesh (also named chief whip in RS), Ahmed Patel, Venugopal, K. Suresh, Manickam Tagore and Ravneet Singh Bittu.

The letter writers claim that the formation of these committees sends clear signals. Barring Azad and Sharma, who were retained in the parliament strategy group by virtue of the posts they hold in the Rajya Sabha, none of the 23 signatories were accommodated in these panels. Leaders like Kapil Sibal, Manish Tewari and Shashi Tharoor, who are well versed with legal and parliamentary matters, were left out. The panels show a clear imprint of Rahul Gandhi as Venugopal, Gogoi, Bittu and Tagore are considered part of his ‘cabal’. A Congress MP and signatory to the letter says, “Every appointment made in the Congress over the past year has Rahul’s seal even though he claims to have given up his leadership claim.” The MP asserts: “We have no issues with Rahul’s involvement; in fact, we would have welcomed him back as party chief, but then this back-seat driving has to end because it adds to the confusion over our leadership.”

Congress sources say the next few months are likely to see more “dramatic changes” within the organisation and that these could reflect a “changed demographic that Rahul is more comfortable to work with”. This suggests that more veterans—simply said, the letter writers—may either find themselves without a job or be relegated to punishment postings in states where the Congress is a fringe electoral entity. “The letter writers claim they are anguished over the shrinking Congress footprint, so they should have no problem with taking up organisational responsibilities in states like Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra or the Northeast to revive the party,” says a Sonia confidante.  

A key member of the letter-writer group tells Outlook that the leadership should not be under the impression that packing off the signatories to difficult states would dampen their push for reform but adds that the “smear campaign” against them must stop. “Ghulam Nabi, Wasnik, and others have served the party in states where the Congress had little presence left…if the party decides to give them a similar assignment again, they will go, but if vested interests continue to undermine them, then it is the party that will suffer not the individual.”

The Congress high command, says another signatory, needs to realise that “by going after us, the party only stands to suffer more humiliation”. He adds: “These sycophants need to realise that if damaging the party was our intent, we could have done so without writing the letter…still, if the leadership thinks that it wants to allow this mudslinging, then it is asking for things to become ugly…imagine the message it would send to the public if even half of us resign.”

What seems to have given confidence to the status quoists in the Congress to launch their counter-revolt against the reformists is that the majority of the signatories are “leaders with no mass base who have grown in stature because of the very system they are now abusing”, says a loyalist.

Besides, most of the signatories are at the fag-end of their career, a fact that the Rahul loyalists, perhaps, believe makes the mutineers expendable. “The earlier rebellions in the Congress were by leaders who commanded a mass base and could still rally support, but even they failed to dislodge the Gandhis. From Kamaraj to Sharad Pawar, no one has been able to push the Gandhis out of public imagination. Forget winning state polls, the people who are talking about leadership today do not even have support to win a seat in the CWC if there were internal elections,” says a young Congress leader.

The acerbic verbal duel that the letter has triggered may not end anytime soon. It would, however, be interesting to see to what end this raging internal feud veers. Will the reformists stake their all and walk out of the party to prove their point or will they, like another category of past Congress rebels that hasn’t been recounted above, make their peace with the Gandhis and prove themselves indispensable to the party afresh? After all, party veterans and current family favourites A.K. Antony and P. Chidambaram had also parted ways with the Congress once, as had the late Pranab Mukherjee, only to win back favour with the first family.