Shashi Tharoor shows Congress the mirror !!
Former Minister and Kerala MP, who wanted to become AICC president, says ... the Congress is full of negativity and instead it requires - positive narratives.
No Congressman and woman can deny overpower the influence of Dynasty. That should be ignored. The Congress revival debate should start from something beyond that. First its history. It has a glorious history of being a nationalistic party.
But in 2025 - the word nationalism in Indian politics is synonymous with the BJP.
Shashi Tharoor said: “As I said at the Congress Working Committee (CWC) yesterday, the Congress must be the party of hope, not of resentment."
That means, the party leaders also realise that the Congress is unable to generate any wave of hope and aspiration.
Tharoor is not alone.
Another Colleague of Tharoor, Manish Tewari (Lok Sabha MP) and also a former Minister said the grand old party Congress must not overlook the aspirations of the youth in terms of creation of wealth and prosperity.
Here comes certain issues which ought to be debate more intensely within the Congress of it wants to revive itself.
Rahul Gandhi around 2015 put Congress on the track of being a neo-urban Naxal. The results are known to all. His entire focus since 2014 has been anti-Narendra Modi -- a leader who has done a hat-trick and who in 2019 took BJP's tally to 303.
After his Rafale and Anil Ambani bogey failed in 2019; in subsequent period - the Congress leader discovered another name Gautam Adani. This too did not yield much results and probably backfired in Maharashtra.
But different doctors will have different diagnosis. AICC president Malikrajun Kharge (probably his script was endorsed by Rahul and his team) dubbed Maharashtra polls as a "fraud".
Politically, other than seeking to articulate the Congress viewpoint on nationalism and faith, the Ahmedabad resolution focused on the party’s line of 'social justice' and a pledge for a nationwide caste census.
The Congress would of course continue to support reservations for backward castes.
Tharoor is learnt to have raised questions on this aspect saying the party must give a clear line of inclusiveness.
Not doing so would blunt the Congress’s criticism of the BJP as a communal party, he said, urging the party to eschew negativity.
The Thiruvananthapuram MP, party sources said, also cautioned the central leadership that its strategy could give BJP ammunition to accuse the Congress of sowing division along the lines of caste.
This issue is critical and not many Congress leaders are actually able to understand the dangerous line Rahul has taken vis-a-vis the demand of caste census.
There is now every chance that the upper castes Hindus would be further isolated from the Congress. As it is many Hindus do not hesitate to lambaste the open pro-Muslim tilt of the Congress. And now comes the aggressive push for caste politics.
Essentially, the Congress is playing the good old game of opportunism. In the process the 'nationalistic' appeal has gone missing.
It is behaving like DMK in Tamil Nadu and is almost opposing Hindi in the state. The Congress is behaving almost like Samajwadi Party (of casteist leadership) in Uttar Pradesh and is readily a junior partner to RJD in Bihar.
Rahul Gandhi and his team believe the issue of caste census will make the Congress a champion of Mandalite forces. They seem to forget the obvious episode of Mandal politics of V P Singh as such games did not make V P Singh a Mandal messiah on ground.
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| V P Singh and Rajiv Gandhi |
Singh lost his government in 1990 and also political appeal. Instead the caste voters lionised two erstwhile marginalised players Mulayam Singh Yadav and Lalu Prasad. Here the argument of merit and hard work does not work. Only caste matters.
The Congress will never be acceptable by Yadav or other casteist voters as their party.
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| tribal voter : Tura belt, Meghalaya |
Some Congress leaders felt the CWC resolution, which was put up for debate at the AICC session, fell short of offering the country a roadmap for the future and aspirations of the Indian youth.
It also did not break the ice on organisational renewal.
Sardar Patel's legacy is now with the BJP:
The meeting, attended by 158 party leaders, adopted a resolution invoking the legacy of Patel and accused—without naming the BJP or the RSS—the ruling dispensation of spreading a “deliberate web of lies” of conflict between Patel and Nehru through its “fake news factory”.
All these have come too late. Sardar Patel's legacy is now firmly with the BJP and Modi 'the protector' of that enriched legacy.
The AICC resolution nevertheless says: “In reality, it was an attack on the very ethos of our freedom struggle and the inseparable leadership of Gandhi-Nehru-Patel. The cobweb of deceit and deception couldn’t be sustained, for Sardar Patel himself wrote to Pandit Nehru on 3 August 1947 and unequivocally stated, ‘Our attachment and affection for each other and our comradeship for an unbroken period of nearly 30 years admit of no formalities.
Our combination is unbreakable and therein lies our strength’.”
The grand old party is perhaps 'deliberately living in illusion'. Good days are gone and we are into 'bad days'. So the Congress seems to believe ... these hard days will also go away.
How is not their question yet. 'When' is ????
ends
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