"The last bit of England in Indian politics looks set to die a slow death," wrote Ian Jack for 'The Guardian' .... May 24, 2014 ....
Are we really heading towards the same in 2024?
In 1998, former cricket captain Krishnamachari Srikanth had walked into a leading media organisation - that is PTI. To a question from me how he rated Sachin Tendulkar as 'captain material'; Srikanth had said - "Captainship is just based on results...You change a baller and he gets you couple of wickets you will be called an innovative and so on and the moment the batsman hits two boundaries, they will say arey pagal....and so on".
In 2021 months before a few state elections, BJP changed its chief ministers - four of them in three states. Two of them were in Uttarakhand and the reshuffle also included Gujarat - Prime Minister Narendra Modi's native state. The results went in favour of BJP.
In contrast, the Congress changed Capt Amarinder Singh, the 79-year-old who served as the chief minister for nine-and-a-half years in Punjab and the results in 2022 went in favour of the AAP. This has been Rahul Gandhi's problem all along and to an extent sympathy and benefit of doubt should go to him.
Rahul Gandhi often banked on his select set of advisors - old and new. A few from Hindi-heartland like Digvijaya Singh and others like K C Venugopal. But the results never gave him the dividends he expected.
Charanjit Singh Channi's elevation to chief minister in Punjab fractured the power held by the Jat Sikh community since the state's creation in 1966. And it also aimed to appeal to the Dalits, a dominant vote bank not just in Punjab but in all-important Uttar Pradesh state, which also just after four months went to the polls in February 2022. But neither Punjab could be protected nor did the move make any impact in Uttar Pradesh.
There was another important factor. In the run up to the 2022 polls in UP and Punjab; if you followed English media - both desi and run by firangis - you could read in plenty that sacking Amarinder and Channi's appointment showed an "uncharacteristic political savvy" on the part of the Gandhis - Congress party president Sonia Gandhi, her son Rahul Gandhi and daughter, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. Ting Tong !!
Looking back, one can trace that Indira Gandhi was not so openly groomed to succeed Jawaharlal Nehru but bringing her in suited power brokers and some elements outside India too.
Post-Emergency as Indira Gandhi stormed back to power, there was 'no alternative' (TINA factor) to Congress. Today, Narendra Modi is basking on this factor.
Of course, the Nehru-Gandhi family was firmly established as a political dynasty by the 1980s. Even after Rajiv's assassination in 1991, thanks to family retainers such as Arjun Singh - the Congress party became a vehicle for the Nehru-Gandhi brand.
PM P V Narasimha Rao was embarrassed. Sitaram Kesri was humiliated in public and Rajiv's widow - Rahul Gandhi's mom Sonia, became the party president and the woman to whom the last Congress prime minister, Manmohan Singh, 'obeyed' dutifully.
It was natural even for old hats such as Pranab Mukherjee and Ambica Soni to see that Rahul Gandhi was groomed as his successor. There were mistakes and the corruption bogey rocked the party. But, if all had gone well for him, his family's position as India's ruling dynasty would have stretched across four generations.
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| Two PMs, four Congress Presidents : All in one frame |
Now the important part of the story. Do they really belong to India?
Rajiv Gandhi married an Italian -- the daughter of a building contractor from a small town near Turin.
The 2014 'The Guardian' article was more than candid. "Nehru's great-grandson, Rahul, is therefore a quarter Kashmiri, a quarter Parsi and half Italian – a fine emblem of social liberalism and national integration, though that might please his grandfather (perhaps Nehru) rather more than his constituents in rural north India".
Indira often to her friend Dorothy Norman, a New York writer, that her "desire to be out of India and the malice, jealousies and envy, with which one is surrounded, are [sic] now overwhelming". Nehru's opinion on Hinduism could be traced in the following lines:
"The spectacle of what is called religion … in India and elsewhere has filled me with horror," Nehru wrote, "and I have frequently condemned it and wished to make a clean sweep of it."
Reports also say Rajiv Gandhi too was proud to have been brought up as an agnostic secular and he also admitted that towards the end of her life Indira Gandhi believed a lot of swamis and yogis and astrologers.
Hence if in 2024, the Congress leaders stayed away from Ram temple despite the risk of being called anti-Hindu; there is a background. It is altogether a different chapter that Indira Gandhi especially post-1971 war handled RSS pretty well.
Today, RSS and BJP are more than just detractors and bitter critics. But that the Congress party is in a deep morass maybe still too early to say.
There are numerous stories of inept handling of the challenges and the crises.
Rahul has to get rid off some of his advisors.
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