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AN unspoken dispute stalks India’s Congress party. It may define the battle lines for the scattered opposition groups to align against a ferocious but not invincible right-wing assault on democracy. The little discussed problem concerns rival views offered by former prime minister Manmohan Singh and former Congress president Rahul Gandhi about what critically threatens India’s liberal democracy.
Singh, during his 10-year rule, had described left-wing extremism as the single largest internal security threat for India. That Prime Minister Modi has embraced the view can be seen from the way leftist intellectuals are being declared Maoists before being sent to rot in prison. Gandhi on the other hand had told a US ambassador years ago, in comments subsequently published by WikiLeaks, that right-wing Hindu extremists posed a truly existential threat to Indian democracy. For this and more, Gandhi has been trolled and abused by the ruling establishment, and less openly by lobbies in his own party.
There are two other notable differences between Gandhi and Singh. The younger politician says he doesn’t care if his political career gets destroyed in the quest to save Indian democracy, a sentiment one doesn’t associate with Singh’s ascent to power. It’s a lofty, romantic thought borrowed from popular 16th-century poet-philosopher Kabir.
The verse was adapted in Urdu by Majrooh Sultanpuri and loaned to Pakistan in its struggle for democracy during the Ayub dictatorship. “Jala ke mishal-i-ja’n hum junu’n-sifaat chaley/ Jo ghar ko aag lagaae hamaray saath chaley”. (“We’ve turned our bodies into flames to ford the dark night/ Those eager to self-destruct could win the fight.”) One remembers here that the Congress had given a call during Prime Minister Modi’s first innings to launch a second freedom movement. Where has that call stalled?
Are the opposition in India for a war with China or are they gloating over a stick they may have found to beat a Teflon rival with?
Something else Gandhi said has earned him sneers from the right-wing within and outside his party. Had a Gandhi member been in the saddle in 1992 the Babri Masjid would not be harmed. That’s what Rahul once said without trying to rub in the point that Singh was a lionised member of the Narasimha Rao cabinet that slept through the mosque’s destruction. Rajiv Gandhi had been assassinated the previous year.
Between Singh’s and Gandhi’s contentions lies the essential crisis for India at the current dire crossroads. A recent letter from a group of Congress politicians obliquely critical of the Gandhis probably had the support of tycoons who have sworn never to see a Gandhi in the saddle. Their anti-Gandhi sentiment had hardened after Rajiv Gandhi threatened in Mumbai during the 1985 celebrations of the Congress centenary that he would punish the “moneybags riding the backs of the Congress party worker”. His opponents, including those from within his charmed circle of friends, joined hands to tar him instead with the Bofors scandal.
WikiLeaks signalled a third element that’s driving cynical politics across the world, not excluding Indian politics with the advent of Prime Minister Modi in 2014. Erstwhile leader of opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Arun Jaitley, had been meeting US diplomats routinely to lobby for the Bharatiya Janata Party as the original pro-American group in India.
The conversation published by WikiLeaks explains Mr Modi’s current agenda. Jaitley admitted to a cynical expediency, which the BJP had embraced in order to survive and grow. What was that expediency? As tensions with Pakistan had abated under Singh, the BJP was losing traction in its north Indian base. So complained Jaitley to his diplomat friends.
In other words, good relations with Pakistan do not suit the BJP. Similarly, he said, in India’s northeast, the talk of Bangladeshi immigrants provided the required oxygen to his party. What Jaitley said then is coming out in bold relief today.
As for China being in the cross hairs of the BJP, mostly on behalf of you-know-who, the current narrative since May of troops crossing this stream or occupying that hill is like a tale from the tavern. The White House undid the BJP’s doublespeak on China after then prime minister Vajpayee secretly messaged president Clinton that the Pokhran nuclear tests targeted Beijing.
What is less explicable here is the opposition’s stance, led by the Congress. Are they for a war with China or are they gloating over a stick they may have found to beat a Teflon rival with? Both are unworkable in the absence of ideological clarity. The Lok Sabha monsoon session starting on Thursday presents an opportunity to draw the battle lines with clarity.
There is needless pessimism over the challenge that Modi presents.
Public memory is short. The Bihar assembly, going to polls this year, was not won but grabbed from the opposition by subverting an alliance. Was that popular appeal or desperation?
The BJP did not win Goa, or Madhya Pradesh or Manipur in a democratic contest. For a party that came to power by raising middle class hopes against corruption, the BJP stands accused in Maharashtra and Rajasthan with attempting to gain power through horse-trading. If the media therefore desperately projects Modi as an invincible leader, why should the opposition fall for it?
There’s a truly imposing challenge, however, and it’s within the opposition parties, chiefly with their self-absorbed leaders. This is where the left parties come be handy with their experience of cobbling steady coalitions. However, for all this to happen, the left needs to stop seeing itself as a victim in West Bengal and Mamata Banerjee as the immediate threat.
The left and the Congress, ideologically revived under Rahul Gandhi’s leadership, need to sort out their differences in Kerala. The BJP covets both opposition-ruled states, and both face polls next year. Ordinary Indians have shrewdly accepted what was unthinkable until recently — the need for bedtime prayers for the far-right Shiv Sena government in Maharashtra to not get toppled. Some would call it opportunism. Others may see it as ideological clarity. Both are needed for the fight at hand.
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
Published in Dawn, September 8th, 2020
