[And so repeated a
predictable and time-honored ritual. For many years, Gandhi leaders have been
expressing ambivalence about their roles, and party loyalists have been
responding with louder and louder applause: Ten years ago, when Sonia Gandhi
refused to accept the post of prime minister, Congress workers gathered outside
her residence, some writing pleas in blood or threatening suicide if she did
not change her mind. Shouts of protest went up earlier this year when Mrs.
Gandhi announced that Rahul, 43, would not formally be named a prime
ministerial candidate.]
By Allen Barry
NEW DELHI — Ritual mortification is an essential element in Indian
political life, and a Monday meeting of the Indian National Congress party,
convened three days after the worst defeat in its history, seemed to call for
something spectacular.
About 200 journalists
spent the afternoon camped outside the party’s headquarters here at 24 Akbar
Road, peering through the shrubbery to the bungalow where grandees were,
presumably, determining whose heads were about to roll.
After a campaign that
clearly failed to connect with an influx of young, growth-minded voters,
Congress’s representation in the lower house of Parliament has been reduced
from 206 seats to 44 — a shocking comedown for the party whose history is
integral to India’s founding narrative.
The sun was already
slanting sideways through the trees when the committee members emerged, grim-faced,
with the news of what had happened inside: nothing.
The party’s president,
Sonia Gandhi, and her son, Rahul Gandhi, had offered to resign their positions
in acknowledgment of their roles in the disastrous campaign. But the committee
members unanimously voted to reject their resignations, showing their unshaken
confidence in the family that,
in this city, somehow always begins with a capital F.
“I don’t think we
should do what Shakespeare said, and ‘throw away the pearl,' ” said a senior
party member, Mani Shankar Aiyar, when asked about the decision during a talk
show on NDTV. “The Gandhi family is our pearl.”
And so repeated a
predictable and time-honored ritual. For many years, Gandhi leaders have been
expressing ambivalence about their roles, and party loyalists have been
responding with louder and louder applause: Ten years ago, when Sonia Gandhi
refused to accept the post of prime minister, Congress workers gathered outside
her residence, some writing pleas in blood or threatening suicide if she did
not change her mind. Shouts of protest went up earlier this year when Mrs.
Gandhi announced that Rahul, 43, would not formally be named a prime
ministerial candidate.
But there was a
frustrating familiarity about the results of Monday’s meeting of the Congress
Working Committee, whose members Mrs. Gandhi appointed. Many supporters were
eager for signs that the party was prepared to confront weaknesses that have
emerged, among them Mr. Gandhi’s poor performance as a candidate and an
emphasis on welfare that failed to resonate with younger and more aspirational
Indians.
A statement released
by the committee late on Monday gestured at that second fact, reading, in part,
“We failed to read the profound challenges that had taken place in the country
during the 10 years” since the Congress-led coalition came into power.
At the meeting,
though, Mrs. Gandhi was one of many to single out the party’s communications
strategy, saying that “the message of Congress was lost in the din and dust
raised by an aggressive and polarizing campaign by our opponents, which was
backed by unlimited resources and a hostile media.”
Ritual resignations,
ritually rejected, occur regularly in Indian politics, serving as reassurance
that leaders “have not lost the trust and the faith of party insiders,” said
Milan Vaishnav, an analyst at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, a research center in Washington.
But they may not do much to convince the public that its leaders have taken
responsibility. "It’s this kind of Kabuki theater,” he said. “There’s a
facade of accountability, but it’s usually just a way of bolstering your
standing.”
The Congress party’s
defeat was in some ways predictable. It had been in power for 10 years, and it
is an unwritten law in political science that incumbents, in democracies, are
hard-pressed to be re-elected a third time. Food inflation has been high. But not
even pessimists would have predicted a result of 44 seats, said Neerja
Chowdhury, a political analyst, who called it “a perilous moment.
“Suppose they don’t
get their act together? Then they can look at a scenario where the Congress
splits, an erosion takes place and people in the states begin to look for
greener pastures,” she said. In a democracy, she added, “you need a healthy
opposition.”
Waves of commentary
have begun, starting with the obvious: Faced with a strong opponent in Narendra Modi, and
saddled with the criticism that the party had become rudderless, the Congress
party still did not name a prime ministerial candidate, presumably to protect
Mr. Gandhi, a visibly reluctant candidate, from a bruising standoff. And, for
young voters increasingly obsessed with economic advancement, its message was
far too focused on the party’s championing of subsidy programs.
“The real lesson they
must draw from this is an ideological one; the redistributive ideology is not
enough anymore,” said Rajiv Desai, a public relations executive and longtime
adviser to the Gandhi family. He said the Congress party could have presented
itself as a standard-bearer for economic reform, if its leaders, including Mrs.
Gandhi, had not insisted on a message tailored to the poor.
“The Congress needs a
leader, and the most obvious one is Sonia,” he said. “They have got to get her
there and tell her, ‘You missed the bus.’ What I would say is, ‘Your policy has
worked. The people have become rich, and therefore aspirational, in the rural
areas. And that’s why you lost.’ ”
But the hardest
question to face was the one about whether Rahul Gandhi will become the party’s
leader, or whether Congress needs to prepare for life without the famous
family. Monday’s display suggested no readiness to confront that question, said
Shiv Visvanathan, a political scientist, during the discussion on NDTV.
“The Congress has
sanitized its bureaucracy, but it failed the leadership drama,” he said, his
disappointment apparent. “One thing that’s true is that, as a nation, they have
rejected the dynasty. To a certain extent, what the Congress is signaling is
that they are continuing the dynasty, come what may.”
Suhasini Raj contributed reporting.
