A bet on the do-or-die spirit of a non-Gandhi

After a long spell of drift, the Congress has finally voted for a new party president. Mallikarjun Kharge’s victory is significant on many counts. He is the first non-Gandhi chief of the 1885-founded party in nearly a quarter century. As the first Dalit leader to hold the post in 50-odd years, his election carries symbolic charge, given how burdened the party is by its image as a hothouse of privilege. The seasoned Karnataka leader’s win also pushes the right federal buttons at a time our north-south divide in politics has been widening. The result of the poll was clear. Kharge swept it, polling nearly eight times the number of votes as his rival, Shashi Tharoor. The victor entered the fray after Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, seen as a trusted choice of the Gandhi family, bowed out of the contest, resulting in Kharge being seen as the ‘unofficial official candidate’. Tharoor pitched himself as the disruptor, but his campaign for change seems to have resonated only with a small minority of the nearly 9,400 delegates who voted. Perhaps, there lies the rub. Will siding with the cautious incremental change that Kharge represents be enough for a party that faces a staggering challenge of relevance?

Almost 140 years old, the party that once was a big tent of ideas and persuasions, led a mass movement for India’s independence, and came to define the country’s framework for a secular polity, is in crisis. It remains in power in only two states, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. In the last Lok Sabha election, its tally was reduced to 52 seats, less than the minimum 10% needed to bag the post of Leader of Opposition. In several states, it found itself not just out-manouevred by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), but also pushed to third place by regional parties. It’s not a stretch to argue that voters uneasy with saffron nationalism are losing faith in the Congress’s ability to take on the BJP. It is not just that India’s polity appears to have swung rightward. In a country of many inequalities and even more aspirations, the BJP has tapped a vein of resentment against an older elite, seen as smug and effete. Its portrayal of the Congress as a party under dynastic control allows a contrasting projection of Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a strong leader who arose from among the people. That’s why many Congress well-wishers were keen for the older party to signal that it was open to change, new ideas, and, above all, a credible revival plan.

Kharge’s challenges are formidable. His task is to catalyse a new imagination of the Congress’s place in ‘New India’, refresh the older discourse of social justice, inclusion, secularism and economic development for a new generation, sharpen and articulate the idea of India it stands for, and transform the party sans bloodletting. That needs both ideological clarity and pragmatism. Kharge’s long record as a consensus man of Karnataka politics might well come in handy in negotiating the multiple demands of various power centres within the party. What his presidency cannot afford is to be seen as a rubber-stamp of the Gandhi family. While some Congress leaders had dismissed the Kharge-versus-Tharoor contest as a “sideshow” to the real thing, Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra, the Congress should not let another round of palace intrigue hobble the efforts of an elected president and risk an extended season of power without accountability. It needs a comeback trail. Forging one will take minds concentrated by the implications of failure.