The Congress party has never been strong on self-definition. Why should we, is the attitude: don?t we represent all of India, notoriously hard to essentialise? Besides, the moment we pick a narrative, aren?t we forced to perform an act of exclusion? And that is something that the party of inclusion finds constitutionally difficult.
Which is why the party?s occasional moments of introspection need to be marked and analysed. One such opportunity came, appropriately enough, with the party?s 125th anniversary, and its release of a two-volume authorised history. All of India?s parties have suffered from a scarcity of in-house intellectual work, so purely for that reason the history should be welcomed. It?s certainly a professional effort, with chapters written by some of our most experienced journalists, and edited by a board of professional historians. The extensive appendices, too, are a treasure trove of speeches and policy statements, useful to those who prefer to draw their own conclusions from the source material.
But let?s not draw our own conclusions. Because what we actually want to know is what the Congress?s chosen view of itself is. For what?s actually a big, confused mass is the party?s history, out of which you can choose some strand of enduring ideology, and twine around it anecdotes and statements such that the grand old party seems to always have believed in something.
Admittedly, that?s explicitly what the book claims it will not do. The foreword, by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, who?s known to be something of an amateur historian, is a grand restatement of the old-fashioned conception of the party, as a broad pre-Independence nationalist platform that became a post-Independence ?all-inclusive, open-ended? big-tent party. That is a good thing, Mukherjee argues, because it allowed a focus on the developing of institutions rather than the promotion of specific interests. And it allowed the party to be ?fleet-footed? in terms of economic policy, moving from the Nehruvian consensus to one around economic reforms.
Yet if we discount this self-conscious self-conception, there?s something very intriguing at work here. Consider economic policy. At every point where the Congress splits, or suffers internal pressure, this history explains the varying economic opinions of either side. And much is made of the fact that, in each case, the Nehru-Gandhi of the time is on the left of the issue. Of the early years, we are told that ?the overall economic performance during the Nehru years was remarkable.? But the Indira-era stagnation is not mentioned. And how does the party value Rajiv?s reformist credentials? In a section on his ?21st century vision?, we are told first about his identification of shortcomings in centrally-funded schemes; of Panchayati Raj; of the Jawahar Rozgar Yojana; of environmental sustainability; of party electoral reform; of computerisation; and only last, almost as an afterthought, of delicensing and the big jump from 3% to 5.5% economic growth that happened during his term. The paragraph that explains and defends post-1991 liberalisation is unusually explicit: growth was merely ?a tool to transform society in a direction which empowered the poor, the backward, women, Dalits and minorities.? This party, so loath to take a stand, has no problem making it clear that they are not full-throated economic liberals, and the sooner that this point is internalised by those who depend on them to frame policy, the better.
That?s how to read the Congress?s economic history of itself. But there?s more here: how are dissidents treated in the party?s institutional memory? How is the Emergency explained? (As perverted by Sanjay-led ?over-enthusiasm?.) In each case, how the Congress is reading its own past tells us of how it?ll write its own future.
But we should ask of the Congress: why must we read between the lines like this? You are now one party among many; shouldn?t you take a stand or two, explicitly? The Congress may be comfortable ensconced in power; but, truly, the days of single-party domination are over. Throughout the book, the ?political stability? that Congress rule could provide is trumpeted. But it would be short-sighted in the extreme to bank on one party providing stability in the coalition era.
Instead, it is our political institutions outside, not inside the party that matter for stability. Yet the Congress seems to believe that it was the balancing of interests inside its own messy coalition-as-party that matters. The party?s attempts at institutional strengthening, Rajiv?s attack on ?power brokers?, the Kamaraj plan, and so on, are highlighted in its chosen narrative of itself.
And it continues to think so. How else should we read Rahul Gandhi?s single-minded pursuance of low-level party institution-building, at the expense of taking stands on policy issues at the national level, something to which he would then commit his party? If you want to read this as signs of a pleasing modesty about his own opinions, fine. But what the Congress would like us to read it as is a belief that the policy doesn?t matter, only the party?s inner life does. And that?s the marker of a party that thinks it?s still unchallenged, the sole alternative in a one-party state.
But we aren?t a one-party state. Which is perhaps the Congress?s greatest success?and not one you?ll see celebrated here.
?mihir.sharma@expressindia.com