“In the new year the single most important characteristic of the political situation is the instability and uncertainty in relation to basic questions that have been brought into sharp relief by the third major split of the Indian National Congress in its 92-year old history. Both Congressmen and Janataites have been given much food for thought. The way they act and decide on issues in the coming months will be closely watched by the people.”
JANUARY 4, 1978
The meaning of this split
HISTORY, IT HAS BEEN OBSERVED, REPEATS ITSELF IN A DISCONCERTING fashion – the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. If the 1969 split in the Indian National Congress contained, for Congressmen and well-wishers of that party, elements of the tragic, the 1978 split reveals unmistakably farcical characteristics. For how else is one to comprehend the various claims and noises made at the “National Convention of Congressmen” that concluded recently? The forces that assembled at Delhi in defiance of a specific party appeal dedicated themselves, by verbal tricks and political sleight of hand, to restoring coherence, direction and unitariness to the political process of the country; to championing the interests of the “downtrodden” and of minorities; to providing strong and patriotic leadership, and incredible as it may sound, to refurbishing democratic political culture. The nature and quality of their programme were expressed, above all, in the act of declaring Mrs. Indira Gandhi – beyond the slightest regard for legality, constitutionality and party procedure – the Congress President. All this signifies that the forces of different complexion that have banded together as followers of Mrs. Gandhi have adopted the strategy of going to the people openly – in contrast to the hesitant and ambiguous official, Congress leadership – in defence of Emergency. Not merely is there no trace of remorse for the towering wrongs done to the nation during the regime, there is social blindness and arrogance at large, reflected in the statement on the real cause of the defeat, viz., the reactionary combine of internal and external forces”. The outlook of Mrs. Gandhi and her henchmen who have captured an unknown part of the Congress Party organisation is blatant. It is to prey upon the complex and uncertain developing situation of the present in order to develop muscle of disruption in the country. No other interpretation can be placed on the political resolution and speeches that rattled at the Delhi convention.
While it will be a mistake to think that Mrs. Gandhi’s group has no real capacity for political mischief, it is well to remember that the present political situation is basically different from the situation that enabled her line to mislead and snare the people in the late sixties. Demagogy practised from the gadi is very different from demagogy practised in a period of political defeat and exposure. It is the deep-going process of exposure taking place before the Shah Commission and the other commissions investigating Emergency misdeeds that explains the desperation, the panic, the stridency that characterise the tactics of Mrs. Gandhi and her entourage.
An analysis of the overall political development of the country during the last decade highlights the following realities. The first reality is that the 1978 split is an advanced development and working out of the process of differentiation within the Congress Party that began some years ago, in response to what was at that time claimed (many would say, falsely) to be live ideological issues and in response to the opposition generated against the inability of the ruling party to solve concrete problems of the people concretely. This does not, of course, mean that any real “politics of conviction” motivated, and issued from the 1969 split. Political, factional and personal factors contributed to the emergence of two lines within the ruling camp at that time, one of which went successfully to the people on a platform of populism and demagogy – which is, after all, the art of playing upon the misery, the feelings, the sentiments of the “downtrodden” while maintaining the existing state of affairs and, more particularly, one’s own sway over everything that matters. The second reality is that if Mrs. Gandhi’s group got the upper hand at a particular juncture for a host of socio-economic, ideological and political reasons, the opposition to her hold gained ground rapidly throughout the Seventies culminating in the Emergency experience and the electoral trouncing last March. The “politics of conviction” so ceremoniously propounded by Mrs. Gandhi in 1969 was gradually undone, as is clear now, on account of its own internal stresses and contradictions, its unaccountable inaction in the matter of offering positive policies, its authoritarian tendency in party and government. It is equally clear that those in the official Congress cannot wash their hands off their own responsibility for the condition that enabled a small coterie of power-wielders to run amok and smother the natural urges of democratic life. The third reality is that the political conglomerate that has replaced the Congress at the Centre has not shown itself capable, so far, of solving the basic problems of the country that eventually got the better of the Congress. The Janata Party has failed to provide imaginative and constructive solutions to these. It has been tormented by internal strife and factionalism and is still to work out for itself an effective policy framework. The Janata Government has failed to overcome the serious weakness injected into the body politic by the polarisation of electoral results between the North and the South; it has by its structure and functioning laid itself wide open to the charge that it is basically a party of one zone of the country which ipso facto becomes neglectful of the interests of the other, the South. While taking note of the split in the Congress – which should, in the coming weeks and as the Assembly elections draw near, push the official Congress group closer to the Janata Party – it must not be forgotten that the issues of poverty, deprivation, atrocities on Harijans, linguistic inequality, self-reliance and neglect of the South do not become unreal and discredited just because Mrs. Gandhi’s camp may choose to adopt them demagogically. They are very real and cannot be tackled promptly and competently unless the Centre acts in close concert with the States, for which an essential pre-condition is the effort to establish greater cohesion among all parts of the federal set-up of the country. In the new year, the single most important characteristic of the political situation is the instability and uncertainty in relation to basic questions that have been brought into sharp relief by the third major split of the Indian National Congress in its 92-year old history. Both Congressmen and Janataites have been given much food for thought. The way they act and decide on issues in the coming months will be closely watched by the people.
Reference:
The First 100
A Selection of Editorials, 1878-1978, THE HINDU, VOLUME I