Congress in Disarray

FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS

Sri Chandrajit Yadav’s strong statement issued on July 17 crying halt to factionalism and indiscipline inside the Congress organisation, has come not a day too soon. Since it is generally regarded as having the imprimatur of the Prime Minister, the statement may be taken as a measure of consternation felt by Smt Gandhi herself about the fast deteriorating situation inside the Congress.

The monster of factionalism has raised its head in most of the Pradesh Congress organisations, with the leadership reducing itself virtually to the position of a by-stander. The ugly melodrama enacted over Gujarat was not the exception but threatened to be the rule in Congress activity. Before Gujarat came the sordid story of Bihar, which was preceded by the equally distressing developments in Andhra leading to the splitting of the Congress organi-sation in the State. The rumblings are heard in other States as well. As a result, most of the State governments are being virtually turned into coalitions of disparate factions inside the Pradesh Congress bodies. Today factionalism in different degrees has beset the Congress organisation practically all over the country from Mysore to Assam, from West Bengal to Punjab.

The rebel groups have been getting respectable reception in New Delhi whenever they could work up a signature campaign against the ruling faction and almost invariably they could get prompt audience from the different Central leaders of the party. There has been no proof to show that the bitter infight has anything to do with differences over principles, ideology or programme of action.

Sri Chandrajit Yadav’s statement is good as far as it goes, but the canker of factionalism has gone deep inside the Congress organisation and only a homily or a harangue would not be able to stop the rot. It is made known that Sri Yadav’s warning is going to be followed up by a meeting of the Congress High Command reviewing the entire situation and taking measures to tone up the party.

The point to note, however, is that the Congress High Command is as much a reality today as was the Holy Roman Empire: it is neither High nor a Command. Not all the members of the Congress Parliamentary Board or the Working Committee can claim to be above factional politics in their respective States. Therefore, they hardly command the respect and authority that their predecessors in the pre-independence days could wield.

As for its acting as a command, it is an open secret that there is no collective leadership in the Congress today. The Prime Minister alone has the authority, and if she wilts or keeps her eyes shut, then the Congress organisation as it stands today is in danger of collapsing like a house of cards.

How has this state of things come about? When the Congress split took place in 1969, Smt Gandhi could mobilise a large section of the Congress ranks because they had been fed up with the authoritarian factionalism of the Syndicate bosses. The section of the Congress which gathered around her was, by and large, enthusiastic that there would be a new turn in the situation and while the government, purged of the Rightists like Sri Morarji Desai, would be able to move forward along radical lines, the Congress organisation, on its part, would develop as a well-knit, ideologically oriented modern party acting as the instrument of change.

It is true that even in those days opportunists had crept into Smt Gandhi’s camp: at the same time, the dominant trend in the Congress ranks was strongly in favour of a new orientation in outlook, function and the structure of the party.

Throughout 1970 it turned out to be a difficult year for the Congress organisation because the vested interests decided to sit on the fence and watch how the new party under Smt Gandhi would move. With a wafer-thin majority in Parliament at her command, Smt Gandhi had an alibi for moving cautiously, though it was just the period when the party organisation could have been rapidly built on a new foundation of dedicated youth, taking seriously their commitments to the programme of progressive measures that the Congress placed before the country.

Early in 1971 came the mid-term poll for the Lok Sabha. The slogan on which Smt Gandhi could move a decisive section of uncommitted electorate was that for the country to progress it would be necessary to have a stable govern-ment. Stability for social advance was the main platform of the Congress in that election battle. Her resounding victory was a measure of the country’s overwhelming response to that call.

However, in distributing the Congress tickets for election, there was a perceptible degree of compromise, and a number of people with unsavoury record could sneak back into the Congress. This was explained away at that time by the plea that in trying to organise a huge party machinery with the responsibility of running the government, one could not be too snooty, and has to allow a certain number of people to come in whose political chastity might be questioned but whose competence in the practical field of life would be worth mobilising.

The Congress victory in the 1971 mid-term Lok Sabha poll was an eye-opener for the entrenched vested interests. They came to realise that Smt Gandhi and her party would be firmly installed in power and instead of fighting a frontal battle it would be better to make peace with it and by patronising it to win it over; in other words, to undermine and corrupt it.

This was the starting point of trek back of a fairly sizable chunk of the reactionaries committed to the Syndicate, to the Congress under Smt Gandhi. The year 1971 therefore presented a strange mixture inside the Congress party: the youth upsurge, brought about by the break with the Syndicate, provided the tempo in the Indira Congress, and with it many of the progressives, so long kept down by the Syndicate bosses, were thrown up in the active functioning of the Congress.

Side by side, many of those owing allegiance to the vested interests were found to be moving actively inside the Congress; with the past experience of running the party machinery they could manage to capture a large section of the party organisation with the usual practice of bogus membership drive and manipulation of the Pradesh Congress machinery to pitchfork themselves into key positions in the party. This was the phase when the progressives and the youth wing missed a great opportunity of building a new party unstained by the power of black money. Silently, on the other hand, the middle-rank veterans of the old Congress managed not only to get a foothold but to enlarge their area of operation inside the Congress.

Then came the election to the State Assemblies early in 1972. In the scramble for the distribution of Congress tickets, the reactionaries scored much better than the progressives. The reactio-naries could butt in larger numbers than they could in the Lok Sabha mid-term poll one year ago.

The sweeping success of the Congress in the 1972 election was also on the platform of stability-cum-progrssive advance. It is significant that in a State surcharged with Left outlook like West Bengal, the Congress could register a spectacular victory: after the tragic in-fight that broke up the CPM-dominated United Front, the Congress promise of stability with progress had an almost instant response. The youth wing of the Congress provided the assurance for the implementation of radical promises, while the electorate gave, in return, an unprecedented opening for a stable government.

The progressive direction that the Congress held before the country at that time brought it also the support of a large section of the Left who were not afflicted by the allergy of blind anti-Congressism. It was for the first time in the history of the Congress since independence that it could mobilise the active support of the CPI at many places. Perhaps this could have been an all-India phenomenon had the conservative wing inside Smt Gandhi’s camp not blocked the possibility.

With the installation of the new Congress Ministries in most of the States after the poll in March 1972, a new phase opened in the fortunes of the Congress—a phase marked by the interaction of contradictory pulls. On one side there was a tremendous mass enthusiasm born out of the expectation that a new era of radical social changes was about to begin. The youth element inside the Congress together with the progressives formed the centre of hope. On the other hand, the reactionary elements with care and foresight jumped on to the winning bandwagon and prepared themselves, quietly and calculatedly, to get a stronger grip over the party machinery and also to get ready for the battles ahead over the implementation of the radical programme.

In the year-and-a-half that followed, there set in a sense of complacency on the part of the progressives, and the Congress as a party organisation hardly moved into action. The mass mobilisation seemed to be confined only for the electoral battle and not for the implementation of the programme. The youth wing lost itself in squabbles and petty factionalism as could be seen, for instance, in West Bengal.

On the other hand, a large section of Congressmen were sucked up in factional politics led by careerists and opportunists backed by black-money operators. Inevitably, all the contours of traditional Congress functioning could be visible: caste and communal groupings or regional factionalism came on top. With the sure belief that the Congress would hold the Ministries for the next five years, the have-nots in the party organisation started intriguing against the haves, and the result has been the ugly scramble for power in practically every State where the Congress runs the Ministry.

Andhra provides the most glaring example of the suicidal policy. Instead of unifying all the forces committed to progressive advance and strengthening the integrity of the State, the State Congress leaders divided themselves into parochial groups and caste politics, and in this they were naturally encouraged by the forces of the vested interests: the result was that disastrous disruption of the Congress led to the collapse of its own Ministry and the imposition of President’s Rule.

In Orissa, the situation was slightly different. Here it was the Congress which originally took the lead in bringing in reactionary elements into its own rank to get a majority to oust the Swatantra-led combine. But it was a costly experiment and it turned out also to be short-lived.

In Bihar, the group fighting became shameless and instead of implementing the promises made to the people, the Congressmen divided them-selves into opportunist groups in the most grotesque display of factional fighting. It was only when it reached a point of total bankruptcy, and tired itself out that the Congress in Bihar had to choose a new Chief Minister who, how-ever, has yet to get the complete allegiance of his own party members.

In Uttar Pradesh, the group in power chose the path of total inaction, paralysing the entire administration and letting itself disintegrate to a degree that Central intervention became inevitable. After the imposition of President’s Rule, the group fighting has again intensified and now the squabble is for the choice of a new leader or the retention of the old. Different personalities with expectation of ruling over a huge State like UP have joined in a silent battle and in this a number of aspirants from the Centre have also been operating.

In Gujarat, the entire mess became an eye-opener for the Congress leadership. Reliable reports say that more than Rs 30 lakhs of black money passed hands in this entire Operation Replacement in Gujarat. The manner in which intrigues and counter-intrigues were allowed to flourish, leading to a shocking state of affairs inside the party, might have helped to shake up the Congress leadership as indicated by Sri Chandrajit Yadav’s latest statement.

Meanwhile, rumblings have started in Madhya Pradesh and have been continuing in Mysore. Whether the Congress leadership—Smt Gandhi in particular—is in a position to put a stop to this downhill trend is yet to be seen.

The basic cause for this degeneration of the Congress endangering the very stability of its regime is that it has not moulded itself into a party for mass mobilisation for the realisation of the reforms that it has committed itself to on the governmental plane. The bogus manner in which land reform measures have been passed and implemented clearly shows that the Congress ranks have not been involved in the entire process.

More staggering has been the record of the Congress throughout the entire period that the government has been advertising the procure-ment drive for wheat. The record of Congressmen in leading posts in this respect is revealing indeed. Very few Pradesh Congress Committees can claim that the majority of the members with surplus foodgrains have sold their stocks to official agencies.

The AICC itself organised no campaign among the masses in defence of the government’s take-over of the wholesale trade in foodgrains. Not even a pamphelet has been issued by the AICC on this subject—an index of the apathy with which a major step towards curbing vested interests in the present situation, has been neglected by the Congress leadership.

In this background, the Congress, being ridden with factions, provides the clearest example of a party squandering its magnificent opportunities by forgetting to go in for mass mobilisation to keep its commitment to the masses.

The gangrene has no doubt set in but the patient has still the stamina to survive. It is to be seen if Smt Indira Gandhi can muster courage for the necessary amputation of the diseased limb so that the Congress might recover into a well-knit party ready to carry out the commitments it has made to the masses during the last three years.

(Mainstream, July 21, 1973)