On September 13, 2013, Narendra Modi was officially anointed the BJP's candidate for Prime Minister. In June of that year in Goa, he had issued his first call for "Congress-mukt Bharat." Two weeks after Modi's appointment, and hours before Manmohan Singh was to meet Barack Obama in Washington, Rahul Gandhi declared at a press conference that a recent government ordinance designed to protect convicted legislators should be "torn up and thrown away".
Ajay Maken, who had begun the press conference by defending the ordinance, now found himself saying that "[Rahul] is our leader and when he has aired his views, those become the views of the party." The ordinance was withdrawn in days. The leadership or ownership of the Congress had passed into Rahul Gandhi's hands. From that day on, Indian national politics has been the story of Modi vs Rahul.
The Congress and BJP had been the two largest parties at every election since 1991, finishing first (in seats) three times each. But the Congress that Rahul inherited in September 2013 was a far more "national" party than the BJP. It had fourteen Chief Ministers; the BJP had four. The Congress was the main Opposition party in ten states, and a strong third in two others; the BJP was the main Opposition in only six states. In 26 Assemblies (all bar West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar), the Congress was either in power or a significant contender.
In October 2022, Rahul Gandhi remains what he was nine years ago - the king who prefers not to wear the crown. But the borders of the kingdom have had to be redrawn. Next year, the Congress is overwhelmingly likely to lose one of its two remaining state governments- Rajasthan. Its best or only hope of ousting a BJP government in Karnataka is far from a sure thing. In a hung assembly, the JD(S) is more likely to partner with the BJP than the Congress this time.
If the BJP can win back Chhattisgarh, the Congress, after ten years under Rahul, may find itself down to zero Chief Ministers. The newspaper front pages can write themselves: a map of India, showing that the slogan Congress-mukt Bharat is now political reality.
Since 2013, the Congress has fallen from first to third or lower in several states, a position from which its history shows it does not recover. In Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, states that gave it 42 Lok Sabha seats as recently as 2009 (not counting the 12 from what is now Telangana), the party has all but ceased to exist, securing 1% and 2% at the most recent Assembly elections. From 24, a decade ago, there are now fewer than a dozen states in which the Congress could be confident of finishing first or second at an Assembly election.
And yet - Congress supporters will object that there is no point rehashing all this history when, at last, the party is in the process of reviving itself. As I write, Rahul Gandhi has just finished the first month of his Bharat Jodo Yatra. And on October 17, the Congress will elect its first non-Gandhi president in 24 years.
Rahul Gandhi during Bharat Jodo Yatra.
I will take up the presidential election in a subsequent column. Whatever the outcome - and the fact that the outcome is viewed, inside and outside the Congress, as a given, is its own indictment of the party - the Congress has already done everything possible to nullify any prospect of the presidential election serving as a vehicle of party revival.
As far as the Gandhis and their remaining supporters are concerned, the real event is the Bharat JodoYatra. This yatra, Rahul Gandhi says, is not aimed at 2024, is not even for that matter a party exercise, but a Congress-led social movement that is focused on issues - secularism, inequality, inflation, unemployment. Yet the nature and route of the yatra tell a different story. They reveal a movement with two aims: rehabilitating Rahul Gandhi's image, and shoring up the Congress' position in those states in which it actually believes it can do well in 2023 and 2024.
By fighting to holding what it has, one could argue, the Congress is actually learning from past mistakes (such as spending resources on a futile campaign in UP that should have gone towards a winnable election in Uttarakhand). And if Gandhi is to be seen to be both grounded and popular, it makes sense to devise a route on which he is likely to find a receptive audience.
Or does it? The BJY route speaks to the party's diminished ambitions, to a Congress that is looking to manage decline in an 'orderly' fashion, like the RBI handling the depreciation of the rupee. It has been argued that the total exclusion of Gujarat and Himachal are not relevant to a campaign whose goals are national. But it is Rahul Gandhi whose preferred description of the republic of India is a "Union of States". To ignore elections in states in which the Congress has *always* come first or second, at a time when AAP is aggressively targeting Congress voters in those states, is to meekly accept yet more shrinking of Congress territory. Never mind voters - what signal does this send to those state units? Demoralising and humiliating several more state units is an odd recipe for party revival.
Rahul Gandhi walking with mother and Congress interim chief Sonia Gandhi during Bharat Jodo Yatra.
The Congress is uniquely ill-equipped to deal with being in Opposition. Its entire structure is based on having the fruits of power to offer its members. This could be Rajya Sabha seats (the Congress has a large cadre of unelectable "senior leaders"), Chief Ministerships, or cabinet ministerships. The Gandhis are used to having plenty of fruit to distribute. In 1952, the Congress held every chief ministership in India. In 1985, under Rajiv Gandhi, they had 18 of 26. Only a decade ago they had 14. Extended periods out of power mean organisational atrophy.
Now, Congress leaders and workers in Gujarat and Himachal might reasonably ask - what's the point? And: Can you name one person who left the Congress and lived to regret it?
What of the yatra's other aim - transforming Rahul Gandhi's image? Rahul Gandhi's problem is that not that he is disliked, it is that he is not taken seriously. Outside of a small but loud echo chamber, Rahul is seen as someone who a) inherited rather than earned his position b) is a serial electoral loser c) exercises power without responsibility.
The Bharat Jodo Yatra addresses none of these. If AAP pushes Congress to third in Gujarat and/or Himachal, that will only exacerbate Rahul's "loser" image, whatever happens in Karnataka. And the de facto appointment of an unthreatening loyalist to the party presidency is additional evidence of the power-without-responsibility charge.
If the aim is to draw a contrast between a grounded Rahul and an inaccessible Modi, then that is as misguided as the "chowkidar chor hain" self-goal of 2019. Voters see the Prime Minister as a chaiwala's son, and Rahul as a fifth-generation dynast, and no yatra of any length can turn the latter into a man of the people.
What both yatra and election offer us is not a blueprint for Congress revival, but reminders of paths not taken. A non-Gandhi Congress would only have been possible if the family left politics altogether, thus enabling a truly free contest for the leadership. An alternative scenario would have involved Rahul Gandhi returning to the presidency and ruling himself out of the race for Prime Minister. In this scenario, the Congress could serve as an important, multi-state component of a wider Opposition, without the next election being defined as Modi vs Rahul 3.0.
However modest the prospects of either path, they would have been preferable to what the Congress has chosen - stasis. If Mallikarjun Kharge is the "official candidate", chosen to preserve the Gandhis' ownership of the party, the Gandhis themselves have come to constitute a kind of "official Opposition" - preserving the appearance of two-party national democratic politics while perpetuating BJP rule.
Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi at a Congress rally.
There lies the paradox of "Congress-mukt Bharat". The BJP's ideal opponent is a Congress that is alive, but barely. A Congress that chooses neither to die nor revive. A Congress run by Rahul Gandhi, except part-time, and in someone else's name. A Congress confined to a handful of states. What the BJP wants is "Congress-almost-mukt Bharat" and that is what they have.
(Keshava Guha is a writer of literary and political journalism, and the author of 'Accidental Magic'.)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author.