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It is not intelligent anymore to believe. The clever option is to be cynical,
particularly about politics. Politics is the panorama behind the curtain, the
vested interest behind the event, the shadow behind the word, the world behind the
gesture, the silence behind the phrase. What is apparent cannot be true; an
answer offered in the breadth of a newspaper headline is meaningless without
knowledge of the intricate calculations. What, therefore, does Sonia Gandhi's
sudden membership of the Congress Party mean? It cannot merely mean that she
wants to be a member of the Congress Party, can it? Did it mean one thing in the
third week of March when the deed was quietly done, and does it mean something
quite different in the second week of May when the Congress president and his
ever-obliging spokesman chose to repeat the information to the accompaniment of
trumpets? Did the chorus define the drama?
Perhaps it may make sense to get a small, if briefly popular, interpretation out
of the way first. The one thing that this event does not mean is that Sitaram
Kesri has placed Sonia Gandhi on a spotlit shelf in order to bludgeon Sharad
Pawar. You do not order out the tanks to settle domestic problems: a quiet
stiletto is generally considered sufficient in Congress politics. So all right
then: why was Sonia Gandhi, for six years the Reluctant Queen of the Congress
Party, ushered into the parlour with her unspoken consent?
Wisdom is generally confused with a long beard and complicated profundities. The
more unreadable you are the higher you rate in fine journals addressed purely to
the intellect; and if you become truly unintelligible these days you are almost
certain to land a professorship in an American university. For us, professional
communicators, wisdom is better obtained in simplicity, for simplicity is the
eldest child of clarity.
Predictably - for he is nothing if not clear, confident and focussed - the most
sensible response to the episode came from Jyoti Basu. "I did not know," he
remarked, "that she was not in the party."
That single sentence summed up all the dimensions of the event. When was Sonia
Gandhi not in the Congress? No Congressman ever treated her as an outsider.
Homage at No 10, Janpath has been an article of faith with the party, and all
through his five years in power P.V. Narasimha Rao resented and chiselled away at
this alternate centre of power. He did not make this very obvious in the
beginning because he was always afraid of Sonia Gandhi's ability to destabilise
him, but when by 1994 a few foolish astrologers had convinced him that he would be
re-elected he lifted the curtains off his disdain, virtually compelling Sonia
Gandhi to retaliate in her silent manner. Sonia Gandhi not a member of the
Congress? You could have fooled the AICC at which more slogans were raised for
her than for the party president Narasimha Rao. Even those Congressmen who left
the party did not leave Sonia Gandhi, and in that sense she belonged to a spirit
much larger than the Narasimha Rao Congress. Sonia Gandhi may have pretended not
to belong to the Congress, but the Congress certainly behaved as if she belonged
to the party.
It would be equally foolish to suggest that Sonia Gandhi was not in politics: even
Sharad Pawar eventually saw the wisdom of taking her into confidence on the eve of
a crucial move. Her philosophy was simple. She would not knock on any door, and
she would keep her door open to anyone who wanted to call, irrespective of past
hostility or present indifference.
What is right is that so far Sonia Gandhi has not sought power, which is quite a
different matter from suggesting that she was not in the Congress or she was not
in politics. She was not in power politics, but she was a major player in
Congress affairs.
The correct question, therefore, is whether the developments of this week mean
that Sonia Gandhi has now decided to enter power politics and indicated to Sitaram
Kesri that he can now signal as much to the party and the country. The Congress
Party of course will lap her up; no one will have either the courage or the
ability not to do so. The big question is the country, and what plans Mr Kesri has
for the country.
Only the blinkered believed that Sitaram Kesri had brought the Deve Gowda house
down without any alternative structure in mind. It could be naive to presume that
his gameplan began with the departure of Mr Deve Gowda and has ended with the
arrival of Mr Inder Gujral. Sitaram Kesri did not take the biggest risk of his
life in order to ensure the glory of Mr Gujral. As far as the Congress is
concerned the only real difference is that Mr Gujral is not a manipulator, while
the former Prime Minister was an expert. Forget the cosmetics like the court
cases: in truth, Inder Gujral can do less to help any Congress leader in trouble
than his predecessor since he has no idea how to twist and rum the system. The
court cases are an incidental subtext in the longer drama; they will demand and
consume their casualties, but they will not alter the progress or the denouncement
of the five-act drama. Go back to Jyoti Basu: when the world was accusing Kesri
of personal greed he described the decision to withdraw support from Deve Gowda as
a political decision. Sitaram Kesri succeeded because he knew that however weak
his hand, the Front's cards were weaker. And now, fresh cards have been dealt.
Sitaram Kesri's plans have only one goal: the return of the Congress to power, a
legitimate enough desire for a party president. The route map is never easy, and
he could see that Narasimha Rao had left the party in a hopeless cul de sac, first
with the defeat and then the unconditional support to the United Front. Three.
steps were needed for the Congress to move ahead: the removal of Narasimha Rao was
first, and was achieved with traditional Congress untidiness. The second was the
destruction of the credibility of the United Front, a process which has now been
partially achieved. The third was to find a leader who could drive the Congress
ahead. Sitaram Kesri has finally decided that he is not that leader. Enter Sonia
Gandhi.
This also means that the Congress has now convinced itself that there is little
hope of entering government in this Parliament, for Sonia Gandhi has no role to
play among MPs who won an election under a different leadership. Her credibility
will lie in her campaign, and the difference that makes to Congress fortunes. She
would be even more effective if she refused to be a candidate, and merely
campaigned for others: there is no law which says you have to be an MP to be sworn
in as PM. Ale Congress would hint at such a future without giving the BJP an
opportunity to start a Ram vs Rome campaign. Sonia Gandhi is clearly aware of the
dangers of overplaying her hand before election day. If she does campaign, and the
Congress crosses 225 seats the MPs will elect her leader by acclaim. That is the
nature of the party.
In other words, the final stage of the Kesri strategy is now set. Smile and be
reasonable. Help the government in every way. Wait for the United Front to
disunite during its next crisis; and when the explosion has wrecked the Front,
move towards an election in which the Congress could hardly do worse than it did
in 1996.
Ergo: if Sonia Gandhi "joins" the Congress can general elections be far behind?
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