HVK Archives: Kesri's Congress
Kesri's Congress - The Indian Express
Editorial
()
22 July 1997
Title: Kesri's Congress
Author: Editorial
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: July 22, 1997
Who said Sitaram Kesri had no ideas, not to speak of an ideology? Look how
cleverly he advised Laloo Prasad Yadav to resign after asking his party
MLAs to abstain from a crucial vote of confidence! He has also disproved
the assumption that having concerned himself, over the years, with party
funds he would have little to say about the finer aspects of party life.
Just listen to his plan for the AICC plenary session to be held in Calcutta
in August. The Congress president would like the event to be nothing less
than a "landmark session" of a party of freedom fighters in the 50th year
of Independence. An ambitious proposal of ardent patriotism. Will it,
however, be widely seen as such, and its spirit shared even within the camp
that Kesri presides over? Unlikely indeed. To the country at large, the
occasion would appear to mark a far less than flattering landmark for the
Congress as it looks back. And, nostalgic nationalism would not appear to
be quite natural for partymen who obviously miss the power of the past much
more. lie single most notable political feature of the period since August
1947 may, in fact, be a progressive reduction in the national role of the
Congress to the present stage where very few can see a reekonable future
relevance for it. The question before the Congress is not what lofty
posture its coming plenum must strike. The more appropriate one that the
Kesris will not ask is how a party that has long prided itself on being the
premier national organisation is in real danger of becoming a notional entity.
It is pathetic to see the party celebrating the disintegration of the
Janata Dal and trying to pretend that the Congress can take advantage of
the situation. How has the party of freedom fighters reached the sorry pass
where power by proxy has become its paramount ambition? How come the only
party of all-India spread and appeal, that the inheritor of the legacy of
the independence movement was, has lost its base in state after state
almost irretrievably along with its claim to be the only possible provider
of stability at the Centre? Where, along its tortuous way, did the party
of Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru, the umbrella organisation under which ideas
and ideologies contended, lose its tradition of internal debate and
democracy? Why is it now capable only of debating about the merits and
demerits of calling upon Sonia Gandhi to lead it, with the voices of
dissent even in such cases being well below the audible level? Why do
claims of its earnestness about organisational elections command little
public credence?
Turning to another but not unrelated set of questions, why has the Congress
become synonymous with corruption, and not only of the political kind, even
more than other parties with their Jayalalithas and Laloos? Why does the
hawala spectre haunt the party despite the court dismissal of the cases?
Is it only lack of charisma that is preventing acceptance of Kesri as an
alternative national leader? Legion are the questions, but there is little
evidence of the party's readiness to face them. The Congress can hope for
no salvation without coming to terms with uncomfortable realities and
unpleasant truths about its precipitous decline over the period since it
first assumed power at the nation's helm.
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