TALES OF TRAVESTY
dR. JITENDRA SINGH
A curious new situation has unfolded just three months before India elects its new Lok Sabha. The largest and the oldest political party of the country, namely the Congress, is unsure about whom to name its Prime Ministerial nominee. With Manmohan Singh having voluntarily stepped aside from the bid to seek another term for himself and with Rahul Gandhi lacking the confidence to step in, the Congressmen are left looking at each other with the unspoken question written on their faces: “After Manmohan who?”
Even if the next Government is led by Bharatiya Janata Party under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as most of the poll surveys indicate, the Congress Party will still not be spared of the dilemma of choosing another leader for itself.
Such a peculiar situation has arisen only once before during the 66 years history of post-independence India. Towards the end of 1963 and early 1964, when the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal was not keeping good health, the entire media at home and abroad was debating “After Nehru who?” and a best-seller book with the same title also hit the stalls around the same time. Nehru, in his lifetime, was accused of tacitly promoting daughter Indira but she was never seen as having emerged as a serious Prime Ministerial candidate. And, therefore, the Congress leaders seen as frontline potential successors to Nehru at that time included stalwarts like Morarji Desai, S.K Patil, Y.B Chavan, K.Kamaraj, Lal Bahadur Shastri and Acharya Kripalani.
The rest is history. Indira Gandhi, who took over in 1966 with the unflattering refrain of being nothing more than a “Moom Ki Gudhiya”, soon proved everybody wrong. First, she showed the door to oldies like Nijalingappa and Kamaraj, and then discreetly established dynasty control over the party to pave a safe succession by sons Sanjay and Rajiv to be followed by grandson Rahul and grand daughter Priyanka.
Today, when Rahul Gandhi boastfully claims that unlike BJP, the Congress has decided not to name a Prime Ministerial candidate because the party follows the tradition of democratically electing its leader with the majority choice from among the elected members of Lok Sabha, somebody needs to remind him that it is actually his party, and precisely his family which is responsible for having broken this constitutional convention. Just recall…. when Indira Gandhi was assassinated in 1984, there was a queue of senior Congressmen including Pranab Mukherjee who could have staked their claim but Rajiv Gandhi was hurriedly flown in from Kolkata to be sworn in as Prme Minister. And in 2004, the Congress Parliamentary Party had elected Sonia Gandhi as its leader but she in turn nominated Manmohan Singh.
The unspoken truth is that declaring Rahul Gandhi as Prime Ministerial nominee before the general election may prove disastrous for the Congress party as goes the experience from the Assembly poll results of the States where Rahul had campaigned. But, the time honoured tradition of the party is that it is eventually the “dynasty’ . And, therefore, by all means…..Rahul… and if, not he for some reason, then…Priyanka.
The people of India are nevertheless wary of such chicanery. The common man is ready to overthrow the family throne, a La Faiz, “Woh Waqt Kareeb Aa Pahuncha Hai……..Jab Takht Giraye Jaenge”. Umapathy holds the “ballot” key to the question “After Manmohan who?”
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