The Congress Party Is In A Coma
With losses in Kerala, Puducherry & Assam, and a wipeout in West Bengal, it seems that the Congress party has entered a coma. Can it resurrect itself, or will it succumb to its own death?
The Indian National Congress is India’s oldest political party. Founded in 1885, it was the first modern nationalist movement to emerge in the British Empire in Asia and Africa. Its leaders from its left & right wings were instrumental in securing India’s independence (and sadly, its partition as well).
From 1947 to 1989, it was the dominant party in India’s national and state politics. While it did receive hiccups after the 1975-77 Emergency of Indira Gandhi and the scandals of her son Rajiv Gandhi in 1989, it picked itself up with Narasimha Rao and his cause of liberalization reforms. However, from 1991 it seemed to head into a decline as it could only form coalition governments whenever it came into power. In 2014, after a series of corruption scandals that rocked the country, the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People’s Party, BJP) under Narendra Modi won a thumping majority by reducing the Congress to its worst showing of just 44 seats out of 545. Modi increased his already large majority in 2019, and the Congress slugged behind at 52 seats.
The Congress has tried to pull attack-after-attack, allying itself with political parties it had grudges with for decades, in an attempt to beat Modi but to no avail. Then came the COVID-19 pandemic, and the disaster that is unfolding in India provided to them an opening to reemerge.
But they failed. Rather miserably, so to speak.
Kerala
Kerala is one of India’s most ardently left-leaning states. It has either elected the Congress party, or the Left comprising of numerous Communist and Socialist parties. However, for the last 44 years, no party had ever won a re-election as the government oscillated between the Congress and the Left.
But in the recent election, Communist Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan broke the deadlock and defeated the state Congress party to retain his coalition’s majority in parliament by increasing his seat share in the 140-seat assembly from 91 to 99. The Congress dropped from 47 to 41, while the BJP lost the only seat the had and were wiped-out from the state.
Traditionally, the Left has been supported by the Nairs, Ezhavas, Dalits and some economically backward communities and groups across religious lines. Congress and its allies (the United Democratic Front) have relied on a coalition of the economically powerful Syrian Christians, Muslims and a section of the Nairs. It can be argued that the shift of Catholic Keralites to the Communists (yes, you read that right) helped strengthen the party.
This is due to the clash between two sections of the Syrian church —the Orthodox and the Jacobites— over the possession of church properties. A recent Supreme Court verdict went in favour of the Orthodox sect. As Congress decided to wait and watch, the Left mediated on behalf of the Catholics. The heads of the Syrian Catholic church, who had traditionally backed the Congress, ultimately decided to align with the Left. The Catholics have an issue with “love-jihad” (Muslim men marrying women from outside their communities and converting them to Islam), which not only helped the Communists form an effective opposition to the Congress and its Muslim allies, but also helped consolidate the Hindu vote away from the BJP, even though the Communists have sought to balance the line between progressivism and conservatism on this issue.
Ultimately, it was a humiliating defeat for Congress.
Puducherry
The Congress held the chief-ministership of the union territory of Puducherry, when until this election, it was brutally decimated by the BJP and its ally “All India N.R. Congress” (many political parties that split from the Congress love to retain the name “Congress” to show that they are more pure and pious than their parent organization).
In the 30-seat assembly, the AINRC won 10 seats (an increase of 3) while the BJP doubled their share from 3 to 6. Congress’ ally, the DMK (lead by a guy literally named “Stalin”), also increased its share from 2 to 6. But the Congress party itself lost a whopping 7 seats, dropping down to just 2.
The BJP aided the AINRC leader N. Rangaswamy, who is known as the “people's CM” due to his popular welfare schemes in education, pensions, and fee reimbursements for college students, among others. The Congress also faced defections, such as A. Namassivayam. The house of cards ultimately tumbled-down for the party which was basically hoping to secure sympathy votes due to interference by the BJP’s Lt.Governor Kiran Bedi in local politics. Its ally DMK was left to pick up whatever opposition now exists.
Assam
The BJP managed to retain their hold of the state of Assam in Eastern India, even while it lost 11 seats and Congress gained 24 in the 126-seat assembly. While this was an improved showing for the Congress, it couldn’t pierce through BJP’s votebank and was left with the votes of the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act coalition comprising mainly of Muslims.
Assam’s Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal had a broad pro-incumbency support heading into the election, while the Congress —relying on minority-appeasement and Assamese regionalist identity politics— failed to reach the threshold it hoped to achieve.
West Bengal
This state was perhaps the biggest prize on the block. From 1977 to 2011, the state was ruled uninterrupted by the Communists. Then in 2011, the party ultimately lost the elections to the All India Trinamool Congress (yes, you guessed it, another splinter from the Congress party!) led by Mamata Banerjee (who also allied with the Congress that election. Yeah).
Along with an emphasis on Bengali identity politics, Mamata coopted the message of appealing to the poor, as the Communists realized they had to modernize the state and couldn’t rely solely on peasants who they successfully distributed land to. This led to the Nandigram massacre where, although the Supreme Court exonerated CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, 14 peasants were killed as the Communist government tried to clear land for a Special Economic Zone. This led to the beginning of the end for the Communists who dropped from 176 to just 40 seats in the 294-seat assembly.
The decline continued, as the BJP opened its account with 3 seats in the state in 2016. It ultimately grew its share as some candidates from all parties defected. What ultimately ended up happening with the Mamata government gaining successful majorities and appealing to the Muslim communities (especially with her opposition to the CAA), was that the Communist votebank and party cadre slowly transferred to the BJP (as was also evident in the 2019 federal elections).
This election, hence, while Mamata’s Trinamool Congress secured another majority, the BJP wiped out both the Communist parties and the Congress party (who by this time decided to campaign with the Communists. Yes. While they were opposing the Communists in Kerala, they were campaigning with them in West Bengal. Fun times). The Communists and the Congress dropped from 36 and 44 seats respectively to zero seats for both parties. Zero.
So while this state was not just a wipeout for the Congress party, it was also the end of the Communist parties. From an uninterrupted 34 year rule, to zero seats in the span of just 10 years. A lot can, and does, change in Indian politics much quicker than one expects. The Congress party, meanwhile, instead of conducting self-reflections on its own disastrous loss, decided to celebrate because… “at least no BJP haha”.
No seriously. Look at this tweet from senior Congress leader and former UN Undersecretary General, Shashi Tharoor.
But “liberal” Mamata Banerjee is celebrating this win by not only burning down BJP offices, but also thrashing Communist ones. So much for Anti-Fascism!
But here it is hard to say whether this moment for the BJP in West Bengal was a victory or a loss. Certainly, skyrocketing from 3 to 77 seats is a big jump and one cannot rule out the possible gains it may make in the future, but it is safe to say it did perform under expectations as leaders like Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath and even PM Narendra Modi himself descended to vigorously campaign in the state. It seems that with the collapse of the Communists and Congress, the only way for the BJP is up.
Can Congress Make Progress?
The Congress Party is ultimately associated more with dynastic politics, corruption, oligarchism and minority appeasement than it is with its vague support for “secularism, socialism, and democratic values”.
The Congress Party, from 1947 to 1991, ran a starving and illiterate agrarian country on a half-hearted attempt to mimic the worst aspects of Soviet central-planning combined with the worst aspects of Westminster liberal democracy. It not only failed to industrialize and grow India, but was also responsible for countless violations of civil liberties and pogroms against various communities. It was Feudalism with a Human Face.
From 1991 to 2009, the Congress abandoned whatever-the-hell it was doing due to the collapse of the USSR, and embraced IMF-induced neoliberal reforms. While credit must be given to them for not destroying the Indian economy with shock therapy that one saw in post-Communist states in Eastern Europe, this era perhaps showed us the worst aspects of Neoliberal Capitalism: scams, scandals, money-laundering, rising inequality, and dynastic corruption.
The Congress Party cannot go on with the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, because the India of today is meritocratic unlike the India of yesterday that voted Congress not because they agreed with its vague values, but because of kinship ties and the image of “freedom fighters”. But 70 years on, one can only take so much of the force-feeding.
So the Congress party has a choice: It keeps the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, transforms itself into an NGO begging for bakhśīś (crumbs) from neocolonial imperialists, and tries a color revolution before fading into obscurity (dies from its coma). Or it ditches the dynasty, commits itself to truly secular ideas such as a Uniform Civil Code while abandoning minority appeasement, and embraces state-capitalist social democracy in the aftermath of this pandemic (resurrects from its coma).
But what path it chooses, or if it somehow decides to create one of its own, is something only time will tell. As Antonio Gramsci said, “the old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters”.
Great analysis!!
I've been following your twitter feed for a long time, from India.
Great analysis. 👍