Those writing the political epitaph of the Gandhi family, particularly that of Rahul, would be well advised to hold their horses. Sure, at the moment, the situation looks grim for the Congress, particularly for its first family that has led India’s 134-year-old party up the garden path, potentially up to a point of no-return.

But the obvious weakness of the Congress — mainly its discredited leadership, or joint family leadership — is also its asset. The rest of the party, with its multi-faceted talents, even if somewhat short on mass appeal, may not be able to stick around for too long without a member of the Gandhi family at the helm.

Those suggesting that the Congress may break after a heavy second Lok Sabha drubbing, are daydreaming. A party that did not split with a rock-bottom 43 Lok Sabha seats in 2014 is unlikely to splinter at an improved 52 Lok Sabha seats in 2019.

Please note that not a single discordant note has been sounded in the Congress, despite another pathetic electoral performance. In any other party, including the BJP, such heavy reverses would have caused sufficient ripples within the leadership, party rank and file.

The reasons are not far to seek. Old timers in the party remember the PV Narsimha Rao era with some trepidation. The Congress suffered a series of splits during the 1990s. Rao faced difficulties right after taking over, in running the government as well as the party. There was mistrust between him and veterans such as Arjun Singh and ND Tiwari. At the Tirupati AICC session in April 1992, Singh won the Congress Working Committee (CWC) polls with the highest margin; Sharad Pawar too was victorious. Rao asked the entire newly-elected CWC to resign on the pretext that there was not enough representation of women and Dalits. He then reconstituted the CWC and included Singh in the nominated category.

But the trouble was far from over. After the demolition of Babri Masjid, Singh started spreading the view that Rao was not secular enough. A power struggle ensued in which Rao lost Sonia Gandhi’s support because he was not seen as active enough on the question of Rajiv’s assassination.

In 1994, the Congress lost in Rao’s home state Andhra Pradesh, which emboldened his critics. The feud resulted in Arjun Singh’s ouster from the Cabinet and suspension from the party, resulting in another split. A breakaway faction was formed with ND Tiwari as president and Arjun Singh as working president. After running a minority government for five years, the Congress lost power in 1996. It would take them another eight years to come back. Rao resigned and AICC treasurer Sitaram Kesri took over, but he too was challenged by other senior leaders. The two years following the 1996 defeat saw backroom manoeuvring and intrigue. In the 1997 Congress presidential election, Kesri defeated Pawar and Pilot. Two years later, he was thrown out of the party after Sonia indicated a willingness to take over.

The broader point, however, is that in the absence of a Gandhi family member at the helm of the party, notably Sonia who had decided to lie low for several years after Rajiv’s assassination, the Congress was in a state of flux with periodic exodus of leaders big and small.

For the Congress to be revived from its comatose stage, it took a Sonia to get all factional leaders and party satraps under one roof by the time she took over in 1998. A year later, she had countered a rebellion from senior leader Sharad Pawar. But what had become clear in this turbulent decade was that the party could not survive without a Gandhi at the helm.

Even more stark was the realisation that the perpetually warring Congress leaders and factions, only listen to their first family, as there remains little scope of reconciliation among themselves.

Once again, politics is running true to form. A party that has been vanquished at the hustings, is pleading with the party president — who himself has been humbled in his bailiff Amethi — to kindly assume leadership of the party, indeed salvage the grand old party from distress and demoralisation. One senior leader after the other is making a case as strongly as possible for Rahul to shed his diffidence and take the bull by the horns, with the latter barely willing to demur.

Comically — if the situation was not so tragic — state Congress leaders have been asked to put in their papers and scapegoats are being pulled out of broom closets, without any responsibility being placed at the door of the top leadership.

One of the main reasons for the Congress to have reached this stage is its inability to introspect. There has been no inner-reflection — as a Gandhi or Nehru would have done — on where and how things have gone wrong and the remedies thereof. Instead, there is this touch of arrogance, with the BJP victory being attributed to fudged EVMs, smart marketing and even the devil’s luck. Not a word about the fading appeal of the once-mighty party, pushed further down the drain by a listless Gandhi family, whose stories of political planning for the polls, post the defeat, are too shocking to be true.

There is no candid admission that for a man who made his political debut in 2004, Rahul has not only not influenced any electoral outcome till 2019, but unbelievably, there is no known plan of action ahead. In fact, there appears little clarity on whether the Congress even has a party president or not!

The writer is Senior Editor, DNA