The British Raj had been jittery even since the 1857 Uprising. The strategy it had decided on was to whole-heartedly adopt the recommendations by Lord Macaulay in 1835 in the document that has come to be known as the “Macaulay Minute" on spreading English education in India. The idea was to now govern the country with the help of English-educated Indians who understood the British way of thinking.

But this did not satisfy Allan Octavian Hume, an outspoken British civil servant, who thought the disillusionment of the Indian masses could lead to large-scale revolt.

In May, 1885, Hume managed to secure the approval of the Viceroy Lord Dufferin to create an “Indian National Union". The objective of this Union was to express the nation’s public opinion and have a continuous meaningful dialogue with the British government. Indians would find a voice—a government-approved one—and equilibrium would be maintained. The first meeting was held at the Goculdas Tejpal Hall in Bombay from 28-31 December, 1885.

Seventy-one delegates attended. Various resolutions were passed, including, that the Supreme Legislative Council and Provincial Legislative Councils should be expanded; and that the civil services examinations should be held simultaneously in England and India. The meeting ended with Hume proposing not three cheers, but three times three, and if possible thrice that, for Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen Empress Victoria. “The rest of the speaker’s remarks were lost in the storm of applause that instantly burst out," reported the then-British-owned Times of India, “and the asked for cheers were given again and again with vehemence and enthusiasm."

A century and nearly three decades have passed since then. The Indian National Congress has seen many ups and downs in these years, though it has been mostly ups. The party has survived many splits—including those led by Subhash Chandra Bose, C. Rajagopalachari, Indira Gandhi (whose party became the Congress as we know it now), Sharad Pawar, Pranab Mukherjee (most people would have forgotten about this), G.K. Moopanar and Mamata Banerjee. The latest is that led by G.K. Vasan, Moopanar’s son and former Union shipping minister. The media has gone to town on this, but it is unclear what specific impact this will have on the national party’s fortunes.

After all, can the Congress’ fortunes get any worse?

After the drubbings the party received in the Lok Sabha polls, and then in Maharashtra and Haryana (not to mention in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh a few months before the general elections), the discomforting question that needs to be asked is: Is the story of India’s Grand Old Party over?

Voices of dissent can be heard within the party against the leadership of Rahul Gandhi. Of course, all these voices are anonymous, and most of them are criticising Rahul’s close advisors rather than him directly (as far as the official records go, sycophancy stills rules big time), but the implications are clear. For all his earnestness and sincerity, Rahul has been a failure. He has been repeatedly out-thought, out-strategised, out-talked, out-gunned and routed by the BJP. It has been one uninterrupted downhill slide. This has never happened before, not in any Indian’s wildest imagination.

As the numbers started coming out for the Maharashtra and Haryana state elections, Congress supporters gathered at the party’s headquarters in Delhi and shouted: “Priyanka lao, Congress bachao (Bring in Priyanka, save Congress)."

Rahul’s reaction to the debacles has been, as usual, uninspiring.

Over the last few days, he has been closeted in meetings with senior Congress leaders. The results: same old, same old. Some leaders have urged Rahul to aggressively go back to the socialist plank and the “Nehruvian vision". Manmohan Singh’s economic reforms have been roundly criticised, indicating that the party is still in denial of the fact that in his second term, Singh was not allowed to carry out any reforms (if he had any intentions to), and the UPA-II government followed the most socialist policies of any Indian administration since Indira Gandhi’s. The country’s governance systems simply drifted along for five years, periodically announcing grandiose schemes for the poor, and then mismanaging the schemes. While this did not impress the poor at a time of rising inflation and stagnant employment, corporates saw the government as “anti-business", what with strange tax claims made with retrospective effect (defying the Supreme Court’s judgement on this), and no will or energy to push pro-economic growth policies.

Meanwhile, Rahul disassociated himself from the government, and in his public speeches, positioned himself as the rebel who railed against governance structures and systems. This “rebel from within" stance cut no ice with the voting public, who preferred total change over vague promises from someone who certainly had the power to change things in the UPA government, but preferred to only talk and take no action.

Rahul’s attempts at bringing in internal democracy in the Congress were also futile. They were bound to be, since the party has become dynastic at every level, and is (for all practical purposes) headed by a man, who, however well-meaning, gained his position through the accident of birth.

According to media reports, recently, Rahul was apparently told by senior party leaders in no uncertain terms that forcing organisational elections would only lead to more conflict and bitterness. It was better to go the way of “maximum consensus" to select party office-bearers at different levels. The point is that the Congress (like most Indian parties) has never known internal democracy, and it’s too alien and suspicion-arousing a concept for most senior partymen. Anyway, if elections did happen, most Pradesh Congress chiefs would possibly lose. So there’s too much vested interest here.

But no one is willing to bell the cat. Which is that, if fair secret-ballot elections were held for the Congress’ vice-president post, Rahul Gandhi himself would almost certainly be defeated.

But that election is very unlikely to be held, and even if it was announced, no one would have the guts to stand against him. Second-rank Congress leaders (though, whether the party has a second rank left any more is a moot question) have always been comfortable with a Gandhi at the helm. It kept the national leadership issue frozen, and everyone could go about their business happily, knowing that there was no chance of anyone else suddenly becoming the boss.

When there’s no Gandhi at the top, Congressmen become ambitious and start fighting among themselves; everyone ponders: Why shouldn’t it be me up there? Arjun Singh and N.D. Tiwari quit the Congress led by Narasimha Rao, and Sitaram Kesri was ousted unceremoniously as Congress chief when his jealous cohorts rallied around “Sonia lao, Congress bachao."

The party’s unprecedented dharmasankata now, as every astute Congressman would have realised, is that this Gandhi at the top has become a liability. Yet, the party’s principal strategy is still to protect him at all cost. So, Rahul Gandhi never became a Cabinet minister (so that he was distanced from a government reeling from corruption charges and did not have to reply to uncomfortable questions in Parliament), he was never officially announced as the Prime Ministerial candidate in this year’s general elections (so he would not be seen directly losing to Modi—this turned out to be a too-smart-by-half delusion), he is not even leading his party in the Lok Sabha, he did not campaign hard in the Maharashtra and Haryana elections while Narendra Modi stumped all over the states (this so that Rahul would not be associated with a losing cause).

There is a massive paradox here. Congressmen, at every given opportunity, will parrot that Rahul is their leader, and yet shield him from the rough and tumble of politics.

The truth is: It’s Rahul who is the losing cause.

And unless he grows some extra brain mass very quickly, he will continue to remain so in the foreseeable future. Unless the BJP messes up spectacularly.

Yet, without a Gandhi leading the Congress, the party could well break up into ineffectual regional outfits, with various leaders pursuing their individual ambitions.

This is a gigantic dilemma. So: Priyanka lao, Congress bachao.

Will Priyanka’s coming in improve the Congress’ situation? One can never tell in these things. But we must consider a few points here:

• Modi has been able to build a very powerful cult of personality around himself. This will take some time and a lot of effort to erode. Carping on television channels will not help much. The “protection principle" will certainly come into play again: keep Priyanka safe from the heat and dust of brutal politics.

• The Robert Vadra factor will definitely come into play.

• And finally, how strong, anyway, is the Family’s charisma any more? Independent India has lived with them as the “chosen ones" for nearly seven decades now. The aura has certainly diminished over time, and dramatically over the last decade. I believe that the UPA handsomely won the 2009 Lok Sabha elections because, one, the people saw an honest trustworthy leader in Manmohan Singh rather than anything to do with the Gandhi family; two, the economy was galloping; and three, the shelf life of Lal Krishna Advani as Prime Ministerial candidate was most certainly over.

So, is the Congress story ending? Well, certainly it has to do some very sharp thinking, and time is running out. Every week counts, as Modi and Amit Shah work hard at building an unbreachable citadel.

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