Ghulam Nabi Azad timed his exit from the Congress for a 'bigger' role

Azad is not known to act impulsively. It would seem his hand was forced by the oncoming Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) elections. Its outcome will set the stage for his national political ambitions

Ghulam Nabi Azad's exit from the Congress had been a work in progress since his Rajya Sabha term ended in February 2021. His hyperbolic resignation letter in which he appears as a selfless politician and Rahul Gandhi a bumbling halfwit is only the beginning of a process that he has initiated. At the age of 73 years, there is no sign that he will be going gently into the sunset.

Azad is not known to act impulsively. It would seem his hand was forced by the oncoming Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) elections. Becoming the next Chief Minister of the Union Territory is a necessary first step in the next stage of his political career. His new party will make its electoral debut in Jammu and Kashmir elections this December, but that is not the limit of his ambitions. He aspires to become the rallying point for an alternative Congress.

Azad knows that even by winning just ten seats in the Jammu region, he can be the Chief Minister of J&K in the 90-member legislative assembly. Azad's new party will aim to split the Hindu and Muslim votes of the mainstream parties in Jammu and the Muslim-dominated areas of Rajouri, Poonch, Bhadarwah and Kishtwar, respectively. The BJP may find an alliance with him quite suitable and shelve its keenness to have a Dogra Hindu chief minister in Srinagar as the crowning glory of its Kashmir policy. Azad, a Jammu-ite and a Muslim to boot, could be a good proxy. Even more significantly, it would help the BJP government maintain its close ties with the Emirates of West Asia, on whom its domestic and international dependency is significant.

However, the BJP may not be his only potential ally. In the post-election scenario, Azad's candidature for chief minister may be supported even by the National Conference and the Peoples' Democratic Party to keep the BJP from directly controlling the levers of power. Therefore, the J&K election is a gambit that Azad has to play. Its outcome will set the stage for his national political ambitions.

The impending election for the party president was the other precipitating factor for Azad to exit the Congress. He could not have waited till the election was over. Had he stayed on, then as the moving force behind the "G-23 rebellion", he would be expected to put forward his candidature. A defeat would be a setback and end his career. And if he did not contest, he would lose credibility.

This is why he also had to damage the credibility of Rahul Gandhi, who represents the new leadership of the Congress. Normally a suave, sophisticated and polite person, his resignation letter is not only lacerating but also verges on political vulgarity. Its biliousness almost suggests that Azad, the forever polite gentleman, could not have drafted it.

Moreover, what is one to make of the cheap shot that Rahul Gandhi's decisions are taken by his "security guards and PAs (personal assistants)"? Was it a friendly security guard or PA who advised Rahul Gandhi to appoint Azad as Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the Rajya Sabha? Azad's relationship with "security guards and PAs" must have been excellent because when Rahul Gandhi became Congress President, he did nothing to disturb Azad as the LoP in the Upper House.

Azad makes the quite ridiculous claim that the defeat of the Congress in the 2014 elections stemmed from Rahul Gandhi's tearing up of an ordinance "incubated in the Congress core group", ratified by the Cabinet and approved by the President of India. Cleverly, he says nothing about the purpose of the ordinance, which was to negate an order of the Supreme Court disqualifying convicted MPs and MLAs, who were till then protected by a provision in the Representation of People Act. He forgets that popular opinion saw the ordinance as patently wrong, ill-intentioned and designed to protect criminals in politics. The main Opposition party, the BJP, the Left parties and civil society groups were up in arms against it. If anything, Rahul Gandhi should be thanked for stalling it through his very public gesture.

It is both "immature" and "childish" of Azad, aspersions that he casts at Rahul Gandhi, to suggest that the Congress would have won the 2014 general election if Rahul Gandhi had not torn an ordinance passed by the Manmohan Singh government that would shield criminal politicians. Azad deliberately ignores the growing public discourse against corruption which was playing in the background. It was, in fact, crucial in creating anti-incumbency against the second United Progressive Alliance(UPA-II) government and contributing to the appeal of candidate Narendra Modi across India and his diminutive version, Arvind Kejriwal. With the middle classes joining India Against Corruption protests led by Anna Hazare and the "Hindutva plus development" campaign of the BJP, the conditions were created for the rise of strong, authoritarian, Bonapartist leadership.

Similarly, his charge that a "coterie of sycophants ran the Congress after 2013" is absurd coming from someone who was part of the coterie of every Prime Minister from Rajiv Gandhi, Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi. He even debuted in politics as a camp follower of the mendacious Sanjay Gandhi, whom he now calls a "youth icon" in his resignation letter to spite Rahul Gandhi.

In suggesting that Rahul Gandhi is impulsive, immature and incapable of taking his own decisions, Azad is only reinforcing the messaging of the propaganda machine of the BJP. His focus is Rahul Gandhi on the eve of his "Bharat Jodo Yatra". If the young scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family proves himself through his mass-contact programme of "Bharat Jodo" and wins the Himachal Pradesh election at the end of this year, not many Congressmen will leave the parent party to join Azad's newly minted organisation. If the mass-contact programme is not successful, then the future of the Congress party is anybody's guess.