Majboori ka naam Sonia

A Congress split in 2004 seems practically certain

Actually, the original saying is Majboori ka naam Mahatma Gandhi. It started doing the rounds about four decades ago. Few people know how it gained currency, why and what it means.

To the best of my knowledge, the closest English equivalent is "making a virtue out of a necessity". But wags and cynics aside, the expression was never true of Gandhiji for whom virtue was an unconditional necessity.

But of Soniaji? Well, what can one say? At this point in time, two things at least.

One is that it doesn't pay to be too clever by half. The other is that the Congress is getting as ripe for a formal split as it was in 1907, 1969 and 1978. In each of those years, it split in a big way. 2004, I am led to believe, may be no different.

For the record, the Congress has split five times since it was formed. Four of these splits have come in the last 34 years. Each time, in one way or the other, it has been the Gandhi family that has caused the split.

The last two splits were 1993 and 2001. In 1993, Arjun Singh and N D Tiwari, loyal servitors of the Gandhi family, walked out to protest against the neglect of Our Lady in No 10 by the then Congress president, P V Narasimha Rao who was also the prime minister.

In 2001, Sharad Pawar and Purno Sangma walked out to protest for the opposite reason, namely, that they were being neglected by the new Congress president.

But let us get back to the first point. Why is Soniaji being too clever by half? For two reasons. One, because she is offering something with one hand and taking it away with the other; and two because she thinks no one will notice.

Thus, first she says that the Congress and its allies will choose the next prime minister after the election, not before. Then, just as people are beginning to sit up to clap, she adds that whom the Congress chooses as its leader is an internal matter. Her flunkeys then get up on their hind legs and bray that as far as the Congress is concerned, she is the only candidate.

No circle ever came round more quickly than this one.

In sum, the potential allies of the Congress are being presented with a fait accompli. First, because if one of them wants to challenge the Congress for the prime minister's post, it will have to get more seats than the Congress.

On current reckoning, this is impossible unless the Congress loses around 85 seats, which is a feat even Soniaji might find difficult to pull off. Otherwise, it will be the largest party in the coalition and will insist on having the plum.

Alternatively, if a group of non-Congress parties offer a rival candidate as prime minister, they will have to accept Congress support from outside. This option too is a non-starter. In the last 13 years the Congress has offered "outside" support twice, once in 1991 to Chandra Shekhar and once in 1996-98 to the Deve Gowda/Inder Gujral duo.

Both times the result was a disaster because the topmost Congressmen (Rajivji and Kesriji respectively) could not stomach the idea of having to sit the match out on a bench while pretenders played centre forward.

As for the other option, of Soniaji playing second fiddle as deputy prime minister, perish the thought. The mirror on the wall will not allow it. She must remain the fairest of them all.

This attitude is going to cost the Congress very dear. Combined this with the increasing desperation of Congressmen and a split looks practically certain in 2004.

On each of the three occasions when the Congress split, it was because the established power centres were refusing to recognise the new political reality. Personalities and egos played the bigger role. Ideology was a mere prop each time.

The story of the 1969 and 1978 splits is well known. The old bosses failed to recognise how India had changed in the two decades after independence and Indira Gandhi took them on and won. What is less well known is that even the 1907 split at Surat was largely the result of personal intransigence.

The official version, correct up to a point is that a fight between moderates and extremists, who wanted complete independence, caused it. In truth, it was much more due to the personalities of Tilak, on the one hand and Gokhale and the rest, on the other.

Incidentally, those who were shocked by what happened in the UP Assembly some years ago with all that microphone throwing and so on should read accounts of what had happened at Surat that day.

The bloodlust has remained quite undiminished. Amazingly, even Jawaharlal Nehru's Discovery of India omits the episode when he, more than any other person, would have been able to cast impartial light on it.

The Congress is caught in a time warp of both politics and economics. The political one is resulting in genuflections to a totem that has lost its magic. The economic one is resulting its clinging to the belief that redistributive policies are the way to get votes.

These policies started in the aftermath of the Communist revolution of 1917 as the capitalist answer to communism. They appear to have run their course because, in my view, it is not so much inequality that people object to as exploitation. The supreme irony of our times is that modern laws make such exploitation impossible in all but communist economies, such as China.

Be that as it may, just as redistribution and its intellectual justification was a political necessity in the 20th century, accumulation and its intellectual justification are becoming the leitmotifs of the 21st. The BJP seems to understand this. The Congress doesn't. Add all these things up and see where the Congress is headed.

A former diplomat famously quipped in 1989 when he resigned from the foreign service in order to join the Congress which was clearly going to lose the general election, that he was the only rat in history that jumped on to a sinking ship. He is most unlikely to jump off now.

But don't hold your breath about the others.