The Pyramid of Inverted Vanities

WHY HAS CONGRESS appeared so stricken with confusion in declaring its candidates for the Gandhi family bastions of Amethi and Rae Bareli?

Is it solely down to the fear of defeat? It isn’t as if the Gandhis don’t know what it is like to lose Amethi and Rae Bareli.

Amethi first played truant with Sanjay Gandhi in 1977 when he was defeated by the Janata Party’s candidate Ravindra Pratap Singh. That defeat was comparable in shock value to the defeat Rahul Gandhi suffered at the hands of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Smriti Irani in 2019. The comparison works because both Sanjay Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi were anointed successors. Both looked to be on an unassailably upward political trajectory. By the mid-1970s, Indira Gandhi had declared Sanjay Gandhi as her successor, and two years before the 2019 Lok Sabha clash, Sonia Gandhi had handed the Congress throne or its presidency to Rahul.

In comparison to temperamental Amethi, Rae Bareli has been more steadfast. Indira Gandhi’s husband won the seat in India’s first-ever parliamentary election in 1952. His wife, Indira Gandhi, ruled Rae Bareli unchallenged from 1967 to 1977. It is said that Indira’s win in 1967 from Rae Bareli saved her from certain political oblivion. Had she lost, the party reins would have passed on to rebellious Nehru-era Congress stalwarts who rejected Indira’s purely dynastic claim over the party.

Only once have Rae Bareli’s voters turned their back on a Gandhi family member. In 1977, they punished Indira Gandhi for her despotism. ‘Giant killer’ Raj Narain of the Janata Party, a well-to-do Brahmin politician from Varanasi, proved to be an enduring nemesis. In 1975, he succeeded in securing her disqualification in an electoral malpractice case. The unseating created the circumstances that led Indira Gandhi to suspend the Constitution and declare the infamous Emergency in a fit of absolutism. But these blips, some more consequential than others, haven’t unseated the Gandhis from atop the commanding heights of India’s political firmament. They have always found a way to return to Parliament and to power. On balance, it is fair to even postulate that the voters of Rae Bareli and Amethi have returned like homing pigeons to the Gandhi ‘gharana’.

But all these Houdini acts belong to the pre-Modi era of Indian politics. Today, with Congress reeling on the ropes like the hapless victim of a Joe Frazier hiding, with its kingdom reduced to a sliver, the crown sits precariously on the Gandhi head.

The Gandhi dynasts are not incidental to Congress. They are Congress. Congress is grand because they are still grand.

Deluded, Congress grandiloquently proclaims that it is the sole guardian of the ‘Idea of India’. It is so ludicrously unaware of its waning influence that it truly believes that it is the only entity holding back what it calls “the forces of Hindu revanchism” from overrunning the Constitution. In this pyramid of inverted vanities, Congress accords to the Gandhis a larger-than-life role. One not unlike the heroic part reprised by Hindu king Jaipal in 1001CE when he stood eyeballing the forces of Mahmud of Ghazni.

When the Gandhis are placed on such a pedestal, they must naturally also be above any risk which could inestimably diminish their cult.

Gandhi family managers are aware of the stakes. One (in this case two) decisions taken in haste exposing the scions to defeat, they estimate, will rob the Gandhis of that carefully constructed cult status. Miniaturised Gandhis will only underline just how miniaturised Congress has become.

In this calculus, the pay-off of holding on to pretensions is infinitely greater than the value of two seats in Parliament.

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