SUCCESSION STORY - The Left should put an end to the anachronism of dynastic rule
Ashok Mitra
The Telegraph, 7 December
If it were not so repulsive a spectacle, it could be hugely comic. Last month, the Congress had organized a gala coronation at New Delhi’s Talkatora Gardens. The ceremony was intended to anoint a young man as the party’s new general-secretary. This was the first step, it was implicitly understood in party circles, towards the youngster succeeding his mother as the party’s supreme leader, in turn ensuring his enthronement as the nation’s prime minister. The proceedings were comprehensively grotesque. But the young gentleman took them in his stride, and pontificated at length to the assembled docile crowd on the grand theme of leadership in administration. Meritocracy, he declaimed in his somewhat shrill voice, was the crux of the matter, those who led the party and the nation must be chosen on the basis of merit and merit alone.
Therein lay the source of hilarity. The youngster has been enshrined as the party’s general-secretary — and is being tipped to be the nation’s next or next-but-one prime minister — not because of any outstanding merit or quality suddenly unearthed in him. His only credential is his pedigree. His father was prime minister, his grandmother was prime minister, and his great-grandfather, the first prime minister of independent India, absentmindedly or otherwise, set up the dynasty. True, Indira Gandhi’s faux pas of the Emergency gave a jolt to the dynasty, but the ineptitude of the Opposition helped it overcome that crisis. It has been since then a cosy feudal arrangement in the party. The family is the overlord, the rest are vassals. For most of the time in the post-independent decades, the Congress has been the ruling party, the prime ministerial post has therefore remained the prerogative of the family. In 2004, when the Congress had to forge a coalition to enable it to form the government, the young gentleman’s mother, then and now czarina of the party, was about to assume the prime minister’s mantle but was deterred by the controversy over her not being a citizen by birth. That accident apart, it has been smooth sailing for the family.
Rule by dynasty, and this is why problems rear their head. According to the nation’s Constitution, India is a republic, on top of that, a socialist republic. A republic presided over by a dynasty — which is as good as monarchy — is a contradiction in terms. The country at one end is aspiring to march confidently into the information-technology-guided amphitheatre of the 21st century; at the other end though, its regime happens to be a feudal curiosum eerily reminiscent of the Middle Ages.
The Constitution of India, of course, allows it citizens freedom of thought and expression. If a party is keen to preach the virtues of a monarchical system, it has every right to do so. Difficulty arises only when the party wants the entire nation to accommodate, within the corpus of democracy, the principle of dynastic rule. The Congress secured a little more than one-fifth of the total votes cast in the last national election. Those belonging to the party may dearly wish a scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family to be the nation’s prime minister forever. The majority of the nation need not, however, go along with their view. And since the Constitution also says that India is a democratic republic, the will of the majority has to prevail. The Congress could well have made up its mind to install the young gentleman from the dynasty as prime minister following the next Lok Sabha elections, whether these are held as scheduled in 2009 or earlier; it is, however, most unlikely to have a majority in the house and would, therefore, face hurdles in fulfilling its goal.
Where there is a will, there could still be a way. As in 2004, the Congress could enter into a coalition with desperate groups and parties and form the government, with outside support from the Left. It might at that point announce formally its intent to name the young man as prime minister. If the other constituents of the coalition as well as the Left were to demur, it could be argued on behalf of the Congress that it was no business of the coalition partners — or of the Left — to claim to have a veto over the choice of prime minister; nominating the prime minister was the prerogative of the leading constituent of the coalition.
Would the Left cave in and let go of the opportunity to bring an end to the dynastic nonsense? Such a possibility indeed exists. For, when, in 2004, it looked imminent that the young man’s mother was to be sworn in as prime minister despite her not being a citizen by birth, the Left had declared categorically that the Constitution did not debar her and, further, it was an internal matter of the Congress whom it chose as its leader. Were a similar situation to develop following the next Lok Sabha polls, the Left could reiterate the stance it adopted four years ago.
Would not such a decision amount to an escape from rationality though? The Left believes in secularism; it is dead-set against sectarians and religious fundamentalists; it is under commitment to fight the forces of bigotry with the last drop of its blood. But, to be consistent, should it not be equally vocal against feudalism and the shameful anachronism of dynastic rule? The Left will not touch a communal party with a bargepole. Must it not apply the same criterion while passing judgment on a party that believes in the monarchic principle? Does it not offend the Left’s democratic sensibilities that members of a particular dynasty are routinely enthroned as the nation’s prime minister for years and decades on end, so much so that they tend to flaunt themselves as royalty? Surely, an issue of principle is involved here. Those who belong to the Left are supposed to be socialists by conviction. Reconciling socialist belief with the edict of monarchism is an impossible exercise. To argue that members of the dynasty are democratically elected to the leadership of the Congress is fatuity. The dynasty is a sort of an imperium; it draws its power and authority from a mysterious source, and it takes it upon itself to nominate the functionaries of the party at different levels; every party nominee for a seat in Parliament or a state legislature is decided by it. Expression of dissidence with any decision taken by the family is considered as worse than sedition; the offender is immediately chucked out of the party.
Other issues apart, the Congress has, by succumbing to the principle of dynastic succession, set a grisly example for other parties too. Those who shy away from censuring the Congress for its blind subservience to the Nehru-Gandhis have zero ground for criticizing the Dravida Munnethra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu, the Janata Dal (Secular) in Karnataka, the Shiromoni Akali Dal in Punjab, the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party in Maharashtra or, for the matter, Lalu Prasad in Bihar. If no protests are registered and things proceed in the manner they have proceeded in the past, India could soon be transmuted into a weird kind of organism: a republic incorporating a dozen or more monarchies, big and small.
The onus is not on the Congress; it is in too timid a state to reform itself on its own. It is for those who shore up the Congress — particularly the Left — to step in and guide it away from idolatrous obeisance to a dynasty. Were the leftists to fail in the task, India, supposedly the world’s largest democracy, is bound to increasingly resemble a hereditary monarchy, like tiny nextdoor Bhutan — or tinier Tonga in the distant Pacific.
The Telegraph, 7 December
If it were not so repulsive a spectacle, it could be hugely comic. Last month, the Congress had organized a gala coronation at New Delhi’s Talkatora Gardens. The ceremony was intended to anoint a young man as the party’s new general-secretary. This was the first step, it was implicitly understood in party circles, towards the youngster succeeding his mother as the party’s supreme leader, in turn ensuring his enthronement as the nation’s prime minister. The proceedings were comprehensively grotesque. But the young gentleman took them in his stride, and pontificated at length to the assembled docile crowd on the grand theme of leadership in administration. Meritocracy, he declaimed in his somewhat shrill voice, was the crux of the matter, those who led the party and the nation must be chosen on the basis of merit and merit alone.
Therein lay the source of hilarity. The youngster has been enshrined as the party’s general-secretary — and is being tipped to be the nation’s next or next-but-one prime minister — not because of any outstanding merit or quality suddenly unearthed in him. His only credential is his pedigree. His father was prime minister, his grandmother was prime minister, and his great-grandfather, the first prime minister of independent India, absentmindedly or otherwise, set up the dynasty. True, Indira Gandhi’s faux pas of the Emergency gave a jolt to the dynasty, but the ineptitude of the Opposition helped it overcome that crisis. It has been since then a cosy feudal arrangement in the party. The family is the overlord, the rest are vassals. For most of the time in the post-independent decades, the Congress has been the ruling party, the prime ministerial post has therefore remained the prerogative of the family. In 2004, when the Congress had to forge a coalition to enable it to form the government, the young gentleman’s mother, then and now czarina of the party, was about to assume the prime minister’s mantle but was deterred by the controversy over her not being a citizen by birth. That accident apart, it has been smooth sailing for the family.
Rule by dynasty, and this is why problems rear their head. According to the nation’s Constitution, India is a republic, on top of that, a socialist republic. A republic presided over by a dynasty — which is as good as monarchy — is a contradiction in terms. The country at one end is aspiring to march confidently into the information-technology-guided amphitheatre of the 21st century; at the other end though, its regime happens to be a feudal curiosum eerily reminiscent of the Middle Ages.
The Constitution of India, of course, allows it citizens freedom of thought and expression. If a party is keen to preach the virtues of a monarchical system, it has every right to do so. Difficulty arises only when the party wants the entire nation to accommodate, within the corpus of democracy, the principle of dynastic rule. The Congress secured a little more than one-fifth of the total votes cast in the last national election. Those belonging to the party may dearly wish a scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family to be the nation’s prime minister forever. The majority of the nation need not, however, go along with their view. And since the Constitution also says that India is a democratic republic, the will of the majority has to prevail. The Congress could well have made up its mind to install the young gentleman from the dynasty as prime minister following the next Lok Sabha elections, whether these are held as scheduled in 2009 or earlier; it is, however, most unlikely to have a majority in the house and would, therefore, face hurdles in fulfilling its goal.
Where there is a will, there could still be a way. As in 2004, the Congress could enter into a coalition with desperate groups and parties and form the government, with outside support from the Left. It might at that point announce formally its intent to name the young man as prime minister. If the other constituents of the coalition as well as the Left were to demur, it could be argued on behalf of the Congress that it was no business of the coalition partners — or of the Left — to claim to have a veto over the choice of prime minister; nominating the prime minister was the prerogative of the leading constituent of the coalition.
Would the Left cave in and let go of the opportunity to bring an end to the dynastic nonsense? Such a possibility indeed exists. For, when, in 2004, it looked imminent that the young man’s mother was to be sworn in as prime minister despite her not being a citizen by birth, the Left had declared categorically that the Constitution did not debar her and, further, it was an internal matter of the Congress whom it chose as its leader. Were a similar situation to develop following the next Lok Sabha polls, the Left could reiterate the stance it adopted four years ago.
Would not such a decision amount to an escape from rationality though? The Left believes in secularism; it is dead-set against sectarians and religious fundamentalists; it is under commitment to fight the forces of bigotry with the last drop of its blood. But, to be consistent, should it not be equally vocal against feudalism and the shameful anachronism of dynastic rule? The Left will not touch a communal party with a bargepole. Must it not apply the same criterion while passing judgment on a party that believes in the monarchic principle? Does it not offend the Left’s democratic sensibilities that members of a particular dynasty are routinely enthroned as the nation’s prime minister for years and decades on end, so much so that they tend to flaunt themselves as royalty? Surely, an issue of principle is involved here. Those who belong to the Left are supposed to be socialists by conviction. Reconciling socialist belief with the edict of monarchism is an impossible exercise. To argue that members of the dynasty are democratically elected to the leadership of the Congress is fatuity. The dynasty is a sort of an imperium; it draws its power and authority from a mysterious source, and it takes it upon itself to nominate the functionaries of the party at different levels; every party nominee for a seat in Parliament or a state legislature is decided by it. Expression of dissidence with any decision taken by the family is considered as worse than sedition; the offender is immediately chucked out of the party.
Other issues apart, the Congress has, by succumbing to the principle of dynastic succession, set a grisly example for other parties too. Those who shy away from censuring the Congress for its blind subservience to the Nehru-Gandhis have zero ground for criticizing the Dravida Munnethra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu, the Janata Dal (Secular) in Karnataka, the Shiromoni Akali Dal in Punjab, the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party in Maharashtra or, for the matter, Lalu Prasad in Bihar. If no protests are registered and things proceed in the manner they have proceeded in the past, India could soon be transmuted into a weird kind of organism: a republic incorporating a dozen or more monarchies, big and small.
The onus is not on the Congress; it is in too timid a state to reform itself on its own. It is for those who shore up the Congress — particularly the Left — to step in and guide it away from idolatrous obeisance to a dynasty. Were the leftists to fail in the task, India, supposedly the world’s largest democracy, is bound to increasingly resemble a hereditary monarchy, like tiny nextdoor Bhutan — or tinier Tonga in the distant Pacific.
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