What passes for democratic politics in India is something of a strange beast. Take, for example, the announcement in recent days that Priyanka Gandhi – scion of the dynasty that has produced three former prime ministers – is to run for the Indian parliament for the first time. She will stand for the main opposition Congress party (controlled lock, stock and barrel by the Gandhi family) in a by-election in Wayanad, a safe seat in the southern state of Kerala, that will be vacated by her brother and de facto leader of Congress, Rahul Gandhi. Victory is pretty much guaranteed. Rahul will continue to represent the seat of Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh, which was once the constituency of Indira Gandhi, his grandmother, and later of Sonia Gandhi, his mother. Welcome to party politics, Indian-style.
The family’s stranglehold on the Congress party as its route to power has proved hard to break
The latest development serves as formal notice that the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty – a family that has dominated India’s political landscape for the best party of a century – is back in the political big time. It no longer languishes in the shadow of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), thanks to the surprise election result earlier this month. Indian voters gave Modi and the BJP a bloody nose, denying the party an outright majority and forcing it to work in coalition with other smaller parties. The outcome was widely seen as a rejection of Modi’s increasingly autocratic tendencies, and a timely reminder that voters had more important matters –such as the cost of living and jobs – on their minds.
The opposition parties, who fought a joint campaign under the acronym INDIA, did far better than anyone expected. No one more so than Rahul Gandhi, who has often been written off as a political dud with only the family name to recommend him. Even so, in no other democracy would Rahul, after losing three successive general elections, survive as de facto leader of the main opposition: only a Gandhi does that, and only in India. Bigger questions about the outsized role he and his family play in Indian politics now appear to have been put on the back burner.
The family’s stranglehold on the Congress party as its route to power has proved hard to break. It is a story that has played out across several generations. In 1929, Jawaharlal Nehru (the founding father of the dynasty) was made president of Congress – almost a century later, his descendants are still in charge. Even Nehru, who served as prime minister from
1947 until his death in 1964, might be surprised that the family’s ascendancy has lasted this long. Since 1977, barring a brief interregnum in the 1990s, the party has not had a single leader who does not go by the name of Gandhi. It is a state of affairs that normalises the abnormal. The problems are everywhere to be seen, if anyone could be bothered to look. The Gandhis have consolidated power in Congress by rewarding loyalists and sycophants. Their long period in overall control has produced a kind of sclerosis, with few lasting party reforms or changes seeing the light. Nothing really happens unless the family give it the nod of approval. It is no way for any modern political party to operate, certainly not in a democracy.
The Gandhis won’t care too much about such quibbles. They view their status and influence as the natural order of events. They may be privileged and wealthy, but that doesn’t stop them painting themselves as on the side of the poor and disenfranchised. Yet the Gandhis have little radical or new to say about India’s economic challenges, nor how they would alleviate extreme poverty in one of the world’s most unequal societies. All that they really offer is the family name and the assurance that this will be enough to cure society’s ills.
More recently, the Gandhis have presented themselves as the guardians of India’s democracy. This claim is a perversion of history for the simple reason that the erosion in Indian democratic norms preceded Modi’s appearance on the scene. Indira Gandhi, Nehru’s daughter, introduced a state of emergency for a 21-month period from 1975 to 1977. The constitution was suspended, political opponents incarcerated and widespread atrocities committed. She was eventually booted out of office. When she was returned to power in 1980, Indira picked up where she left off, launching a vicious crackdown on Sikh nationalists, which culminated in the massacre at the Golden Temple in Amritsar. She was assassinated in 1984 by her own Sikh bodyguards.
When Narendra Modi came to power a decade ago, he talked about creating an India without Congress. In saying this he didn’t mean wiping out the party, his real ambition was to sweep away the Gandhi dynasty. He can but dream on. The Gandhis are politically relevant and powerful once more. Whether this resurgence is good for Indian democracy in the long run is the question.
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