The Nehru-Gandhi Family, Umbilical Cord of the Congress

 

The Nehru-Gandhi Family, Umbilical Cord of the Congress

In 137 years history of the Indian National Congress, the Nehrus associated with the Congress for 106 years.  Jawaharlal Nehru met Mohandas Gandhi in 1916 at the Lucknow session of the Congress.  Gandhi had immediate and profound impact on him. He became a radical nationalist that created a rift between him and his father. Motilal invited Gandhi to Allahabad in 1919. Gandhi counselled Jawaharlal to moderate his pollical activity in deference to his father and urged patience.  However, the draconian Rowlatt Act of 1919 that extended the wartime powers of arrest and detention of suspected subversives without trail and the Jallianwala Bagh massacre had changed the father-son equation. Motilal Nehru was converted to Satyagraha and the entire Nehru family joined the Non-cooperation movement. 

 

At the Congress session of Madras in 1927, Jawaharlal Nehru moved the resolution that ‘Congress declares the goal of the Indian people to be complete national independence.’ Both Motilal Nehru and Gandhi were reluctant to sever India’s ties with Britain. They wanted to achieve swaraj through dominion status within the British Empire.  Motilal Nehru was elected the President of the Congress at the Calcutta session in 1928. The Congress adopted a resolution demanding dominion status. An incensed Jawaharlal denounced the dominion status. This culmination of the struggle between those who supported complete independence and those who favored dominion status had threatened to split the Congress and the Nehru family.

 

Jawaharlal Nehru was elected the Congress President at the Lahore session in 1929. Motilal passed on the mantle of the Congress presidency to him, quoting a Persian couplet: Herche ke pidar natarwanad, pesar tamam kundad (what the father is unable to accomplish the son achieves), quoted by Katherine Frank in her book Indira.  Nehru moved the resolution for Purna Swaraj, which was passed at midnight on 31 December. And 26 January 1930 was celebrated as Independence Day across the country, with the people taking the Independence Pledge. Following the Salt Satyagraha, the Congress party was banned. Its leaders and volunteers were arrested. 

Indira- 12 years old- formed the Vanar Sena (monkey brigade in Ramayan), mobilizing children as volunteers, to help the Congress workers by doing menial jobs such as carrying messages, preparing food, sewing flags and distributing leaflets.  She led a huge procession of 15,000 chidden, witnessed by a crowd of more than 50,000 gathered on the streets of Allahabad. She wore the male Congress volumeter uniform of khadi and a Congress cap. As Katherine Frank writes: “Historical and political imperatives determined and shaped the lives of Jawaharlal Nehru and his daughter Indira Gandhi. Both Nehru and Indira were handcuffed to history.  Only death offered release.”

 

Nehru was elected the Congress President in 1936. He travelled across the length and breadth of the country on every possible mode of transport, including horse-ride, bullock cart and foot, reaching out to inaccessible terrain, to campaign for the Congress contesting the Provincial elections. He covered some 50,000 miles and addressed nearly thirty meetings a day and came into contact with more than ten million people. The Congress secured impressive victories in the provinces and formed governments in eight of eleven Provinces, with Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit becoming a Minister in the United Province-the first woman Minister in the British Empire. Nehru was reelected the President of the Congress in 1937. He became sort of a cult figure to the masses; a national hero- synonymous with the Congress.  

 

On release from the Ahmednagar Fort in 1945, after serving the ninth and the longest prison term of nearly three years, Nehru campaigned extensively throughout the country for the central and provincial assembly elections held between November 1945 and March 1946. The Congress won in every province except Bengal, Sind and Punjab, where the Muslim League performed well.  In May 1946 Nehru was elected the Congress President, succeeding Maulana Azad, as Gandhi thought he was the right person to negotiate with the British at a time, when the transfer of power was imminent. And on 2 September 1946, as the Vice President in the Viceroy’s Executive Council, he became the head of Interim Government.

 

Nehru guided the destiny of India for next 18 years. From1951 and 1954, he was the Congress President.  The Congress won the general elections in 1952,1957 and 1962. The Congress formed the governments at the Centre and in the states. The people’s vote for the Congress was a vote for Nehru, and for his charismatic leadership that carried along all sections of people, and of all faiths.

 

Indira Gandhi was not interested in politics. In 1959, the Congress President U.N. Dhebar was about to retire before the end of his two-year term.  He and G.B. Pant, the union home minister, wanted Indira to succeed Dhebar as the President.  She refused.  But eventually she was persuaded to become the President. And on 2 February, 1959, she was elected the President of the Congress.  It was during her tenure that the communist government in Kerala, headed by E.M.S. Namboodripad, was dismissed in 1959 for allegedly aligning with right-wing forces, the state slipping into violence and anarchy.

 

Indira was not a member of Parliament when Pandit Nehru died on 27 May 1964. According to Katherine Frank, ‘On 30 May, just three days after Nehru died, Shastri called on Indira at Teen Murti and urged her to take on the leadership of the country...But without hesitating, Indira refused, saying she was too grief-stricken to contest an election or assume power.” How she became the Prime Minister after Shastri’s death is an interesting story, outside the scope of this piece.

 

In 1969 Presidential election, the Congress chose Sanjeeva Reddy as the party ‘s candidate instead of Vice President V.V. Giri. When Giri announced to contest the Presidency, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi gave a call for ‘a vote of conscience’ because of right-wing Jan Sangh and Swatantra Party support for Reddy. Giri defeated Reddy. And Indira- ‘freedom’s daughter’ who devoted all her life to the Congress in the service of the country - was expelled from the Indian National Congress by the Syndicate for alleged ‘indiscipline and defiance of party leadership’.  The Syndicate comprised of old guards- Morarji Desai, K. Kamaraj, Sanjeeva Reddy, S. K. Patil, Atulya Ghosh, Biju Patnaik and the Congress President S. Nijalingappa.  The Congress was split with 297 Congress MPs, 220 of them from Lok Sabha, supporting Indira Gandhi.  Thereon Indira’s Congress took on the title Congress (R) and the Syndicate clique became Congress(O). And when the Congress(O) called for a vote of no-confidence in Parliament, it was soundly defeated.

 

The ’Great Split ’of the Congress in 1969 marked a milestone in Indian political history. After lifting the Emergency, Indira Gandhi announced the general election to be held in March 1977. Just before the election, her senor most cabinet minister Jagjivan Ram founded a new party- the Congress for Democracy. Indira Gandhi was ejected from the leadership of her own Congress(R). She split the party again to assert control and her faction came to be known as the Congress(I). Both she and her party lost the elections. However, in a short span she bounced back, and returned to power in the general election-January 1980, her party registering a massive victory. The Congress (I) became the Indian National Congress.  

And, thus, from 1969 till her assassination on 31 October1984, Indira was the Congress, and the Congress was Indira.  And like in the case of her father, it was her charismatic leadership and mass appeal that won the elections for the Congress. She was able to project herself as the champion of the underdog. That in 1984 general elections the Congress could win the massive victory securing 415 seats, polling nearly 50% votes, showed popularity and mass appeal of Indira Gandhi.

 

Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in May 1991. He was also the Congress President. Sonia Gandhi refused to take charge of the Congress. She spent seven years in political wilderness.  The Congress fortunes revived after she was elected the President in1998. Had she not led the party, the Congress would not have achieved the electoral success in 2004 and 2009, forming the UPA government.  That the Congress is unable to revive its electoral fortunes since 2014 is a complex story.  However, it is too simplistic to hold the leadership of Sonia and Raul Gandhi singularly responsible for the Congress all time poor performance in 2014 and 2019 general elections.  It is imperative to understand the rise of extreme Hindu-right-wing party and the Hindutva ideology as the decisive factors for the Congress fortune nose diving.

 

It is the magnanimity of the Gandhis that they renounced power and allowed a free and fair election for the President of the Congress held on 17 October 2022.  One hopes that the new President Mallikarjun Kharge would address the organisatinal problems of the Congress and revive the party. It is an insult to him to assume that he would be remote controlled by the Gandhis. If the Gandhis wanted to cling to power, why do they need to remote control the party?  In 2004, Sonia Gandhi didn’t grab the opportunity to become the Prime Minister. And no one asked Rahul Gandhi to quite the Presidency in 2019. He resigned owning moral responsivity for the Congress poor performance at the election.  It is a malicious assumption on the part of the critics of Gandhis that the new party President would be perceived acting independently only if he sidelines the Gandhis and ignores them totally. The entire rank and file of the party wanted Rahul Gandhi to take over the party leadership; and yet he rejected the position of power.   

 

The Nehru-Gandhi family has been an integral part of the Congress. The five generations of Nehrus-from Motilal Nehru to Rahul Gandhi-and Sonia Gandhi have made monumental contribution to the Congress, rendering immeasurable service to the nation. The freedom movement owes as much to Nehrus, particularly to Jawaharlal Nehru, as it is to Gandhiji. The Family is umbilical cord of the Congress. And cut it off, the party would disintegrate and break into splinter groups, each promoting and advancing its parochial interest.

 

The fact that Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra has become a rallying point, galvanizing the party workers, mobilizing and attracting huge crowds, connecting to people cutting across communities, is an indication of the mystique of the illustrious family- an embodiment of sacrifice and probity in political discourse. No other leader could have done what Rahul Gandhi is doing. He comes out as a sincere, honest and truthful leader really concerned about the communal politics of hatred and violence posing threat to the unity of secular democratic India.