The Trouble with Dynasties

The Congress Party of India’s dependence on the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty (no relation to Mahatma Gandhi) is a double-edged sword, a fact that is becoming all the more evident in recent months. The party is currently controlled by Sonia Gandhi, the widow of the late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, who was the son and grandson of Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, respectively. The party held power from 2004 to 2014 with Manmohan Singh as prime minister before being trounced by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in national elections.

Though it remains the main opposition party, the Congress Party has been marginalized by the engaged style and vision of India’s current prime minister, Narendra Modi. The Congress alternative to Modi is likely the party’s scion, Rahul Gandhi, son of Sonia and Rajiv Gandhi. Yet he vanished from the public in February, only to reappear almost two months later, in mid-April.

Rahul Gandhi’s disappearance occurred at an especially inopportune moment for his party because it happened just as the BJP was beginning to lose its shine. In early February, the BJP lost badly to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in local assembly elections in Delhi. Then, later that month, the BJP’s budget disappointed many who had been hoping for major economic reforms. During Rahul Gandhi’s two-month absence, the BJP also came under fire on a number of fronts, particularly because of a controversial agricultural land acquisition bill that has yet to be passed and its stance on net-neutrality.

The Congress Party was slow and awkward in leveraging these events to its advantage, seeming rudderless in Gandhi’s absence. While the Congress Party does have many things going against it –despite party criticism, Modi’s government continues to make economic and diplomatic progress and is good at marketing these facts while the Congress Party is awkward with modern media – it is still well placed as India’s oldest established party with strong architecture.

Moreover, Congress dominates an important pan-India ideological space: the secular center-left unencumbered by a caste or religious base. If the Congress Party were run like the BJP, it would have many forceful figures arguing for its ideology emerge from within the party. Yet the party is not really about ideology anymore; it is more about one family and keeping that family in power.

Diversity of Voices

At the time of India’s independence, the Congress Party had a diversity of voices and independent personalities, represented by figures such as Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel, and B.R. Ambedkar, among others. However, during the premiership of Indira Gandhi, a culture of nepotism and sycophancy emerged that solidified the party around her clan and her leftist ideology. It wasn’t only the Nehru-Gandhi family that was pleased with this new situation. Many rank-and-file Congress Party members also supported the continuous domination of their party by the Gandhis because it left the question of who was on top settled, allowing other members to attend to their personal fiefs without worrying about competing for the party’s leadership.

Without the personal leadership of a member of the party’s leader clan – regardless of their level of competence – the party seems to flounder. After the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, the party was led for a time by people from outside of the family. India’s economic reforms occurred during this time, when Congressman P.V. Narasimha Rao was prime minister. Yet it was during this time that the Congress Party lost its traditional dominance of the Indian political system, political fragmentation occurred, leading to political instability, and the BJP rose to prominence. The Congress Party’s lot improved when Sonia Gandhi returned to lead. It is clear that the party has many intelligent and well-educated leaders but that ultimately it cannot hold together without the glue of a Gandhi. This is the double-edged sword dilemma it faces.

This is why when Rahul Gandhi vanished, the party was thrown into panic, and calls increased for his mother, Sonia Gandhi, to continue to lead the party, or for her daughter, Priyanka to take the reins instead of her brother. Although multiple sources in the Congress Party have said that Rahul Gandhi’s absence was aimed toward introspection for the purpose of strengthening his organization, few in India or even in the party itself believe this.

Now that he has returned from his still unexplained absence, it remains to be seen if Rahul Gandhi will lead from the front, as many party members have been urging him to do. Although some have suggested incompetence was the reason for his absence, there are also rumors that he wants to be the individual who will reform his party more along the lines of the BJP, in terms of allowing more ideological and structural competition, a position his mother opposes. Such a change could indeed help the party, but it does represent a major risk without guarantee of success. Rahul Gandhi’s track record of unorthodox strategies have yielded few benefits and the old guard of the Congress Party is somewhat justified in its skepticism of any radical changes the scion may want to introduce.

If Rahul Gandhi proves unable to take the reins, his mother may be able to salvage the party’s fortunes for a few years, but she is 68 and reportedly unwell. In a post-Sonia Gandhi scenario, barring a sudden emergence of charisma in Rahul Gandhi, there are four possible scenarios. The first is that Rahul’s sister could emerge and prove to be everything that Rahul isn’t. However, Priyanka Ghandi has never held public office and her political skills are even more untested than her brother’s. The second is that eventually another leader from outside the family will step forward and revive the party. This is possible, but that road would be long and difficult. In third scenario, the party collapses and its place in the Indian political spectrum is taken by another center-left party, perhaps the AAP if it can manage to hold together. Finally, the center-left may fail to win elections at all, leaving the political field open for decades-long BJP dominance, mirroring the Congress Party’s own lengthy tenure. Even if the BJP does not deliver as much as expected during this time, it may continue to win elections by mobilizing its large base (the party recently overtook the Chinese Communist Party as the largest party in the world). It remains to be seen which scenario will come to pass; the next couple of years will be crucial in determining which direction India’s political system will take.

This reliance on one family for so long explains the difficulties that the Congress Party faces today. It has not matured beyond its reliance on the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. The BJP’s vision of India as an industrial rather than an agricultural country is more in tune with the evolving conditions of development and modernity than are the ideas of the Congress Party. Still, Indian voters are fickle and one day, the BJP could no longer be in power. If that happens, it would help for India’s main opposition to be competent and ideologically functional.