The chosen person’s independence of mind should be evident to all. Any hint of the presence in the shadows of a backseat driver will be disastrous for the new president’s political standing and his future.

Since the Congress’s future will be linked to the chief’s, it is only when he or she stands tall (amidst the ruins of the party at present) and is seen as capable of giving it a new direction in the realm of ideas and of breathing life into the currently moribund organization, will there be any chance of the 134-year-old party recovering its lost glory.

It is no secret that the glory was lost because the Congress lost its way. And since the Nehru-Gandhis have always been at the helm (except for brief periods when Kamaraj or Narasimha Rao and a few others were at the top), there is no way that the blame for the party’s blunders can be placed on someone else.

Among these were the Emergency of 1975-77, the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 and the overturning of the Supreme Court’s Shah Bano judgment in the mid-1980s. For the present, it is the last blooper which is relevant because it paved the way for the BJP’s rise by confirming its charge of minority appeasement by the Congress.

To counter this phase of Indian politics which tends to darken the country’s “soul”, as The Guardian of London has said, a new Congress president has to return to the party’s old secularism and not take recourse, as some of the other chiefs have done, in “soft” Hindutva in a futile attempt to appear to be more Hindu than the BJP or at least as much of a Hindu as the saffron outfit.

But there was no need to play such silly games, for few are deceived. Most people see it as an insincere ploy. Yet, the fact that they were indulged in showed a numbing of the party’s intellect.

And that is an inevitable consequence of the absence of internal democracy, when the party begins to resemble a zamindari household with the family being surrounded by sycophantic courtiers who are forever kowtowing to their masters – young and old – and echoing their views.

The deadening of the intellect not only robs an organization of the mental capacity to evolve novel means of taking on an opponent – and not via imitation – but it also makes the followers develop a pathetic dependence on the masters so much so that they fear that the organization will fall apart if the prop of the first family is removed. This crutch of dependency is not unlike what is fostered by the system of reservations in the social sector.

Since the two successive drubbings of the Congress have rung the alarm bells about the party’s future, the need to chart a new course cannot be delayed any further.

The bells had tolled earlier, too, but the Congress’s response was a bureaucratic one of setting up a committee under a pliant chairman to analyze the causes and then shelve the report.

The committee route was preceded by the routine offers of resignation by the party president, which was predictably rejected by the docile party members.

The Congress has avoided the charade this time although there were tearful members who protested against Rahul Gandhi’s offer to step down. But he seems determined to leave the post after making the correct diagnosis about the party’s malady.

The Congress needs a new zamindar from outside to move into the decaying, crumbling palace and begin the repair work. But who will it be ? Amrinder Singh would have been the ideal choice. But who will take his place in Punjab ?

As if the feudal bug wasn’t enough of a hindrance to healthy growth, the Congress has also unfortunately suffered a series of untimely deaths – Madhavrao Scindia, Y.S. Rajashekhara Reddy, Rajesh Pilot – while its leaders in the south like Siddaramaiah appear too immersed in state-level politics (apart from having a non-Congress background) to make the transition to the national level, and A.K. Antony seems too subservient to the first family.

Apart from the untimely deaths, what has also deprived the Congress of having a strong bench strength – as they say about cricket teams – is the stifling of local talent by nervous “strong” leaders like Indira Gandhi, who did not like challengers to emerge from the boondoks. As is known, even Amrinder Singh was not a favourite of Rahul Gandhi because of his outspoken nature.

So, the country waits for a new saviour to rescue the Congress from its dire straits. One can only hope that the person will not be another dynast.(IPA Service)