Remembering the only man in her cabinet

October 31 marks the 25th anniversary of the assassination of Indira Gandhi,
the woman who defined Indian politics for a generation. Today’s Congress is unabashedly studying her blueprint for ideas and tactics.

Twenty-five years after her assassination, the Congress is seeking to revive Indira Gandhi’s legacy. The swathe of programmes that will unfold at the exact moment she was shot, 9.20 am, October 31, is not sepia-tinted nostalgia for a woman inextricably linked to the party’s history. It’s part of a meticulously-planned strategy to recapture the glory days of the Congress, when the party under Gandhi successfully fought off challenges from within and outside to become the pre-dominant political force in the country.

If there’s an element of irony in the party moving back to its left-of-centre moorings after taking a decisive right turn in 1991 with Manmohan Singh’s economic liberalisation programme, few Congress leaders seem to be bothered by it. “Indira Gandhi is more relevant than ever,” says party general secretary Janardhan Dwivedi. “She should be our role model today, not Rajiv Gandhi. The country and the world need a strong leader like her. She knew better than anyone else how politics should be handled. Her policies and programmes are pertinent even today.”

The journey of rediscovering Indira Gandhi has gained momentum after the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, which the Congress believes it won because of its aggressive pro-poor positioning through measures like the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, a Rs60,000-crore loan waiver for poor farmers, the midday meal scheme and education programmes under the Sarva Siksha Abhiyaan.

The names were different but there were unmistakable shades of Indira Gandhi’s famous “garibi hatao” slogan that swept her to a two-thirds majority in 1971. Today, like then, the opposition, both Left and Right, lie decimated under a tidal wave of populism unleashed by the Congress.

“The nomenclatures have to change with the times,” points out information and broadcasting minister Ambika Soni. “So, instead of garibi hatao, we call it politics of inclusion. But the ethos is the same.”

With the Left and Right floundering for a counter-strategy, the Congress is in resurgence mode. And it is unabashedly studying Gandhi’s blueprint for ideas and tactics. A senior leader who wished to remain anonymous acknowledged that in the past couple of years, Gandhi has increasingly come to figure in internal debates and strategy sessions. Rahul Gandhi’s plans for a Congress revival in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, for instance, are straight out of his grandmother’s copybook.

When the Congress lost ground in these two politically crucial states in 1967 to the Sanyukta Vidhayak Dal, the precursor to the Janata coalitions of later years, Indira Gandhi crafted the party’s return by stitching together an unbeatable caste alliance of Brahmins, Dalits and Muslims. This is Rahul’s roadmap too for the 2014 elections, which the Congress hopes will be a watershed in the march back to single-party rule.

The driving force behind the bid to recreate Indira Gandhi’s legacy is Sonia Gandhi. Deeply influenced by her dominating mother-in-law, Sonia began her political career in December 1997 with physical emulation, down to the big wristwatch and rapid strides that were Indira Gandhi’s hallmark. Sonia’s political successes have given her the confidence to abandon those trappings today but she has chosen to retain the branding. “Sonia Gandhi internalised Indira Gandhi’s concern for the poor,” maintains party spokesman Manish Tiwari. “Indira Gandhi believed in decisive state intervention on behalf of the poor and broad-based state instruments like banking to help the underprivileged. These remain part of our political idiom.”

Recalls Indira Gandhi’s close aide RK Dhawan, “Before taking any decision, Indira Gandhi always used to ask: ‘Janata kya sochegi?’ I think the same thought troubles Sonia Gandhi also. She is as concerned about the party’s image among the poor as Indira Gandhi was.”

As the Congress fights to regain its pre-eminent position, Indira Gandhi’s shadow is likely to loom in larger-than-life images in the days to come. The impact is already being felt by the Manmohan Singh government. Its autonomy is slowly being whittled, especially on the policy front. Think Sharm-el-Sheikh, when the prime minister was forced to backtrack on the controversial joint statement with Pakistan after his party expressed public displeasure. Think anti-Naxal operations: the government has been forced to go slow and soften its language because of possible collateral damage to a critical political constituency for the Congress, the tribals.

The pro-market lobby and other liberalisers in the government may chaff but true-blue Congresswallahs are gung-ho. “The imprint of Indira Gandhi on today’s Congress is indelible,” insists Soni. “We have to get back to her politics and policies if we want to get out of the kind of fragmented politics we have today.”