The Indian Congress Party and Its Foundering Fathers
SABAVALA, SHAROKH
By Sharokh Sabavala Old forces in India can no longer cope with new problems The Indian Congress Party and Its Foundering Fathers Bombay That India's ruling Congress party is foundering became...
...But the public exhibition of disunity and lack of planning it gave, the growing inability of Nehru either to guide or control his own party, or, for that matter, to know his own mind, has not gone unnoticed...
...And while the country is thus preoccupied with internal schisms...
...How much longer before the story of Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey—or at least Indonesia—is repeated...
...Inside, the rising tempo of industrialization, the breakup of the joint family system, the restlessness of the nation's youth, the continued failure of the Opposition to provide an alternative and the preoccupation with local, parochial issues of little or no importance, are all building into a whirlwind...
...Parliament and people are quite ready to vote more and more money to the Defense Ministry, which is rapidly assuming a pivotal position in the Indian Government...
...In southern Madras, a black-shirted organization, led by a communal fanatic, is again demanding secession of South from North and to show its earnestness is going around burning Indian maps and flags...
...This made the session unusual...
...Way back in 1946, before freedom dawned, the late Mahatma Gandhi shrewdly suggested the dissolution of the Congress party, which at that time was not really a party but a national platform, conceived to help win national independence...
...Village pan-chayats—councils—today have more power than ever before and as far as rural reconstruction is concerned, the Nehru Government is going in for a phased program of decentralization...
...instead it has Nehru, as mercurial as the uncertain weather that lies ahead...
...For the moment no such move appears on the horizon...
...Although members were worried about the threat posed by China and by the post-summit deterioration of the international situation, in which India is directly involved, it was decided not to make any official resolutions and to give the rank and file a free hand so that, if possible, the recommendations of an earlier party Reorganization Committee could be freely and frankly discussed...
...In the process, however, the governments have become things apart from the party...
...Outside, the buffer of neutralism has become sadly dented and Nehru's once-shining sword of coexistence is rusting in its Indian scabbard...
...They keep this subcontinent sufficiently unified to enable it to turn itself from an agricultural into an industrial unit...
...In northern Punjab, the martial Sikh community also is again demanding a separate linguistic state and to back the demand has launched a direct action movement which has led to serious rioting even in the streets of Delhi...
...The Congress party form of socialism makes less and less sense in a country which needs to be increasingly pragmatic...
...These are questions everyone is asking after the latest Congress party fiasco and the questions gain in urgency as China increases its military preparations on the Indian border...
...Speaker after speaker attacked the party's aging leadership, openly suggested that the founding fathers, still adorning the party platform, give way to younger leadership and demanded that at least a third of the Congress Working Committee now be elected instead of being nominated again and again by a Congress party President, himself a nominee of the high command...
...This could be dangerous to Indian democracy, especially since the armed forces are the country's only really disciplined and cohesive force and anyone using them could quickly gain ascendancy...
...In the lull before the storm, India desperately needs the finesse of a Gandhi and the iron will of a Sardar Patel...
...The Communists and Socialists again are bent on encouraging those who want to "Bal-kanize" the country—their primary objective being to further weaken the Congress party...
...China continues to mass artillery in western Tibet and build jet airfields on India's borders...
...By Sharokh Sabavala Old forces in India can no longer cope with new problems The Indian Congress Party and Its Foundering Fathers Bombay That India's ruling Congress party is foundering became painfull) obvious after the first-week-of-June session of its All India Congress Committee...
...For a change, however, he failed to cow his fellow members and overnight, seeing the way the wind was blowing, changed his tactics and voted for accepting the principle of election...
...As the Congress party itself is discovering, it is no use airing theories which immediately thereafter must be modified out of existence...
...as a result, they voted against him and the session thereafter broke up amidst scenes of unprecedented confusion...
...This the Congress party and the Government wisely has sought to strengthen...
...Unfortunately, he forgot to take his senior colleagues into his last-minute confidence...
...At the same time, the country is increasingly conscious of the need for firm leadership, not necessarily the leadership of one man, but a leadership which is practical, patriotic and, above all, which makes sense...
...As China does so, Indian military preparations are also stepped up...
...Nehru and his Government, after nearly a decade and a half of office, still provide India with a vast measure of political stability and a great economic impetus...
...Everyone, presumably, expected this and it was believed a shrewd move on the part of the leadership to let the rank and file blow off steam...
...And while Nehru lives, a military or any other kind of coup d'etat appears unthinkable...
...Congress party policies on nationalization, state enterprise and cooperative farming are all being chopped into little pieces by the pressure of events, and the time is at hand when nobody will believe anything it proclaims, even if Nehru is its mouthpiece...
...Lack of opposition, in turn, has hastened the processes of disintegration, yet even today the Indian people have no alternative with which to threaten Congress preponderance...
...It was different—and with a vengeance...
...But how much longer can this state of affairs go on...
...Even more painfully obvious, the result of this discovery is now leading divisive communal and neo-fascist groups to rear their ugly heads once again...
...Strangely enough, the governments sponsored by this party have successfully undertaken the task of national reconstruction and carried through a giant planned development which has brought the country within measurable distance of the point of "economic takeoff...
...Contrary to his usual role of liberal reformer, he resolutely opposed any reorganization of the party, refused to accept the possibility of elections, deriding the speakers for their "meaningless" attacks and generally lost his temper...
...But the program is necessarily slow whereas events, both inside and outside the country, are moving rapidly...
...Until recently, Nehru was a law unto himself, but the party has lost its grass roots contact, its prestige has dwindled and everywhere parochial groups have risen to wage war against it...
...The All India Congress Committee, which meets twice a year, went into session this time to discuss the party's possible reorganization...
...The Army and its leaders eschew politics...
...The Congress party still remains to be reorganized...
...Where is the second line of leadership, in the Congress party or elsewhere...
...This time it was everyone's hope that things would be different...
...Nehru came down like a ton of bricks on the young rebels...
...For years, party members attended sessions only to raise their hands at appropriate times to endorse the wishes of the Congress high command, led, however unofficially, by Jawaharlal Nehru...
...Nor are the masses ready to throw the nation into confusion by experimenting with other parties and ideologies...
...Nehru and other party men resisted this suggestion and for the last 14 years have been carrying on their backs a vast, amorphous, slowly crumbling organization which has been unable to define a policy, which includes men of widely differing political coloration and which, in the last half decade, has become synonymous with corruption...
...From this to disillusion with democracy itself is not a very great distance and right now not a few Indians already look wistfully across the borders to Pakistan where a general has very much simplified the techniques of government...
...Their British training, in this context, stands them in good stead...
...For India, the one saving grace is local self-government as practiced in its 600,000 villages for several hundred years...
...Why is Nehru not thinking in constructive terms of the leadership that must follow him...
...But everyone, apparently, did not include the Congress high command, which has apparently gotten so used to docile acquiescence that it can brook no opposition...
Vol. 43 • July 1960 • No. 29
