WHEN THE GRAND OLD CENTRIST PARTY MOVES TO A SIDE

The Congress is getting more ideological while trying to counter the BJP and the RSS. It can learn from Ambedkar, whose pragmatism made him focus on the art of the possible

- SUGATA SRINIVASARAJU

THE term 'ideology' has made a comeback to dominate the Indian public and political landscape in the last few years. It had become somewhat less fashionable since the early 1990s, but had a faint revival in 2014, when the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power. It found greater traction and mobility ever since the BJP sealed its dominance in 2019.

If ideology, as a somewhat rigid set or system of ideas, has seen a resurrection in more recent years, it can be argued that the reason is not the BJP, but the Congress. Since the Congress, under the leadership of Rahul Gandhi, began to perceive the BJP more as an intransigent ideological machine and less as a political opposition, it too began to devise a stubborn ideological response at the opposite end of the spectrum. From being a party with definite ideas and principles, it began to fancy being ideological.

This response pattern has been a kind of global playbook, and therefore Rahul Gandhi definitely came before Zohran Mamdani; but, for distinct reasons, their levels of success have varied. Anyway, this ideological game witnessed a new flashpoint in the last few days.

First, Priyank Kharge, son of Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge and a minister in Karnataka, wrote a letter to his own government demanding that the RSS's activities in public places and government premises be regulated, if not banned. Next, Kharge Senior took the idea to Delhi. On October 31, he asked for banning the RSS.