Trapped in a Template

In the upcoming election, more than the Congress, the future of the Gandhi family is at stake

- Harish Khare

A political party's ideological profile is defined and shaped as much by its founding principles as by the opposition it faces at any time. The political party that dynamically fails to adjust its sails to the changing winds of global currents and internal storms inevitability gets marginalised. No political party can afford to remain stranded on an island of ideological purity.

The Indian National Congress (INC) is no exception to this rule. If it has survived for so long, it is only because of its ability to fine-tune its ideological pretensions and postures to answer the ever-changing Indian realities. This capacity for adaptability has often exasperated the purists and baffled the rivals and opponents.

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Preoccupied as it was in the first 20 years (1947-1967) after Independence with national reorganisation and constitutional consolidation, the INC had to necessarily carry on its preIndependence identity as an umbrella party, accommodating and amenable to one and all, as long they pretended to subscribe to the Idea of India. The party boss, Sardar Patel, frowned upon any ideological assertions. He ran the Congress Socialist Party out of the Indian National Congress.

The Congress stood drained of influential voices like Acharya Narendra Dev, Jaiprakash Narain, Acharya Kriplani, NG Ranga, and Ram Manohar Lohia. The Congress bosses were content to pursue power and office, as Nehru-Patel performed in jugalbandi to address the urgent and desperate task of carving a new Indian state out of post-Partition chaos and giving it a new instrument of legitimacy, the Constitution of India.