The tremors in the Indian National Congress is similar to earthquakes. For long the shift of the tectonic plates takes place unseen. It generates subterranean tension that, reaching a critical level, uncoils itself. The intuition in the old Indian myth that the earth is upheld by a gigantic serpent is intuitive. The decline of the Congress did not start the other day. The tectonic plates have been shifting even during Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s time.

Perhaps the two factors that have undone the Congress party are the Indira cult – she was Ma Durga – and minority appeasement. The Indira cult smacked of the old-world dictatorships in which, as Louis XIV said, the ruler was the State. The outcome of such a scheme of things is the under-development and disempowerment of the people. In the late ‘60s and till the mid ‘70s, national elections could be won by simply distributing the photographs of Indira ji among the masses. It made little sense to circulate manifestos or make reasoned speeches; the rank and file were illiterate. The inflicted disability of the people seemed to yield rich electoral dividends. But the law of history applied, nonetheless; the unrighteous advantage of yesterday is necessarily the inevitable scourge of today and tomorrow. Even today, the tragicomedy of our political stage is played out on the gullibility of the voters.

Gandhiji is, is to me, the true democrat not just because he involved the people in the national movement. That can be done by any demagogue. He is a democrat because he endeavoured to ensure that this participation was an ennobling experience for the people. He was, in other words, keen to ensure that the people did not get coarsened and vulgarized and that crudity and blood-thirstiness did not infect them. He did not see them as political fodder. Over the years this has changed. The slip down the slop continues.

The general decline in the quality of the people is what we see reflected in the malady of our democracy today. It did not begin with the BJP. It began with the Congress. The general pattern is this: the Congress sowed, the BJP reaped. It is the inflexible law of history that gains of unrighteousness will be reaped by anyone but the sowers. That is why there is a touch of inevitability about how things are panning out for the Congress today.

Coming to the minority appeasement: no one really paid any attention to this dishonest phenomenon or look beyond its cliched façade. This amounted to no more than keeping the leaders of the minority communities well-humoured, without any concern as to what was happening to the members of the communities. Appeasement did happen; but, for all these protracted exercises of appeasement, the communities concerned remained backward. They were used and betrayed by the religious and political leadership. At the same time, it afforded deadly firepower to the detractors of the Congress to riddle the ramparts of its hypocrisy. In this process the minority communities got stigmatized and alienated. They were seen as the herd of corrupt religious leaders who sold them wholesale to a party. Being sold and bought is appropriate to animals, not to human beings. The national stock of minority communities crashed as a result.

This, combined with the perversely perpetuated all-round under-development of the masses, created yet another deadly infection. The middle level leaders of the Congress, drunk by power and bloated by pelf, began to be disdainful to the common man. “The common man,” said a senior Congress man, who was a minister in UPA -2, to me, “is an ass. He will forget all this in ten days.” “He might,” I told him, “but he could come out of his amnesia at the time of elections.” When a party, and its putative leadership come to counting their electoral fortunes on the stupidity of the people, you know right well that the end is not far off.

That end is twitching and gasping in Karnataka, in Goa, in MP, in Rajasthan. Unlike most others, I am not upset that the BJP is buying up, if that indeed is the case, Congress MLAs at handsome rates. The problem is not that they are bought; but that they are buyable. On what basis were they given Congress tickets? Who dressed them in the bikini of the party? They were not, after all, neophiles so that selecting them as candidates could be excused as a mistake. These political merchandises have been part of the Congress for long. That being the case, the disturbing thing is that many more, like them, are susceptible to being bought or sold. These MLAs are a standing public condemnation of the stuff that the Congress is made of. Given that, and given also that there is no eagerness to reckon and rectify the rot, no tears need be shed on the ongoing ‘implosion’ of the party, in the words of K.T.S Tulsi, the nominated Congress Rajya Sabha member.

Rahul Gandhi, alas, has wrecked himself on this hard rock. He is like a captain who assumed the helms without coming to terms with the condition of the ship. He was not aware of the gaping holes at its bottom. Like a well-meaning and naively adventurous young man, he thought he could steer the ship home on the strength of his good intentions and almighty efforts. Admittedly, he has done his very best. But his heroic efforts were like that of a physician straining his last nerve to save the life of a patient dying of an unknown disease. What is reflected in his resolute determination to quit as the president of the party is the despair bred by his very best proving woefully inadequate. That, all the same, is a sign of immaturity. It is when the party is at its nadir that it needs a true leader. Conversely, it is when a party is in the doldrums that a born leader finds his opportunities.