That the Nehru-Gandhi family rules the Congress is a widely acknowledged fact, though there are a few of those who wish to believe against all available evidence that the Congress is the most democratic organisation that exists in the country. Two recent instances will serve to rid such optimists of their delusion and demonstrate the hold of the dynasty over the party.
The first is a speech delivered by a Congress leader at an election rally in Meerut in Uttar Pradesh. The leader captures her audience’s attention with the question: “Do you know Mayawati’s father’s name?” “No”, she answers it herself, and goes on to explain how in contrast everybody knows about the Nehru-Gandhi family. She ends her harangue by asking the crowd if it would vote for someone like Chief Minister Mayawati whom it “doesn’t even know”.
That Mr Rahul Gandhi depends heavily on his family’s legacy for his career in politics is clear, just as it is obvious that lower rung leaders of the party like this Congress activist bank on the Congress’s first family’s name to keep the party afloat. It is not surprising that leaders and campaigners of the party should stoop to the despicable level of running down political opponents through such crass personal remarks, given that they will even happily prostrate before the dynasty to win its approval.
But why is Mr Gandhi silently accepting such demeaning conduct by his camp followers when he has never tired of claiming that he is just one among the many leaders in the party and that all talk of the family’s hegemony over the Congress is a mischief spread by the party’s opponents?
The second example of worshipping the dynasty came on the heels of the first one, when senior Congress leader from Uttar Pradesh and Union Minister for Coal Sriprakash Jaiswal made the outrageous remark said the new Government in Uttar Pradesh would be “remote-controlled” by Mr Gandhi. This is an insult to the voters of the State who are in the process of electing a Government which will listen to them and not one that is “remote-controlled” by the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty.
Moreover, since the Congress is unlikely to win enough seats to form a Government in the State on its own, does Mr Jaiswal mean that a non-Congress Government is going to be managed by Mr Gandhi, perhaps in lieu of the support that the Congress extends to the regime for the latter’s survival? For the Congress to have a say in matters of governance by a regime that it supports is understandable, but Mr Jaiswal has in a brazen manner equated the Congress with Mr Gandhi by saying that the latter will control the Government.
Now that the cat is out of the bag, parties considering the possibility of seeking the Congress’s support stand forewarned.
