Author: Arun R Swamy, University of Guam

India’s grand previous occasion, the Indian National Congress (INC), has elected a new president. This shouldn’t be huge information, however it’s the first contested election in 20 years and only the sixth in INC historical past. It can also be the primary time since 1998 that somebody not named Gandhi has held the submit. But the prospects of this train in occasion democracy reviving the INC are slim.

As the tortuous course of and predictable end result clarify, the INC has nonetheless not overcome its dependence on one ruling dynasty. Its difficulties are deeply rooted in its historical past and observe of elevating a single chief to a place of charismatic authority past democratic accountability. This observe originates within the management that ‘Mahatma’ Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (no relation to right now’s Gandhi dynasty) exercised over the independence motion and persists partly as a result of India’s regional variety makes it troublesome for many leaders to enchantment nationwide.

With Gandhi’s demise, the charismatic mantle handed first to Jawaharlal Nehru, the primary prime minister, after which to Indira Gandhi, the third prime minister and Nehru’s daughter. Both loved private reputation and electoral success that had been unmatched till latest years.

But the continued charismatic authority loved by — or maybe thrust upon — Indira Gandhi’s descendants owes much less to their reputation, which has been declining steadily, and extra to the inner dynamics of the INC. The existence of a charismatic ‘supreme leader’ has lengthy allowed dropping factions in regional models to enchantment towards extra well-liked regional leaders. These appeals are normally to a nationwide management that’s usually itself little greater than a coterie across the supreme chief. This has led disgruntled regional leaders with a major well-liked base to exit the occasion, leaving solely these whose political survival is determined by help from the only central chief to steer state models. Both components had been on show within the latest contest.

The momentum in direction of the latest elections started when the earlier occasion president Rahul Gandhi, Indira Gandhi’s grandson, resigned following the INC’s disastrous displaying within the 2019 elections. Rahul was changed by his mom Sonia as interim president, who had herself served as president from 1998 to 2017. But a 2020 letter signed by 23 senior leaders calling for intra-party elections was seen as a direct problem to the Gandhis. With neither willing to run, Gandhi household loyalists needed to settle for a contest they didn’t need.

When Shashi Tharoor, a signatory of the 2020 letter, introduced his candidacy, Gandhi loyalists started frantically to seek for an alternate. Their first selection, Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, withdrew when his faction within the state legislature refused to again his rival and deputy, Sachin Pilot, for Chief Minister. Gandhi loyalists then settled on Mallikarjun Kharge, a veteran Dalit chief. Kharge called on Tharoor to withdraw to permit for a ‘consensus candidate’. Leading as much as the ultimate vote on 17 October, many state models and particular person legislators publicly called for Rahul to be president or Sonia to pick one.

In the top, Kharge’s landslide victory was a foregone conclusion. With many of the 2020 letter writers backing Kharge, it was as a lot a testomony to the party’s dependence on the Gandhi dynasty as an indication of intra-party democracy.

After independence, the connection between the Congress organisational president and its principal political chief modified a number of instances. Under Nehru, after an preliminary wrestle, the INC president was clearly subordinate to the occasion’s political and legislative chief — the prime minister. After Nehru’s demise, highly effective regional leaders gained management of the organisation and the presidency for some years. But they had been ultimately outmanoeuvred by Indira Gandhi, who split the party in 1969 and restored the occasion chief’s supremacy over the occasion president.

Following her defeat in 1977, Indira Gandhi took the presidency of the occasion herself. This observe, by which the occasion chief held the organisational presidency, remained the sample till 1998. Following successive defeats in 1996 and 1998, the occasion elected a reluctant Sonia Gandhi, former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi’s Italian-born widow, as president.

Sonia Gandhi’s management compelled a brand new mannequin. As her Italian origins made her unacceptable as prime minister to many, the organisational president now exercised supremacy over the legislative chief. When the INC shaped a coalition authorities from 2004–2014, the prime ministership went to a politically weak technocrat, Manmohan Singh, whereas Sonia Gandhi exercised sway from outdoors the federal government.

With the INC now out of energy and the Nehru-Gandhi household having given up the organisational presidency in addition to all legislative management posts, their continued hegemony seems to have introduced the INC full circle. The main centre of energy is now fully divorced from any formal management positions within the occasion.

The INC continues to cling to a charismatic mannequin of management tied to a single dynasty that has lengthy ceased to ship victory. The end result has been the hollowing out of the INC in a number of states as voters who may need supported the INC as an alternative flip to renegade INC factions — notably West Bengal’s Trinamool Congress, Andhra Pradesh’s YSR Congress and Maharashtra’s Nationalist Congress Party.

Since Indira Gandhi’s demise, no INC chief has demonstrated the identical enchantment and skill to get votes. The perpetuation of the supreme, extra-organisational authority of the Nehru-Gandhi household — even towards their very own obvious needs — prevents any different nationwide chief. Whether the election of a brand new organisational president will change that stays to be seen.

Arun R Swamy is Professor of Political Science on the University of Guam.