Ravi Shankar writes for The New Indian Express
He refuses to go away. He lives beneath our collective consciousness, like an underground river moving through Bharat’s substratum, murmuring a mantra as ancient as human endeavour—freedom and dharma. Every election, he is reincarnated like some political nativity play, exploited by the ersatz moral sincerity by politicians. But Mahatma Gandhi is not going to win elections for anyone. He won India freedom, and gifted by association his magical surname to his favourite family. Though he was a Congressman in every atom of his body and mind, Nehru’s mentor was the ultimate nationalist who placed both India and Bharat over partisan politics. Now he is back again. Laundered. Dressed up.
Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi was the first to take to the ouija board. Recently, he linked the assassination of the Mahatma and the Congress party’s favourite Frankenstein, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), as a poll issue. “RSS people killed Gandhiji and today their people (BJP) talk of him... They opposed Sardar Patel and Gandhiji,” he said at a public rally in Maharashtra. Rahul should learn history from his grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, who was wary of Vallabhbhai Patel’s charisma and stature rivaling his own. In a collection of letters published by the National Book Trust, this uneasiness is apparent. After Gandhi’s murder, Nehru wanted to ban the RSS, but Patel objected because there was no concrete evidence. He argued that the rule of law should prevail in a democracy. Though he was forced to go along with Nehru on the Congress decision to ban the RSS, Patel believed that “Bapu’s murder was not the result of an RSS conspiracy but that of a section of Hindu Mahasabha”, which he regarded “a greater danger than RSS”. Patel had said, on January 7, 1948: “You cannot crush an organisation by using the danda. The danda is meant for thieves and dacoits. After all the RSS men are not thieves and dacoits. They are patriots who love their country.”
The letters further expose the suspicion between Nehru and Patel. The latter strongly objected to the Prime Minister’s direct interference in his ministry. He wrote to Nehru, “I should like to suggest that it is somewhat embarrassing both to me and to the local officials if orders are issued to them directly by you in matters which fall within my departmental responsibility... Even if some instructions were issued by you, I feel that I should have at least been informed and that those instructions should not have come to my office indirectly...”
The Gandhis may have Nehru, but he is increasingly irrelevant to modern India. For the first time, the Congress is left without a zemi. Nehru had Gandhi. Indira had Nehru. Rajiv had Indira. And Sonia had Manmohan Singh. Today, the party is panicked that the BJP has appropriated Sardar Patel as their mascot. Narendra Modi’s idea to send party workers all over the country to collect at least one kilo of iron from each village to construct Patel’s statue has found a resonance, which the Congress fears could upstage Nehru and give the Sardar his place in history denied to him by the Nehru dynasty.
The Mahatma’s legacy seems to have deserted the Congress. His granddaughter, Sumitra Gandhi Kulkarni, is proud of her friendship with Modi. After she met him in Ahmedabad, she had said, “We are old friends. So the meeting was bound to be happy and pleasant.” Gandhi’s grandson Rajmohan, who had earlier lost his deposit to Rajiv Gandhi in 1989, is the AAP candidate from East Delhi.
The Congress has lost its Mahatma mojo. Will the Gandhis lose the Congress next?
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