Spinning the wheel

The wheel has turned full circle. In deciding to let the BJP-led Arjun Munda form a government in Jharkhand, the Congress has chosen democracy over secularism.

When it was pointed out to a senior minister that democracy has not always been a priority of the Congress, he said ingenuously: "But we have apologised for the Emergency."

Lately there have been other instances where the Congress has battled for democracy over religion. Although the temptation to throw the Hindutva brigade in jail and throw the key away is great, it has been recognised that these elements have democratic rights too. The UPA's policy on Left wing extremism is informed by concern over civil liberties, something it was not overly worried about in 1974-75.

But make no mistake, the Congress continues to be a regency. Whether in the states or at the centre, it is not the MLAs or MPs but Sonia Gandhi who is the oracle. Even the most well-informed and cosmopolitan Congressmen concede that only a member of the Gandhi family can hold the Congress together.

This is why, despite a perfectly democratic election, in seven out of 10 cases, the Congress Legislature Party will leave the choice of the chief minister to the High Command. This tendency has become particularly strong after the Emergency when "strong" Congressmen like H N Bahuguna and Jagjivan Ram left the party and the Congress realised the importance of a strong centre.

Much else has also changed inside the Congress in the last 30 years. It has experimented with non-Gandhi-Nehru Presidents and decided they don't work; it has tried putting a non-Gandhi Prime Minister in place and worked out that it is easy to create a communication gap and leverage it.

In its current incarnation it is trying to make a distinction between the government and the party. The chafing has already begun; the government has begun taking a call on how far it should be responsible for the decisions of the party.

So although two centres of power coexist peacefully in the party and government for a year, how much longer, remains to be seen.

The Congress's core beliefs "" socialism and secularism "" have undergone definitional changes. For at least five years, the Congress was a blind believer in the power of the market. This has undergone course correction.

The party also flirted with majority appeasement and the overt recognition of the Hindu identity. The process began in the mid-1980s and was at its height in the early 1990s. But all the indications are that it is harking back to its old constituencies "" the Dalits and the Muslims.

The most profound change after the Emergency has been the way the Congress has begun to see itself in relation to the opposition.

It has come to terms with the fact that the opposition has become regional rather than national and has unbent enough to accommodate itself as a junior partner in states where other like-minded parties have a bigger stake. However, the Congress base, still unused to coalitions, is finding "front" politics a hard act to follow.

In the 1970s, the Congressman was a khadi-wearing, Gandhi topi clad individual. In the 1980s, consistent with the image of a political executive, Congressmen graduated to safari suits with leaders like Anand Sharma actually making this a sartorial statement against Apartheid.

In the early 1990s when PV Narasimha Rao was PM, a shawl worn on top of the bandgala was as much a necessity (to keep bronchial colds at bay) as a style statement. The elaborate borders of the angavastrams that had the Andhra Pradesh hallmark became the vogue in the 1990s.

What of the Congressman of the new millenium? The party leadership wants the "new" Congressman to be a decent, reasonable, well informed liberal who can explain party line to anyone who wants to know - whether on the Kyoto Protocol or on Tobin's Tax.

Young intense idealistic boys (there are no young Congresswomen, unfortunately) stand out as the new Congressmen. The thing is, all of them are sons of Congressmen and in the Lok Sabha in that capacity to secure the lineage. So 30 years on, the tradition of the regency is alive and well in the Congress.