by Piyush Mathur

Editorial precis: On March 9, 2020, Jyotiraditya Scindia—a major leader of the Indian National Congress (INC)—resigned from his party; shockingly, he joined the INC’s archrival (and the ruling party at the centre) the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) on March 11. In this piece, Piyush Mathur highlights what has turned the INC into an unbearable organization for its own leaders. Further, arguing that Scindia’s step is ill-timed even for himself, Mathur briefly illustrates why it is also deeply disappointing for many (including Scindia’s erstwhile fans in the country).

Except for diehard Gandhi family loyalists—as few as they are now (and ever so dwindling)—every observer of India’s politics would have foreseen the Scindia showdown some 2-3 years ago (if not earlier). These observers, however, might not have anticipated the exact shape of this showdown—the fact that Jyotiraditya Scindia would end up joining the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP)—anymore than its timing (which is peculiar, even if we approach it from Scindia’s quarters, as I shall explain toward the end). Wherefore, what we recently witnessed—through March 9-10—was not even a showdown; it was rather an exit.

In point of fact, the keenest observers of India’s politics could have foretold Scindia’s exit from INC more than four decades ago—when he was yet a child, quite like the two offsprings of Rajiv & Sonia Gandhi: Rahul and Priyanka. These observers would have noted—to themselves and to their friends and family—that the Gandhis (or what was then the so-called first family of India) would not allow any other INC member to lead the party (leave aside the country) for real; and the young Gandhi siblings had a likelihood of coming into conflict with Scindia as adults.

The Gandhi family would of course end up making a crucial exception regarding India’s leadership in the case of Manmohan Singh; but that was a well-calculated—entirely managed—move on its part, given that Singh had no popular base whatsoever, and he could not have posed any threat to the hold of the family on the party or the country. Singh also had the personality of a compliant, politically ineffectual technocrat whose loyalty to the Gandhi family was rooted in his gratitude to it for the gift of his own career in politics.

Crass dynasticism is of course not unique to the INC; however, this happens to be the party that can be considered the inspirer-in-chief, or the fountainhead, of the culture of political dynasticism in India as a whole. The first political party of British India (and thus, retroactively, of independent India), the INC has not only been adamantly undemocratic and opaque at least since the leadership of the late Indira Gandhi, but it has also always been opportunistic in exploiting, to its own electoral advantage, dynastic tendencies manifested in other political parties. At any rate, by failing to reject political dynasticism internally—and standing by it externally—the INC has ended up bequeathing and naturalizing the “family owned business” template for India’s regional political parties. Unfortunately, India’s intellectuals—including the Anglophone journalistic class—have largely played along; mostly they have clapped and cheered whenever the next dynast (within the context of any given party) showed up on any of the next steps to the throne itself!

Unsurprisingly, the two key political blocs—the Communists and the RSS-BJP combine—that emerged against the INC have both rightly boasted of far greater accountability and non-dynastic institutions inside their core organizations than the INC. That might not be saying much within the context of some rationalistic political theory, but it is saying a lot about a key underlying feature that has been common to the Left and the Right in distinction from (and in opposition to) the INC. Indeed, one of the reasons why the BJP has gained so much strength and popularity nationwide is its lack of a dynastic culture —a lack that has allowed it to relentlessly attack the INC for its dependence on the Gandhi family qua dynasty.

Of course, observers cannot help but notice that stark authoritarianism (mostly outside a dynastic fold) has begun to raise its ugly head inside the BJP lately; but they feel reassured, perhaps naively, by the fact that Narendra Modi himself has no progeny—and the rest of his family has no visible political role nationally or even organizationally. Meanwhile, BJP insiders cannot help but notice that the rise in authoritarianism within their organization has also negatively interfered with its electoral campaigns—and contributed to their failure—in many states lately (most recently in Delhi).

The peculiarity of Scindia’s move—and some of its implications

It is against the above—somewhat immediate—backdrop that one wishes to focus briefly on Scindia’s political move. His choice to join the BJP at this specific juncture is peculiar not only because the BJP-led government is no longer at the peak of its popularity (even though BJP remains the most popular party in India), but also because the nation has witnessed its ugliest side very recently—via the protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019 (CAA) and the administration’s and political leaders’ cold and cruel stance toward them.  Indeed, the BJP lost the Delhi election so abjectly partly because of the bitterness that ensued from the violence associated with the anti-CAA protests—and the police’s and BJP leaders’ lack of impartiality regarding the same.

As it happens, there had been a long, vicious build-up to the Delhi violence—witnessed in a nation-wide degradation of institutions (be it in the academia, administration, law, or police); campus assaults; an unending stream of reports of governmental suppression of expression; social violence and illicit administrative action against dissenting individuals and communities; political witch-hunts; government-sponsored legal rescue of state agents that were being prosecuted by previous regimes for their alleged roles in mass violence against one minority or another; and, of course, in the notorious and politically divisive National Register of Citizens (NRC). With all that turbulence and mismanagement, India’s economy had also been going downhill—what with the unhelpful context of international geopolitics.

So, just when the general mood had begun to go negative against the BJP (reflected in its complete loss of Delhi assembly elections in February)—and when a growing number of people had begun to grow suspicious of Modi’s unfazed sweet talk, hollow reassurances, and unbearably cosmetic lectures on socio-political ethics—this promising INC stalwart chooses to join it!  Scindia’s supporters claim that his honour was at stake—as he had been denied his due over and over again by the Gandhi family; there has also been a claim made in the media that he had been trying in vain for months to meet Rahul. This latter claim is a bit hard to believe given that Scindia and Rahul are childhood friends—and Scindia has always been socially close to the Gandhi family; on his part, Rahul has flatly denied that claim—and has in fact underlined Scindia’s unique (not just unusual) access to his residence.

The point is that Scindia did have other choices concerning his own political future—both in terms of time and in terms of substance. In terms of time, he could have made this choice in 2018—before, during, or after the Madhya Pradesh assembly elections that year; he could have made this same choice even in 2019, when the BJP and Modi were both still on an upswing. Of course his choice would have still been abhorrent to those who remember the 2002 Gujarat Riots that unfolded under the chief ministership of Modi; however, it would have been more understandable in an instrumental sort of way. But fresh against the backdrop of the Delhi violence—a losing culmination for the virulent project of Hindutwa nationalism—when Modi stands completely unmasked as an insufferable liar to a vast swath of people, Scindia has made himself look like the horse’s rear (and worse) by switching over to the BJP.

In terms of substance, of course he could have just resigned—and focused on his business. Or, he could have done that—and also complained to the Election Commission of India against the INC’s failure to conduct genuine organizational elections that lie at the heart of the kind of problems that he had been having with the party. He could have also lodged a legal campaign against the INC in the courts. He could have done all of that—and also built public opinion in favour of democratic reform of the INC. Well, he could have done all of that, too, and launched his own party (and, for that matter, if he wanted to tip his hat to his late father—never mind his dynasty for the moment—he could have also revived the short-lived party that he had launched in 1996 during his own brief exile from the INC).

But, no, he did not do any of that—as any of that would have required some real effort and some genuine political values on his part; and all of that would have of course required a political genius with some real spine and plenty of grit. And if you had mixed the above with his enviable eloquence in Hindi as well as English, then you would have met a true statesmen in Scindia somewhere around 10 years down the line.

Instead, tens of thousands of Indians who had hoped that he might provide a viable alternative to the Gandhi family—albeit still within the INC dynastic milieu, of which he is himself a part—now have to witness Scindia standing on the side of both the Devil and the Deep Sea (and we know what these mean here); they also have to see him faking himself as their obedient soldier. Good job, Your Excellency!

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External reference

https://www.theweek.in/news/india/2020/03/10/rahul-gandhi-refused-to-meet-jyotiraditya-scindia-for-months.html

Dr. Piyush Mathur is a political philosopher and consultant. You may write to him by clicking on his name—or by contacting Thoughtfox. For his other publications, click here.