1996 vs 2019: What Rahul Gandhi Can Learn from Sitaram Kesri

If Congress has to weather the price of incumbency, it MUST be in the driver’s seat.

The Quint’s Founder-Editor Raghav Bahl (Centre), Congress President Rahul Gandhi (R), Former Congress President, Sitaram Kesri (L). 

(Photo: Saumya Pankaj / The Quint)

We begin with two questions (on Instagram, since Facebook is oh-so-old?), which are bound to send the trolls into overdrive:

1. What do you know about a quaint Congress politician called Sitaram Kesri?
2. How do you rate Rahul Gandhi’s performance since he became President of the Indian National Congress in December 2017?

What’s Working for Rahul 2.0?

Before I come to the first question, let me say that even Congress critics concede that Rahul has begun his innings with unexpected chutzpah. So I can reiterate, quite candidly (yes, bring on the trolls), that Rahul Gandhi 2.0 seems to have not put a step wrong since he became the undisputed Congress chief two months ago:

1. Beginning with an astute Gujarat campaign, stringing together Young Turks like Alpesh Thakor, Paresh Dhanani, Hardik Patel and Jignesh Mevani, that almost felled M/s Modi & Shah;
2. To the stunning electoral triumph in Rajasthan where credit was freely given to Sachin Pilot and Ashok Gehlot;
3. To allowing a regional satrap like Siddaramaiah to head the Karnataka campaign even as Rahul showers willing and visible support;
4. To the “healing touch” in Delhi Congress where a “repentant” Ajay Maken has been “persuaded” to swallow his pride and woo dissidents like Sheila Dikshit, AK Walia, Haroon Yousuf and Arvinder Singh Lovely back to the fold;
5. To harnessing ‘whiz kids’ like Praveen Chakravarty to head a new-age AICC division on “big data and analytics”;
6. To pulling back once-disenchanted/sidelined veterans like Chidambaram and Kapil Sibal to the fore on economic/legal rebuttal of the government’s policies;
7. To displaying a mature sense of continuity by respecting/empowering the old guard

You have to admit that Rahul Gandhi is leading from the front, not distracted nor reluctant, with a promising amount of native intelligence. Of course, one swallow does not make a summer, and this is but a tiny beginning in an enormously arduous trek back to power, but well...

Ok now, enough said, do really bring on the trolls!

Sitaram ‘Kesri’, Who?

On the second question, I am bound to get irate blowback on Instagram, where the millennial memory stretches back, max, to 2000 AD: “Please correct the typo; clearly you mean Sitaram Yechury, that handsome Communist leader, right, coz we’ve never heard of a bloke called Sitaram Kesri?”

There you are! Before I go any further, I have to digress into Sitaram Kesri’s biodata to make sense of my argument. He is an astonishing politician from a bygone era. He joined the Independence Movement at the tender age of 13, going to jail several times between 1930-42. Moreover, Kesri is a six-term member of parliament, once in the Lok Sabha, and five times in the Rajya Sabha.

In 1980, he became the treasurer (aka as principal money man, with a photographic memory and grasp over a political party’s inscrutable accounts, from a single rupee donated by a humble party worker to crores given by corporate titans) of the Congress party, successively serving in the cabinets of Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and Narasimha Rao.

He finally ascended to the peak – becoming AICC President (in September 1996) when Rao went into political oblivion.

But over the next two years, Sitaram Kesri committed blunders which Rahul Gandhi must study a million times as we hurtle towards 2019. This is where the lessons of history must intersect for Congress President Sitaram Kesri (circa 1996-98) and Rahul Gandhi (circa 2017-to... well, the innings has only just begun).

Congress’ Political Annihilation

1995 – the last year of Narasimha Rao’s Congress government – almost sounded the death knell for the party. Scams, resignations of seven ministers, a split with the “loyalist” faction of Arjun Singh and ND Tiwari, corruption charges emblazoned in the infamous Jain Hawala Diaries (and earlier in the tenure, Babri Masjid destroyed in 1992, Chief Minister Beant Singh assassinated in Punjab, the pain inflicted by 1991’s economic liberalisation) – small wonder that the Congress got wiped out in UP and Bihar, winning a paltry 140 seats in the 11th Lok Sabha Polls of 1996, its lowest tally ever.

But even bigger history was being made elsewhere, as the BJP got 161 seats, becoming the single largest party in parliament, pushing the Congress to an ignominious second place.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee was sworn in as the prime minister of India, the first non-Congress politician to win that office – only to resign a mere 13 days later because hardly anybody was willing to buy into the RSS/Hindutva vision of India.

Let me repeat for emphasis, because I will return to this argument: nobody was willing to buy into the RSS/Hindutva vision of India.

What Rahul Can Learn from Kesri’s Blunders

Since politics abhors a vacuum, the United Front (UF), a cabal of several regional parties with 192 seats in Lok Sabha, was hastily cobbled together. Sitaram Kesri’s Congress, with 140 seats, gave outside support, and a government led by Deve Gowda, (until then a factional politician from Karnataka, but with an ostensibly stable support of 332/542 MPs), was formed.

But Sitaram Kesri was unhappy and impatient. Legend has it that he fancied himself as the prime minister of India, denied his place in history by an unholy regional coalition. So he toppled Gowda’s government in less than a year – only to be thwarted again as Inder Gujral replaced Gowda at the head of the second UF government. A seething Sitaram Kesri pulled the plug, one more time, within eight months, plunging the country into another parliamentary election in less than two years. An angry electorate punished Sitaram Kesri’s Congress, handing Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s NDA a handsome majority in 1998.

This time, people were compelled to buy into the RSS/Hindutva vision of India. To repeat, the recalcitrance of 1996 against the RSS/BJP/Hindutva had evaporated, thanks to Sitaram Kesri, in 1998.

Sitaram Kesri was consigned – literally lifted off his gaddi (throne) and dumped outside the AICC office – to anonymity. Sonia Gandhi emerged just in time to save a decimated Congress party from disintegrating.

Rahul’s vs Kesri’s Congress

Now to the core of my argument. Imagine if Sitaram Kesri had refused to prop up a gaggle of regional parties in 1996? While it’s impossible to fathom the “what ifs” of history, you can safely bet that some sort of “BJP + regional” combination would have come to power, but collapsed just as inevitably within 2-3 years.

In such a situation, the Congress would have occupied a sharply defined opposition space through those turbulent years. It would not have been trapped in “no man’s land”, where it got exponential discredit for being the twin evil – the incumbent and destabiliser.

Again, it’s difficult to say with any certainty what would have happened in the ensuing polls, but perhaps Congress and BJP would have been principal opponents, with a shrunken challenge by the dispirited regional parties.

And here’s the lesson for ‘Rahul’s Congress’. 2019 could throw up a very similar political arithmetic as 1996. For purposes of illustration, let’s go with the following math, give or take a few seats:

• BJP/NDA with 200 seats
• UPA/Congress with 150 seats
• Regional Parties with 192 seats

Congress will be tempted to repeat 1996. But it must remember the lessons of history. To repeat: just two years later, people were compelled to buy into the RSS/Hindutva vision of India; the stubborn recalcitrance of 1996 against RSS/BJP/Hindutva had evaporated.

Congress Should Not Get Trapped in ‘No Man’s Land’

Here then, is the decision matrix for Rahul’s Congress in 2019:

• If BJP/NDA, with 200+ seats, emerges as the largest political formation, that would indicate that people’s disenchantment with Hindutva politics is gathering speed, but has yet to peak. The Congress should bide its time, become an even more vigorous opposition, and plan on a 200+ return in 2024
• Only if the Congress/UPA gets more seats than BJP/NDA (a la 2004 and 2009) should they even think of forming a government
• In any case, in no event should the Congress give outside support. If it has to weather the price of incumbency, it must be in the driver’s seat
• And Rahul Gandhi, instead of an appointee, should be the prime minister

Otherwise, those who forget history are condemned to repeat it.

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