Congress having a massive rally in Nagpur to celebrate its foundation day on December 28 is unlikely to have any significant political or electoral bearing on the RSS. Congress was born in Bombay in 1885. But the party leadership chose Nagpur as the venue of celebration for obvious reason to send a message to RSS, which has its command centre there.
By holding the rally in Mumbai the Congress would have succeeded in motivating the party rank and file, but the Nagpur rally symbolises Congress’s ideological aggressiveness. This is certainly a welcome move but the Congress ought to realise that RSS leadership would come out with the counter strategy even before Congress acts.
There is no denying that organisationally RSS is much ahead of the Congress in planning its strategy. While the RSS has a battery of senior leaders and strategists to formulate the action plan and also responsible for implementation of the programmes, in the case of Congress only three persons Mallikarjun Kharge, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi matter. The Congress utterly lacks a team of dedicated strategists committed to the core values of the party.
In this backdrop let us recall Rahul Gandhi’s statement of July 3, 2019 wherein he made public the reason for quitting the office of Congress president. He said; “As president of the Congress party, I am responsible for the loss of the 2019 election. Accountability is critical for the future growth of our party. It is for this reason that I have resigned as Congress president. Rebuilding the party requires hard decisions and numerous people will have to be made accountable for the failure of 2019. It would be unjust to hold others accountable but ignore my own responsibility as president of the party”.
During these four years, the party could not be resuscitated or rebuilt. The coterie of the leaders who were responsible for the worst performance of the party still continue to hold sway. It is an open secret that party lost the assembly elections to Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan only due to this factor. Rahul’s diktat failed to make them move. Obviously how anyone could expect that the Congress leadership would force RSS to recoil make space for the Congress.
No doubt the rally would send a pulsating message to the people of Maharashtra. But it would have been better if the leaders of constituents of INDIA should be invited as the guests. This is the need of the realpolitik and the Congress leadership must lend its ear to the ground. Already the leaders of the opposition combine INDIA have identified Maharashtra as one of the key battlefields of 2024. An occasion where they will be sharing the dais with Congress will go a long way in strengthening INDIA bloc and especially the Congress.
Congress getting around 10 lakh vote more than the BJP in the three assembly elections reinforces the fact that people are with the Congress but to ensure the defeat of BJP, in real sense of RSS, the Congress will have to counter the RSS ideologically. Still time is left the Congress must depute some committed cadres and leaders having ideological clarity to reach out to the people and explain the concealed agenda of Sangh.
As is said justice should not only be done, but it must appear that justice has been done, simply holding a rally in the fort of RSS is not enough Rahul and Kharge must spell out why the RSS was dangerous for the existence of India and survival of its culture and social order. They must spell how this has had endangered the basic concept of India, the identity of India.
If RSS and Narendra Modi could dump their old and trusted leaders and entrust the unknown faces to take charge as the chief ministers for firing the imagination of the people and motivate them to vote for BJP, why cannot Kharge purge the leaders who are acting against the interest of the party? The leadership realise that people still look towards the Congress with the hope and this is manifest in the increase of the vote percentage of the party which can be seen from the results of state elections.
Rahul has raised the hope of the people for a new political idea, a better future and freedom from the rule of Hindu terrorism. But it appears he has lost the track and is more concerned with the petty issues. He was supposed to lunch the second phase of Bharat Jodo Yatra from north east to Gujarat. But it does not appear that will ever be organised. UP JpdoYatra cannot be a substitute for BJY.
Maharashtra party leaders had been urging the national leadership to focus on the state, especially on Vidarbha where the electoral prospects are still brighter for the party. Obviously the leadership could not ignore this. Otherwise too after Uttar Pradesh which has 80 Lok Sabha seats, Maharashtra is the second state which has 48 Lok Sabha seats. After its drubbing in MP, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan the party is pinning its hope on Maharashtra for its resurrection and also putting a decisive challenge to RSS and Modi.
Rahul and Kharge must realise that simply engaging RSS in ideological battle is not enough, it must appear to be acquiring a shape. With the Lok Sabha polls barely three months away the Maharashtra unit of Congress is without an effective in-charge from the AICC. As the in-charge HK Patil is now a minister in the Karnataka government, he is not getting time to monitor the Maharashtra organisational activities. As a result ,the state unit is functioning without any supervision from the Centre.
Nevertheless Kharge must ensure that the celebration does not turn out to be mere ritual; paying tributes and homages. It is noticed that the BJP leaders in a systematic and synchronised manner have been attacking Nehruvian economy and have also been distorting the historical facts to depict him as the villain and destroyer of India. But no effort was ever made by the party to put the facts straight and counter their vilification design. Only some individuals like RJD MP Manoj Jha or some youtubers tried to place the true facts and tried to expose the vile propaganda of saffron political ecosystem.
Rallies are essential to enrich the supporters and sympathisers, but it is also imperative to feed them the correct perspective of the political developments so that they are not misled by the rightist ecosystem. Modi claims to trounce the Congress especially in Hindi heartland. The Congress must tighten its belt. Notwithstanding Modi’s claim, the fact remains that BJP is vulnerable in eastern and north Indian states and the Congress along with INDIA must decisively strike though RSS has taken command of the region. This would be befitting reply to RSS electoral hegemony. (IPA Service)
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