“India has bled. We have paid a heavy price. We have been restrained in our responses. It was time that there was retaliation, but it was measured and calibrated,” Congress leader Anand Sharma said recently about India’s global outreach on Operation Sindoor. In saying that, the former Minister of State (MoS) for External Affairs was the latest to break ranks with the official Congress line, which has chosen to criticise the outreach as a “diversionary tactic”. This was significant, given that Sharma was among the original names furnished by the Congress – and the only one to be co-opted – in the official delegation.Coming after the public defiance of the Congress party by leaders such as Shashi Tharoor and Manish Tewari, who are part of the delegations themselves, it reflected the divergence between these leaders and the party’s official stance, represented by Leader of Opposition (LoP) Rahul Gandhi. Even as the Congress backed the government wholeheartedly when India’s strikes on Pakistan were on, it struck a discordant note following the ceasefire announcement, going as far as labelling External Affairs Minister S.
Jaishankar a ‘mukhbir’, meaning ‘informer’.The dissonance in the grand old party lays bare a larger ideological tug-of-war playing out between the increasingly Leftist posturing adopted by the party under Rahul Gandhi, and the contrarian position represented by Tharoor, Tewari and Anand Sharma. Even someone such as P Chidambaram has adopted a position similar to the trio’s in the wake of Operation Sindoor, diverging from his own United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government’s approach of strategic restraint that was exercised in the aftermath of the ghastly terrorist attacks in Mumbai in 2008. In fact, something from the 2019 Balakot strikes comes to mind: in the aftermath of that attack, Rahul’s close associate, Sam Pitroda, had boldly stated, “Attacks happen all the time. We could have reacted by sending our planes following the 2008 Mumbai attack, but that is not the right approach. Eight people come and do something – you don’t jump on the entire nation [Pakistan].”
Today, the contrasting positions taken by Rahul and team and dyed-in-the-wool Nehruvians such as Tharoor, Tewari and Sharma on Operation Sindoor are essentially an extension of the rebellion the G-23 group of leaders had waged in 2020, calling for introspection and collective decision-making. That Tharoor, Tewari and Sharma were also a part of that team is no coincidence.We are the G-23, but definitely not Ji huzoor [yes-men] 23”, Kapil Sibal had famously declared at a press conference five years ago, before his outbursts eventually led him to chart an independent course. Sibal was referring to the increasing democratic deficit in the Congress, with the coterie surrounding Rahul Gandhi influencing policy decisions and yes-men such as KC Venugopal blindly implementing them.
The Congress has always been a liberal party with a big-tent approach, where its leaders constituted an ideological spectrum from the Left to the Centre-right. Of late, however, the party has taken a distinct Left turn, though whether that’s out of electoral pressures or a deeper ideological shift is another debate. In fact, Rahul had himself once claimed that the 1991 reforms ran its course by 2012. Regardless, the leftward tilt only seems to have eroded the middle-class base of the Congress over successive elections.
The radical turn could also be a reflection of the gradual withering of Left parties in India, with the larger Left ecosystem being on the lookout for a platform to articulate their politics, hijacking the Congress.
It is well-known how Rahul is close to many Left-leaning intellectuals in Delhi. Congress has also seen an influx of young Left leaders in recent times. Beyond Kanhaiya Kumar, they include Rahul’s close aide Sandeep Singh, Shahnawaz Alam, Sudhanshu Bajpayee, Raghunandan Yadav, Sarita Patel – all formerly associated with the All India Students Association (AISA), the student wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist). Rahul’s bromance with the late Sitaram Yechury, the general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), was also legendary.
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