With the Congress floundering visibly, therefore, the smaller regional parties are evidently making their own calculations about the viability of opposing the BJP, and many are joining the bandwagon.Even though scrapping the special status of Kashmir has long been an important feature of the BJP’s core ideological agenda, the Narendra Modi government took everyone by surprise with its move to render Article 370 ineffective and bifurcate J&K into two Union Territories. Everyone seemed caught off guard and outmanoeuvred. But none more so than the Opposition, especially the Congress. It has seemed stunned and slow to react. And then it has spoken in different voices, with many of its prominent younger leaders like Jyotiraditya Scindia, Deepender Hooda and Milind Deora publicly backing the government, saying that the revocation of Article 370 is the national interest, even as seniors like Ghulam Nabi Azad accuse those who support it of being ignorant of history. Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, who led its charge in Lok Sabha did it with spectacular ineptness and its chief whip in Rajya Sabha, Bhubaneswar Kalita, has resigned over the party’s stand on the issue. But the question, really — and given that it is the leading party of the Opposition, scandalously — is: Just what is the Congress’s position on the reading down of Article 370? The CWC resolution, which blames the manner more than the move itself, only mirrors the Congress fumbling, sharpens the edge of the question.
It is true that the government has struck at a particularly inopportune moment for the Congress, when it is already discomfited. Rahul Gandhi had stepped down as president after the party’s embarrassing showing in the Lok Sabha elections, and the aftermath of his decision has exposed a reality hidden in plain sight: Remove the Gandhi at the helm, and you have a party that has forsaken all structures and processes, one that has no mechanisms of survival and movement left. A party, in other words, that finds it difficult to go on. This failure to preserve and nurture a sense of institutional self, this excessive dependence on its ruling family, is a tragic denouement for the grand old party that, at one time, offered the most vivacious and spacious of political platforms and helped win a nation its freedom. For that party to look so hollowed out today, for it to seem so unsure of itself and spooked by its political opponent, is a sad sight.
In its lowest point today, as in its erstwhile highs, the Congress predicament speaks of larger things. Today, its deshabille points to the fragmentation of the Opposition to the BJP. Despite its steep fall, it remains the salient if not primary pole in the non-BJP space. With the Congress floundering visibly, therefore, the smaller regional parties are evidently making their own calculations about the viability of opposing the BJP, and many are joining the bandwagon. The inability of the Opposition to hold its ground is bad news for a democracy that prides itself for its argumentative spirit, and its checks and balances, especially at a time when they will be needed to handle the fallout of the Centre’s move in Kashmir.
