The many rebellions of Congress leaders
PERSONALLY REMAINING INCOMMUNICADO, SACHIN PILOT’S WAS A PROXY MEDIA OFFENSIVE AGAINST CHIEF MINISTER ASHOK GEHLOT’S ‘EXCESSES’ TO MARGINALISE HIS FACTION
The Janata Dal that formed the government in 1989 under Singh was founded a year earlier.
Besides him, the trinity that unraveled the legislatively formidable Rajiv dispensation included the latter’s ambitious cousin, Arun Nehru and Arif Mohammad Khan, who fell out with him when the government gave in to the hardline lobby in the Shah Bano case.
From the memoirs of Giani Zail Singh and PC Alexander, it is evident that Arun Nehru engineered Pranab Mukherjee’s ouster from Rajiv’s inner circle after the 1984 elections in the wake of Indira’s assassination. That saw Mukherjee forming his own party-- before merging it with the Congress in 1989. In Rajiv’s own words, the reconciliation happened when he realised that many things told to him about his mother’s trusted men, such as Mukherjee and RK Dhawan, were untrue.
The episode could be a lesson for the incumbent high command on the risks of being misled by those they trust.
Like Mukherjee, who rose to be India’s President, other Congress biggies who formed their own parties but later returned to the Congress were former Kerala CMS K Karunakaran and AK Antony. An ace party hand, GK Moopanar floated his Tamil Mannila Congress in the 1990s. But for the DMK’S opposition, he could’ve been the PM of the United Front government in 1996.
Another Indira loyalist, VC Shukla’s homecoming happened in 2004 after stints in Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party and the BJP. He also served as a minister under VP Singh and Chandra Shekhar.
The restlessness of talented people in the Congress today is largely the work of its fixation with the Nehru-gandhi name, which has undoubtedly kept it from falling apart, besides fetching it power on Sonia Gandhi’s watch from 2004 to 2014.
But in the absence of the glue of power, even that utilitarian value of the “first family” came unstuck with a string of debilitating defections: Hemata Biswa Sarma, Jaganmohan Reddy and Jyotiradtiya Scindia, to name a few (and whose decisions to part ways has seriously dented the party).
That brings Pilot back into the narrative. In his early forties, he hasn’t left the Congress and seems to have returned to the fold after keeping the party on the tenterhooks for weeks.
Perhaps Pilot’s terms of entente were unrealistic. After all, a CM with majority support in the legislature could not be removed at his asking. He needed to agree to a middle ground. And seems to have.