How Congress ceded Gandhi

It showed no political creativity, leaving the field open for BJP

Mahatma Gandhi is the father of the nation. And as the father of the nation, every Indian has a right over him. Every Indian has a right to celebrate him, revere him, even critique him. In national imagination, he transcends political affiliations, regional boundaries, religious divides and caste barriers. But, at the same time, Gandhi was, in his time, a political figure. And the political formation he was most closely associated with, which he was a member of, and which he led formally as president and informally as the moral leader, was the Indian National Congress (INC). The Congress of today is distinct from the INC of the freedom struggle. But the party, because of its past, has been in the best position to leverage its association with Gandhi. Indeed, for much of independent India’s history, it was the Congress which was at the forefront of celebrating Gandhi’s life and contribution.

But as the nation marked 150 years of Gandhi’s birth anniversary this week, a difference was palpable. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by Narendra Modi, made Gandhi Jayanti a landmark event in its own political messaging. Mr Modi’s effort to revive Gandhi’s memory has been in the works for some time now. From launching Swachh Bharat on October 2 five years ago to getting singers from 184 countries to sing Gandhi’s favourite

bhajan, from referring to Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary repeatedly in his speeches and writing a piece in the New York

Times to mobilising his party machinery to be on the ground to mark the occasion, Mr Modi made the event his own. The embrace of Gandhi is also striking for it is known that in the past, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh — the BJP’s ideological parent — has been critical of Gandhi’s views and politics.

To be sure, Mr Modi leads the government and the government celebrated Gandhi. But what is striking is the manner in which the Congress has let go of the occasion. A tweet by Rahul Gandhi, a speech by Sonia Gandhi, a padyatra by Priyanka Gandhi, a working committee meeting at Sewagram earlier this year were all important. But in terms of mobilisation, events, literature, of memorialising Gandhi and his ideals, the Congress displayed a remarkable absence of political creativity for a moment as significant as this. If it is now concerned that its political opponents, who did not share Gandhi’s worldview when he was alive, have now appropriated him, the Congress must introspect on its own failure.