A RACE FOR THE PRESIDENCY
There’s been no official declaration yet, but most Congress leaders, off the record, confirm that there will be at least two candidates for the party’s presidential poll scheduled for October 17—Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot (purportedly backed by the Gandhi family) and Shashi Tharoor, the Lok Sabha MP from Thiruvananthapuram. Of course, as with anything connected to the Congress, the two will enter the fray only if ex-party president Rahul Gandhi sticks to his adamant stand that he will not take up the post.
If sources are to be believed, a few other senior leaders are also toying with the idea of contesting. The names being bandied about include former Haryana CM B.S. Hooda, ex-Union ministers Anand Sharma and Manish Tewari, and ex-Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah. Incidentally, Hooda, Sharma and Tewari belong to the rebel group of 23 (G23) leaders who had written to party president Sonia Gandhi in August 2020 seeking organisational reforms and an accountable and accessible leadership.
Rahul’s close confidants keep insisting the Gandhi scion will not lay claims to the post, which he quit in 2019 after the disastrous Lok Sabha election performance. His critics say the Gandhi family wants to run the party by proxy, avoiding responsibility for the party’s electoral debacles. That’s the reason,
they point out, Sonia has requested family loyalist Gehlot to run. “Only the name changes. The real power remains with the family,” says a CWC member.
Tharoor too was part of the G23 and a signatory to the ‘letter’, but has of late maintained a careful distance from the other members. The three-time MP has also never been publicly critical of the Gandhis (though the family loyalists seek to paint him as a rebel). On September 17, Tharoor met Sonia Gandhi to understand the family’s position—whether he would be seen as a rebel if he throws his hat in the ring. “Tharoor doesn’t do anything without homework. The meeting was part of it. He articulated a principled stand, and has the courage and conviction to put his neck on the line,” says a source close to him, adding that Sonia assured him that the Gandhis would remain neutral in the event of a poll.
In fact, a section in the Congress believes Tharoor has been inveigled into contesting to legitimise the Gandhi family’s preferred outcome—a loyalist (read Gehlot) getting the job through an election. The professed show of neutrality is to debunk the criticism of running the show by proxy. “Even if this is true, Tharoor should run as it is still a statement worth making,” says a senior Congress leader who did not wish to be named.
Meanwhile, the chosen one, Gehlot, is not so excited about the promotion, as he will lose the Rajasthan CM’s post. More importantly, he doesn’t want bête noire Sachin Pilot, his former deputy CM, to succeed him. Though there is no official confirmation, insiders claim that following his unsuccessful rebellion in 2020, the Gandhi siblings—Rahul and Priyanka—had promised Pilot the chief ministership a year before the state goes to polls in 2023. Gehlot, though, wants one of his loyalists to succeed him.
In a late-night meeting with party MLAs in Jaipur on September 20, Gehlot said he will “continue to take care of the affairs of Rajasthan” even if he is asked to contest the party president polls. A resolution to this impasse is expected during Gehlot’s meeting with Rahul in Kochi on September 22. The Gandhi scion is in Kerala leading the section of the Bharat Jodo Yatra there. Pilot also reached Kerala to walk alongside Rahul on September 17. Political observers feel the two Rajasthan leaders converging at this time in the southern state is crucial. “Rahul may find it easier to unite India than getting these two to patch up,” quips a Congress Rajya Sabha MP.
Many Congress leaders are already saying that Gehlot’s victory—if there is a contest—is a foregone conclusion. “The Congress electorate is steeped in sycophancy, and Gehlot is a Family-backed candidate. Besides, he is acceptable to most senior leaders,” says a CWC member. The Rajasthan CM is a career politician
who has spent five decades in the Congress. He has performed various organisational roles, served as minister in the Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and P.V. Narasimha Rao governments and has enjoyed the trust of generations of Gandhis. Gehlot is also a prominent leader from the north, where the party has performed abysmally in the previous two Lok Sabha polls. Adept in the art of realpolitik, he was instrumental in the party’s resurgent performance in the 2017 Gujarat assembly polls and is now again election in-charge in the state this year.
Gehlot is also an OBC leader, just like Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which may stand the party in good stead, as the OBC vote bank is considered a swing factor in any election. He also shares a warm equation with most Opposition leaders (indeed much more so than Rahul), which will be essential if the party is to build an alliance to challenge the BJP in 2024. Gehlot’s access to business leaders could also help solve the party’s funds crunch.
That said, his electoral record does not inspire confidence. As incumbent CM, he has never been able to lead the Congress to victory in Rajasthan. And in the past two Lok Sabha polls, the Congress drew a blank in the state. Most importantly, however, he is seen as part of the old guard, a symbol of the Congress inertia that has led to its decline. His elevation, critics say, is unlikely to enthuse either party workers or voters.
In contrast, Tharoor brings a whiff of freshness to the party, thanks to his professional accomplishments and popularity among the educated middle class. A career diplomat, who worked with the United Nations for nearly three decades, an acclaimed author and public intellectual, Tharoor made a lateral entry into the party in 2009, thanks to Sonia, and was made a Union minister straight away.
The suave and articulate Congressman has a great appeal among the aspirational middle class, which played a key role in the evolution of the BJP. Tharoor’s vibrant social media presence and massive following could also help the party build an alternative narrative in a domain where the BJP always has an edge over the Congress.
Where Tharoor falters is in his understanding of the party structure and support within. The veterans are unlikely to cooperate with him; even several G23 leaders are unwilling to accept him as president. Indeed, even leaders in his home state Kerala have come out and said they will not support him. Critics also cite his propensity to get into controversies, thanks to his public comments. But the biggest challenge is that he will be the rebel candidate against the one backed by the Gandhi family.
And that’s what makes it a battle of unequals. Anyway, whoever becomes the next Congress president will have a gargantuan mountain to climb. He or she must revive a moribund party organisation, build a poll-ready narrative and start winning elections. Very few will envy the winner in this. ■
Tharoor’s biggest challenge is that he will be the rebel candidate against the one backed by the Gandhi family
prospered and vice versa. Shah has broached the subject intermittently, but now he too had refined his line, speaking of “co-existence” and re-energising local languages along with Hindi, and claiming there was a ‘disinformation’ campaign to pit Hindi against languages such as Marathi and Tamil. But the remarks were seen as being in service of the old hierarchy—formalised in the idea of a ‘national language’. What Stalin found galling was Shah’s remark that people should learn Hindi to understand the soul of India’s culture and history. “This is an overt sign of dominance,” says Stalin, suggesting Hindi Divas be replaced by Indian Languages Day.
The ‘One Nation, One Language’ policy has few takers in the non-Hindi states, which remain wary of the ethos of cultural dominance lingering from pre1947 years. In the erstwhile Madras Presidency, ironically, learning Hindi was first made compulsory by C. Rajagopalachari in state public schools—and revoked by the British three years later, in 1940.
Today, Stalin says the Centre is desperate to impose Hindi and Sanskrit on other states via the New Educational Policy—and that if it truly cares about language equality, it should cease favouring Hindi/ Sanskrit. Funds allocation is the real test. Outlays for the promotion of Indian languages nearly halved in Union Budget 2022—from Rs 561.47 crore in 201920, it dipped to Rs 433 crore for two years, before plummeting to Rs 250 crore this time. Much of this goes as grants to the Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan and the Kendriya Hindi Sansthan. Other language institutions—such as those for the promotion of Urdu or Sindhi or studies in classical Tamil—are the ones that suffer because of this skew.
Except for Sanskrit, the five Indian languages designated as classical—Tamil,
Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Odia—see little government investment. The ‘classical’ category may valorise a few, but it does show the robustness of the linguistic spectrum outside Hindi/Sanskrit. A language can be designated as classical if there exists a ‘high antiquity’ of recorded history and an ancient literary corpus, deemed valuable and original, in a classical register distinct from the modern language. Tamil, for one, attests to a rich history that’s at least a millennium deeper than that of Hindi.
With historians and linguists highlighting how the Dravidian languages were spread across the Indian Union and beyond its frontiers many centuries before the birth of Hindi itself, these facts have a degree of popular recognition now. Thus, an emerging concern is the growing abhorrence to the ‘One Nation, One Language’ strategy among youth in non-Hindi states. They perceive it as language imperialism, and it bleeds into economic concerns as migrants from Hindi regions take up semi-skilled and skilled jobs in their states. Their demand for language equality is turning shrill, and is likely to remain till the Centre refines its stand.
In Karnataka, even a BJP government has to bow to this sentiment. In the ongoing session of the assembly, the state will see the Kannada Language Comprehensive Development Bill, fixing the state language as the medium of instruction in schools and colleges and creating job reservation for Kannadigas in the public and private sectors.
“No one can insist on imposing any other language in the state,” says chief minister Basavaraj Bommai. That’s why Aazhi Senthilnathan, Chennaibased federal and language rights activist, says: “What Stalin has raised is the voice of constitutional equality. It is the voice of leaders from most non-Hindi states.” ■
‘ONE NATION, ONE LANGUAGE’ HAS FEW TAKERS OUTSIDE CORE HINDI AREAS. TAMIL’S VETO NOW TOUCHES ALL
After me, the deluge? No, with Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren, that could well be recast as ‘After me, me’. The way he has been steel-plating himself through pitched battle, a phase that was to have felled him has actually seen Soren rise in stature as a political artist. From just another innocuous non-BJP CM, crisis has revealed him to be a nimble-footed, pugnacious opponent willing to redraw the rules— even controversially. On September 14, Soren’s cabinet pushed the ceiling of reservations in government jobs up to 77 per cent and set 1932 as the cutoff year to determine domicile status. A day later, he tweeted a video of his supporters cheering, ‘Jharkhand ka mukhyamantri kaisa ho, Hemant Soren jaisa ho.’ That may have seemed a bit strange to some. After all, that slogan is usually reserved for CM-wannabes. But those in the party who claim to read the CM’s lips say it has future connotations.
In other words, Soren is anticipating a formal setback, and preparing for a stronger return. To begin with, he is battling multiple legal challenges, including the prospect of disqualification from the assembly. The BJP, Soren’s main opponent, had petitioned Governor Ramesh Bais against him, saying a mining lease he owned violated the Representation of the People Act, 1951. Bais forwarded it to the Election Commission (EC), which sent its recommendation last month to the governor. Though Bais is yet to reveal the precise contents of the EC’s direction, Soren is widely believed to be living on borrowed time.
He evidently knows it too. That’s why he unilaterally called a kind of snap confidence motion on September 5: his JMM-Congress-RJD alliance duly bagged 48 votes in the 82-member assembly, including a nominated Anglo-Indian member. (The BJP has only 26 MLAs and its ally, AJSU Party, two.) Thus fortified, his rule legitimised in numerical terms on the floor of the House, Soren proceeded to his next step: that of securing a wider slice of popular support, so as to equip himself for the various what-if scenarios.
His September 14 decisions strike a rich lode of political ore, even if legally contentious. The 77 per cent reservation move, for instance, breaches the 50 per cent upper limit set by the Supreme Court. But its design is ingenious enough. While the Economically Weaker Section retains its 10 per cent quota in government jobs, those for Scheduled Tribes have been raised from 26 per cent to 28 per cent, for Scheduled Castes from 10 per cent to 12 per cent and, significantly, for OBCs from 14 per cent all the way up to 27 per cent.
The second decision is as eyecatching, and sure to set the terms of debate in a state carved out as a tribal homeland. Only those with 1932 khatiyan (proof of land document) will have domicile status and be eligible for reservation benefits. Those without land or their families named in the land records will have to get validation from their gram sabhas to obtain domicile. Implementation, thus, can get mired in a mess on the ground—that is, if it survives judicial scrutiny. When the state’s first CM, Babulal Marandi, attempted to set a 1932 cutoff for domicile back in 2002, the move died in the courts.
With this move, Soren has overturned the preceding BJP government’s 2016 decision that redefined ‘locals’ through an executive order, essentially setting 1985 as the cutoff year to determine domicile status. The then CM, Raghubar Das, was incidentally
THE CM’S TWIN DECISIONS ON SEPT. 14 ARE SEEN AS STEPS TO PREPARE FOR THE WHAT-IF SCENARIOS
Jharkhand’s first non-tribal head of government. But Soren knows implementing the two decisions will be easier said than done. That’s why his next move will be to shift the onus on the BJP. Once ratified in the assembly, the policies will be sent to the Centre with a request to include these in the Ninth Schedule to firewall them against judicial review (barring any violation of fundamental rights or the basic structure of the Constitution). If the Centre agrees, the Soren regime will gather credit. In case it rejects the moves or pussyfoots around them, the blame will go the other way. Both tribal groups—the state’s moolnivasis (original inhabitants), roughly 26.3 per cent of the population—and the OBCs will be watching. Soren, whose Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) already has a strong support base among the tribals, is making a play for a wider votebase: the OBCs range up to 46 per cent. It’s Jharkhand’s Mandal moment.
Soren has been on a please-all mission ever since it became clear he may be forced to craft a future anew. Earlier, he had revived the old pension scheme for government employees from September, which guarantees 50 per cent of the last drawn salary as pension (the new scheme is market-linked and, therefore, offers uncertain returns). Soren has also cleared proposals to give a month’s additional salary and 20 days’ compensatory paid leave to police personnel, and approved paid study leave for state administrative service officers. In another initiative, the field firing range in Netarhat was not renotified, in line with a longstanding demand of thousands of tribals in Latehar and Gumla districts.
Late last month, Soren was desperate to keep his flock together. Fearing a plot to wean away ruling alliance MLAs, on August 30, he moved 31 of them to Congress-ruled Chhattisgarh. But he shifted tack soon and brought the MLAs back to Ranchi for the confidence motion. This appears to have done wonders to his confidence too. Soren last week met the governor, asking him to clear the confusion over the EC’s word. Jharkhand has seen 11 CMs and three spells of President’s rule since its formation in November 2000. It may see a 12th one if Soren gets disqualified. But his eyes seem set on a larger clock. ■