Since Shruti Kapila is the stupidest commentator on Indian politics that I know of, I always read her articles in Press.in with interest. If she says 'x is the case', you can be certain that 'not x' obtains.
Her headline is-
Kharge over Tharoor—Congress returns to caste politics without the cynicism of Mandal
Congress had cynical formulae like 'Brahmin-Muslim-Dalit' in UP or 'KHAM'- (Kshatriya, Harijan, Adivasi, Muslim)- in Gujarat. It was VP Singh who 'Mandalized' politics thus confirming the rise and rise of 'Backward Castes'.
Sonia was backing Gehlot- from the 'Mali' OBC community- and that was a good choice. Malis have traditionally introduced new crops or farming practices and thus are respected by all. Moreover, Gehlot was a successful Chief Minister and thus a good rival to Modi whom, hopefully, other opposition parties could unite around. The mistake was to force Gehlot to resign. He should have been left in office so that the voters could clearly see that a genuine choice was being offered to them. If Gehlot had quit as CM people outside Rajasthan would have assumed he was useless. Sonia had gotten rid of him so as to promote Sachin Pilot who most people credit for the 2019 victory. Rajasthan is prone to anti-incumbency in any case so Gehlot might have been kept on side if his son was looked after. Kharge and Maken were supposed to seal the deal but both turned out to be utterly clueless. Kharge had missed out on being CM of Karnataka and had lost his seat in the last election. As a punishment for failing to get Gehlot, he himself was made President so as to take the blame for up-coming debacles for Congress. Kharge is smart, but he is 80. Still maybe Congress will win Himachal while Kejriwal might fall flat on his face in Gujarat. But this won't change the fact that what Kharge is famous for is not being Dalit but being super corrupt. He is charged with having acquired wealth to the tune of half a billion dollars! He certainly owes the dynasty something and, at 80, he may as well sacrifice himself.
Rahul Gandhi is charting a path that diverges from the Congress’ erstwhile matriarchs.
That's certainly true. Rahul's path is out of politics.
But it would be a lost opportunity if this remains at the level of symbolic tokenism.
Very true. Congress must find even more corrupt octogenarians to lead it. One Kharge is not enough. It is mere tokenism.
The election for the post of Congress president has had a surreal effect.
Nope. It was dull and predictable. Tharoor looked a bit of a fool but if he quits the Party as he quit the UN then nobody can say he didn't try to reform it from within.
If you only followed India’s English social media or print and TV news, you would be left with the distinct impression that Shashi Tharoor was both messiah and martyr of his own party.
No. You got the impression that this guy is going to jump ship.
To be sure, Tharoor styled himself as a reformer and professional politician akin to his western counterparts. This did not come across as cosplay but was true to his celebrity forged on the back of books, speaker fixtures, an international career and as a workaday successful constituency MP. And for a certain kind of Indian, this is IT! How come with that trajectory Tharoor could be denied the top party job?
Because he is in the wrong party. In 1989 he published a very long book in which he equated Congress with the Kauravas- the bad guys in the ancient Indian Epic titled 'The Mahabharata'. Manmohan backed him for the top job at the UN (which was never on the cards) so as to recruit him as a pro-American Foreign Policy expert who could take on the IFS and the national security establishment's hatred of Uncle Sam.
Pitched as he was against the now clear winner and a man five years older than independent India at 80, Mallikarjun Kharge by contrast has cut his political teeth in labour movements, forging several provincial election victories, and above all is a Dalit, who has overcome steep historic barriers to emerge on top.
And half a billion dollars richer according to newspaper reports.
Kharge is also a consummate party man adept at manoeuvring Congress factions and structures.
But he couldn't rope in Gehlot. He is being punished for failure.
His life also proves the cliché wrong that all political careers end only in failure.
Because Kharge is going to pilot Congress to victory in 2024- right? He himself will become Prime Minister.
Personality aside, the contest has in effect represented the diversity of India.
Both candidates are Southerners. Shruti is a cretin.
That both men are from the south of the Vindhyas indicates that the Congress fightback will upturn the northern fixation of national electoral politics.
Because 80 percent of the population lives there.
The contest also underscored that no two social groups are the same and it is the contest between social groups that has made Indian democracy the most competitive in the world.
Plenty of social groups are the same in India. That's why jatis can be ascribed to Varnas or, more recently, classed as 'Forward' or 'Backward' or Dalit or Adivasi.
Language as class and the power of caste, to my mind, have defined the differences between Tharoor and Kharge while the figure of Rahul Gandhi loomed large over the contest.
Kharge is a lawyer who is much much richer than Tharoor who never had the opportunity to enrich himself by being a 'labor leader' or MLA or a minister in a State Government.
Kharge was voted in strongly but the English mediascape has been awash with conspiracy, name calling and intrigue with attempts to even malign the election process that, by most accounts, seems to have been pioneering for Indian politics.
Tharoor did make a couple of complaints. He has cleared the decks for his own jumping ship. It remains to be seen whether the Janata Parivar will want to accommodate him. Perhaps Vijayan will recruit him. Tharoor would be an excellent brand Ambassador for Kerala, bringing in plenty of f.d.i.
From the days of its earliest foundations, the Congress has attracted India’s English-speaking elite and until M.K. Gandhi, English was the membership ticket to the party.
Elite English speakers in India were British, not Indian. Lawyers are not an elite. They are merely lawyers. The Indian elite, at that time were Maharajas, Nawabs, Taluqdars. or- like the Aga Khan- the hereditary leader of a religious sect
As the language of power, a century later, English now no longer commands rule.
In which case it isn't the language of power. Shruti does not read over what she writes.
Yet, and precisely because Indian English media houses are wilfully caste-blind — arguably to protect their caste privilege — Tharoor as their favoured candidate was projected with powers to swing the floater voter and represent the aspirational.
Indian media houses either have money privilege or they go extinct. Caste privilege is irrelevant. If you have a caste it means you are of Indian ancestry and thus the descendant of people who were shit at defending or ruling themselves. It is one thing to be descended from slaves kidnapped from their own country or continent. It is another to come from a very populous place which preferred the rule of foreigners because they were less rapacious.
Kharge was dismissed as not just old but not even the holder of his own views.
His view is that he and his family should be very rich. It is a perfectly sensible view. Why go into politics if you want to just be middle class?
In a hypocritical blind spot, many of the same outlets had loudly discussed the role of race in Rishi Sunak’s recent failure to get Britain’s top job.
Shruti published this on the very day Sunak became PM.
Irony has long been dead
says a cretin who thinks become PM of the UK is just as important as becoming President of an Indian political party in terminal decline.
but this total and brazen lack of self-reflection
If Kapila were capable of self-reflection she would top herself.
only denudes the power of political commentary.
This shite is 'political commentary'? Oh, the irony!
So much for analysis as caricature.
Nothing wrong with caricature. An 80 year old who has amassed 500 million dollars worth of disproportionate assets. He failed to rope in a CM for President and so had to take the job as punishment.
To the extent that the media can influence the drift and direction of political narratives and fortunes, Kharge’s victory has served to reconfirm bias.
What bias? Kapila won't tell us.
Tharoor’s greatest asset is indeed his media savviness and to his credit, he aces that.
If a x is the asset of y, then y is good at x. But in this case, Tharoor didn't ace shit. If he doesn't jump ship soon he will be remembered as a fool.
Crucially and since the rise of Narendra Modi, it is entirely unclear whether traditional opinion-making machinery of the Fourth Estate holds any significant power.
The thing never had any power whatsoever.
It is fair to say that in choosing Kharge, which also effectively gives English media the short shrift, the Congress party is only playing catch up with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
How? By putting an 80 year old who lost his election in charge? That's not 'catch up'. It is suicide.
Sadly, since I do enjoy the press (and even write for it), it looks like the press was the bigger loser once again.
Kapila is the biggest loser Print.in could find to write for it. Since she is a Professor at Oxford, Indians are afforded a hearty laugh.
As it stands, the English press will continue having to contend with little to no access to the ruling party while now gaining the disdain of the grand old party as well and diminishing its own credibility and power in the process. This cannot be good news for India’s multi-party democracy let alone its English media.
Congress is dying. That's not exactly news, but it is entertainment. That's all we can expect from the second oldest profession. The question is whether Rahul can feed our schadenfreude much beyond 2024. Once he's out of Parliament, the story dies.
In Kharge’s victory, the Congress instead seeks to project the power of caste.
How? Gehlot was their choice. But he preferred to stay CM so, at the last minute, they had to put in Kharge because at least he almost became a CM and remained in the Lok Sabha till 2019. The alternative was Maken, who lost his seat in Delhi in 2014.
In a highly competitive electoral context, the BJP has leveraged and instrumentalised the caste matrix to its own advantage.
No. It has leveraged Hindutva- which is anti-caste- and has instrumentalized fear and hatred of Muslims to achieve cross-caste 'Hindu consolidation'.
Though Charanjit Singh Channi as the Dalit face of the Punjab campaign did not win votes for the Congress, the party seems to be manoeuvring itself towards this significant, historically oppressed and currently under-represented social group.
Kharge belongs to the numerically smaller 'right hand' Dalit community. It is likely that the numerically larger 'left hand' Dalits will double down on the BJP.
It certainly offers an alternative optic from both the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)’s wilful neglect of caste
which makes sense for an urban party which is bound to grow with urbanization
and the BJP’s assertive identity politics. If, however, this remains only at the level of symbolic tokenism, then this would be a lost opportunity for the Congress.
They should find and appoint to the Congress Working Committee ninety year old Dalits who also suffer from various types of disability and belong to the LGBTQ community.
Undeniably, the resetting of a new politics of caste, in the age of high Hindu nationalism, offers a new political opening.
Kharge represents the 'creamy layer' Dalit lawyer politician. The BJP is targeting 'Mahadalits'- e.g. 'left hand' Dalits in Karnataka. Will they succeed? Not necessarily. But the mother tongue issue helps them.
As the basic structure of Indian society, caste has long been the prison house of Indian democracy.
No. Indian democracy has broken that prison. Niyogi Brahmins, Kayasthas, Khattris etc. have been displaced. Even Ashraf Muslims are in danger of losing the support of Pasmandas.
Now, it deserves and demands a new imagination and politics beyond the symbolic and instrumental counting of caste heads for electoral equations.
That imagination existed long ago. This woman is from the Punjab. Has she never heard of Kanshi Ram?
In short, a new caste politics
there is none. Most people my age consider Karpoori Thakur's becoming CM of Bihar in 1970 as the dawn of the type of caste politics we still have with us. The BJP can do 'Hindu consolidation' but has to keep the caste equation in mind. Let us see whether Kejriwal and Prashant Kishor (assuming he sets up a party of his own) can get rid of it altogether. Ultimately, BJP has a responsibility to the Hindu religion to get rid of casteism and regionalism. That consideration must take precedence over maximising economic growth.
cannot now just mimic the toxic mix of cynicism and fake socialism that defined Mandal politics of an earlier era.
Mandal politics could mean getting rid of good governance so as to have OBC governance. But Gandhian and Nehruvian politics was about the same thing. India became relatively poorer and weaker after Independence. That was cool coz brown peeps got into move into the nice mansions the Brits had built themselves.
That would be neither effective nor inspiring!
I like that jaunty exclamation mark.
Finally, the new president is a return to history.
Nonsense! Kesri was krap. Kharge is smart. Still, he is 80 and has made lots of money. He must accept his punishment for failing to get Gehlot to pick up the poisoned chalice that is Presidency of Congress.
In turning to Kharge amid its mass contact programme of the Bharat Jodo Yatra, the Congress has returned to an older division of political labour.
No. In the olden days, Congress actually held power. The PM ran the country while someone else ran the Party. Now Congress spends its time trying to sabotage such CMs as it retains. It has no power to harm Modi but can harm its own stalwarts.
Historically, political leadership and party presidency have been distinct.
But, historically, Congress was always the largest single party. Then, it became obvious, Rahul was stupid, lazy, and shit at politics. More surprisingly, so was Priyanka. Dynastic parties collapse when the dynasty degenerates into outright imbecility.
This has been since the age of Gandhi
who did manage to delay the departure of the Brits by a decade or two by uniting all non-High Caste Hindus against the INC
through to Nehru
who turned India into a starving shithole unable to defend itself against not just China but even Pakistan. Had he lived, he'd have handed over Kashmir to Ayub and tried to do the same to Assam. Why? He, like the Mahatma, genuinely believed Hindus were shit. After all, it was Hindus who'd made him PM- right? Since Nehru had realised he was shit, he drew the obvious conclusion- Hindus should surrender territory to all and sundry.
and even in the more recent UPA era when party and government were helmed by two different figures, whether in friction or in harmony.
Sonia was a surrogate for her son. With hindsight, she should have forced him to take a job in the Cabinet in 2004 when he had turned 34- the age Pakistan's Foreign Minister, Bilawal Bhutto is now. It was strange that an Italian lady in poor health was having to be the Regent for a Cambridge MPhil approaching 40. Equally strange was Manmohan's position. He was a technocrat without any political skills. He could have been Finance Minister while sitting in the Upper House. The PM should be in the lower house and have experience in fighting elections.
Though she has cast a strong shadow, Indira Gandhi was an aberration in that long history, holding as she did the party and political leadership while also being head of government.
Not really. Nehru had made himself the master of his party quite quickly. He had used Kamaraj to get rid of his rivals in Cabinet. But Kamaraj ended up splitting the party and losing his own State for Congress. What was different about Indira is that she succeeded in making her party openly dynastic. But Rahul could have become a Minister at 34 and PM at 40. At the very least he could have taken charge of the Commonwealth games as his father had taken charge of the Asian games. Congress's problem is that it had no PM candidate and then it turned one even its own sitting CMs.
Dynastic political power deserves its own column, but suffice to say that it is blindingly obvious that Rahul Gandhi is charting a path that diverges from the Congress’ erstwhile matriarchs.
He is walking out of Indian political history. The pity of it is that he will remain the public face of the party- i.e. people will think it represents a useless cretin who will neither work nor let anyone else work.
In holding a party presidential election at the same time as its mass contact programme, the Congress party seems to have come out of its long complacent chapter.
It could have done so by signaling that Gehlot was its PM candidate. The other opposition parties might have decided to get behind him and thus Modi would have had a credible rival in 2024.
Since at least 2012, the party has been stymied not only by stunning defeats but, crucially, also by the loss of political language.
Political language is of the form 'we've got a great PM candidate. Vote for us.'
For now, it is increasingly clear the Congress is seeking its political future by reorienting the region and society to undermine the hegemony of Hindu nationalism.
Which is crazy in a country which is 82 percent Hindu and where only non-Hindus harbor secessionist sentiments.
Its calls for unity and harmony counter the dominant political sentiments of hostile anger of our age.
It spits bile at Modi and the RSS. But both have won admiration from an ever increasing proportion of the population.
In this moment, the Congress may have found its utterance, however faltering but anew, and even an initial confidence in its party structures.
Congress can't keep talking of ideology when even the Communists are speaking in a pragmatic manner. Either it provides a credible alternative to Modi or else it needs to play second fiddle to the candidate of the Janata parivar.
It is the right step and in the right direction but the path to political power still needs to be lit by a grand and captivating vision.
What is that vision? Who does Congress want to replace Modi with? We don't know. All we know is that Kharge will have to take the blame for further electoral losses. To be fair, unseating Modi in 2024 may simply not be possible. The question is whether Congress will survive to the end of the decade. Rahul is not 52. He has never held any Ministerial appointment. Kejriwal is 54. He only set up his party ten years ago. He has routed Congress in Delhi and Punjab. As India urbanizes, he stands to win the most. His persona is that of the 'common man' in the Cities, not the Villages. People can increasingly relate to him. Does he have an ideology? Who knows? Who cares? He is a smart chap and he promises to make the lives of his voters better in very practical ways. That's all that seems to matter.
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