#dnaEdit: Lowly loyalty test

Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi might not have asked for it, but Adhir Chowdhury got the 44 newly-elected members of the West Bengal Legislative Assembly to sign the pledge of loyalty to the mother-son duo on a Rs100 judicial stamp paper. The pledge also said that members would not indulge in anti-party activity and criticise the party leadership’s decisions. Apart from the fact that the party opens itself to being lampooned for its servility and its shameful durbar politics, it also opens up debate about the internal state of the party. It appears that the party leadership is suspicious that its members would be tempted to leave the party now that they have won the election. It is indeed a symptom of acute paranoia if nothing else. 

It should not come as a surprise that in the face of backlash, the party would deny the whole episode. It is quite unlikely because it is an acknowledged fact in the Congress that loyalty to the Gandhis is a prerequisite for remaining in the party as well as for upward mobility, including getting a ticket to contest. It has been a matter of debate whether Sonia and Rahul, and before them Indira and Rajiv, had demanded loyalty from their party colleagues. One of the arguments given in defence of the family is that it is the courtiers around them who always raise this bogey of loyalty, and that it has nothing to do with the family members. Unfortunately, it does not wash because at no time did Indira or Rajiv, Sonia or Rahul, declare publicly that remaining loyal to Congress is quite different from remaining loyal to them. 

It is a given fact that there is no avoiding personal loyalists. When a team is built around the leader, mutual trust develops between the team leader and the team members. It follows that team members are duly rewarded in direct and indirect ways. But a large organisation is never confined to a small team around the leader, and it is not necessary for those in the organisation to develop this sense of personal loyalty. It also follows that those who are not loyalists are not discriminated against. Owing allegiance to the Gandhis has become almost a litmus test for the Congress folk. It has been rationalised that the Gandhis stand for the ideals of the party, which is some kind of a vague socialism, secularism et al, and those who believe in those ideals also believe in the Gandhis. This is of course pure sophistry, and Congress has lived with this from at least the 1970s onward, sometimes unabashedly and at other times sheepishly.

Critics had been hammering home the point from the 1970s onwards that what is weakening the party in the country is this shameful cultic practice. But Congress leaders would quite often deny that there is anything like a dynasty in the party, and that the Gandhi are the democratically chosen leaders in the organisation as well as in the country. 

It seems the mask is falling off, and the latest news from Kolkata affirms that the family is the true north in the party and to remain true to the party, members have to remain true to the family. The practice of declaring loyalty to Sonia and Rahul will not work as a talisman for the party in the face of electoral defeat.