In a way, Congress’ crisis is part of a global pattern of liberal and social democratic parties being overtaken by the radical Left.
With the Navjot Singh Sidhu-Amarinder Singh dispute hogging the news headlines, an important development within the Congress has not received as much attention as it should have: the grand old party’s leftward turn. Speculation about Communist Party of India activist and ex-JNU president Kanhaiya Kumar and another Left-leaning politician Jignesh Mevani joining the Congress underlines this trend.
If the two get inducted in the GOP, it would be a case of symbiosis, not political opportunism. For the party, under the Nehru-Gandhi family, has been steadily moving towards the left of the ideological spectrum. The family ensured that the privatization process, begun by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, got scuttled during 2004-14. Not that the Narendra Modi regime has been able to restart it, but it is at least trying, under the new name of National Monetization Programme (NMP). To be sure, the Congress is opposing that too.
While the Leftists influenced policy when the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance was in office through the instrumentality of the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council, they are now joining the GOP in droves.
Sandeep Singh, who is reportedly close to Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, was a radical student leader at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. Another Congress leader from UP, Mohit Pandey, also has a similar background. A few weeks ago, the expelled Congress leader, Konark Dixit, accused UP Congress chief Ajay Kumar Lallu of being a Leftist.
Then there are older Left student leaders. For instance, Shakil Ahmed Khan, another former JNU student union president, joined the party in 1998.
The increasing influx of pinkish leaders is not just further fossilizing the GOP’s stance on economic policy but also adversely affecting its electoral fortunes. Nothing else explains the party leadership’s preference for Navjot Sidhu over Amarinder Singh.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has often accused the Congress of being soft on Pakistan. Yet, Sidhu was the first Indian politician to attend Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s oath-taking ceremony. This despite the fact that at that time he was a cabinet minister in Punjab. Worse, he went on to hug the Pakistan Army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa.
The BJP capitalized on these blunders; it is still doing that. But neither Sidhu has mended his ways nor the GOP high command has shown any displeasure over his actions that invariably show the party in a bad light. Sidhu’s advisers made anti-national remarks; again there were no consequences for him. In fact, it looks like he has been rewarded, for his bête noire, Amarinder Singh, has been eased out of the party.
In a way, the Congress’ crisis is part of a global pattern—of liberal and social democratic parties being overtaken by the radical Left. The Democratic Party in the United States, Labour in the UK, liberal parties in Europe—all of them are moving leftward.
And the Left is calling the shots. Especially in the US, as President Joe Biden suffers from serious problems. As his predecessor Donald Trump said, “Biden doesn’t know he is alive.” Biden forgets names and places, mumbles and fumbles while talking. Unsurprisingly, he can’t act properly; the messy withdrawal from Afghanistan underlines this fact.
Biden won the Democratic nomination primarily because he was seen as more mainstream and thus acceptable than the notorious socialist Bernie Sanders. The pathologically anti-Trump media overlooked Biden’s unremarkable past, the racist remarks he made earlier in his career, his cognitive issues, and of course his son Hunter’s shady dealings.
Biden, however, has proved to be a boon for his Leftist handlers. He even gets instructions from them as to which reporters he should interact with at press conferences. That the radical Left is calling the shots is evident from policy reversals the US has seen since his ascension: illegal immigrants, who were checked by the Trump administration, are infesting the southern borders; prices, especially of fuel, are up; crime rates are soaring, thanks to the egregious “defund-the-police” movement; after the Kabul exit fiasco, America’s enemies are emboldened and friends like the UK furious with Washington.
The predicament of Labour is no different. The party “continues to clean up the mess left by Jeremy Corbyn, the left-wing perma-protester who led the party from 2015 to 2020. Corbyn lost one general election (in 2017) by a surprisingly small margin, and another (in 2019) by an enormous one. Under his leadership, anti-Semitism flourished. Corbyn himself was suspended from the party last year for claiming that anti-Semitism had been ‘dramatically overstated for political reasons’.”
Labour leader and former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair recently wrote, “Political parties have no divine right to exist and progressive parties of the centre and centre-left are facing marginalization, even extinction, across the Western world.”
The Congress needs to accept this truth. Just because Leftist ideas helped it remain in power for over half a century doesn’t mean that it would be the same in future.
Ravi Shanker Kapoor is a freelance journalist.