Arati R Jerath
Political commentator
Rahul Gandhi has no fig leaves left to hide after the disappearance of Sonia Gandhi’s trusted lieutenant, Ahmed Patel. For years, he and his clique blamed the old guard represented by Patel for obstructing their efforts to create a new Congress to replace the rusty, creaky and decaying organization run by his mother.
Whether they were right or not is a matter of debate. But it gave Rahul a convenient excuse to shirk responsibility, disappear without warning, take a vacation in the middle of an election, challenge the party line with inconvenient tweets, and generally cultivate the air of a reluctant prince.
The time for all that is over. With Patel gone, Rahul can’t justify his non-performance for much longer. His moment of reckoning may well have come, finally.
There is widespread recognition in Congress that Patel’s disappearance marks the end of the Sonia era. The curtain has fallen on death with a purpose that Sonia has not achieved in her life, despite numerous attempts to withdraw and pass the leadership baton to Rahul.
Although it seems inconceivable that the death of a non-Gandhi proved to be a pivotal event in the history of a dynasty-driven party, Patel was not just any old congressional veteran. It occupied a unique space. In the years he worked as Sonia Gandhi’s political aide and chief problem solver, he became virtually synonymous with her. It was the face and voice of Sonia Gandhi inside and outside the party.
In many ways, Patel represented the quintessential ‘Sonia Congress’. Like her, he believed in the status quo and consensus, strove to make peace between warring factions, and chose caution over quick responses.
When Congress surprised itself and everyone else by winning the 2004 General Election, Patel became the mainstay of his first successful experiment in running a coalition government in the Center. Later, when the party lost power and Sonia started making noise about her retirement, she turned to him for help paving the way for a smooth transition. Then he became the bridge between the generations, doing his best to fulfill his boss’s wish to balance old with new, experience with youth, and most of all, keep the party together.
It’s no secret that Patel and Rahul had a tense and awkward relationship. Patel’s first loyalty was to Sonia and Rahul knew it. Like any other legatee waiting to take over the family business, he wanted his own team of loyalists, not some inherited from his mother.
However, despite efforts to marginalize Patel, Rahul soon realized his usefulness and importance. Patel was not a mass leader, and consequently had little to contribute to the electoral arena. But no one understood the congressional system better than he did. Patel was the only one who knew how to operate the levers that turned the wheels of the Grand Old Party. If Rahul needed a navigator to find his way through the complex maze that is Congress, Patel was his best guide.
In the end, Rahul agreed to make him party treasurer, but Patel was never really absorbed into the Gandhi Scion team. He continued to be seen as a representative of the ‘Sonia Congress’, someone who spoke on behalf of the matriarch and functioned as an interlocutor with the old guard.
In his last days, he had set himself the task of healing the internal rift in the party that erupted in public view at a stormy Labor Committee meeting in late August. A letter written by 23 leaders exposed the latent tensions between veterans of the ‘Sonia Congress’ and those attending the ‘Rahul Congress’ anxiously waiting behind the scenes to take charge. For the first time in many years, another division of Congress seemed to emerge as the old guard called for ‘collective leadership’ amid indications of a lack of confidence in the Rahul administration.
There is little doubt that Patel’s disappearance is a severe blow to the G-23 (as the dissident group became known). Many admit that without him as an interface, their communication link with Rahul and his clique has been severed. Sonia has neither the ability nor the health to play peacemaker. And it will be impossible to find another Ahmed Patel to do the job for her.
The stage is then set for the emergence of the “Rahul Congress.” Time will tell if he himself is in charge of directing it or if he appoints a delegate president through whom he can direct the party. Whatever decision you make, the clock has already started ticking for you to prove your worth, now that there are no obstacles to stop you.
There are three immediate challenges for Rahul. One is to keep the party together. Members of Sonia’s team feel like orphans without Patel and could end up scattering in different directions. While some have no electoral weight, others do. For example, Bhupinder Singh Hooda. He was about to resign before the 2019 general elections. It was Patel who convinced him to stay behind and reached a compromise whereby he was given a free hand to fight in the elections in Haryana. Hooda is one of the few congressional leaders left with a massive base of his own, and unless Rahul’s team gets close to him, he could go his own way. Captain Amarinder Singh in Punjab is another. He is irritable and restless and makes increasingly autonomous decisions.
The second challenge for Rahul is to renew the organization and make the Congressional struggle fit to face the formidable electoral machinery of the BJP. So far, Rahul has had little success, but he always had the old guard to blame. Now, there is no defense.
And the third is to start winning elections. His biggest test will come in 2022 when UP goes to the polls. Is Rahul up to the task?
