It is perhaps the first time that Congress leader and Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi has released his speech delivered at a meeting of Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) bloc leaders to the public.
This writer has attended all INDIA bloc meetings, including the formative gathering in Patna, Bihar, in June 2023 before the alliance adopted the INDIA name.
Gandhi’s impassioned speech, delivered at a time when the BJP’s ‘double-engine’/National Democratic Alliance (NDA) governments span over 20 States and Union Territories, was both reassuring and somewhat concerning.
While it would have resonated strongly at a Congress meeting, parts of it seemed somewhat discordant in a gathering of 23 parties representing diverse ideological streams united in defence of India’s sovereign, socialist, secular and democratic republic.
Gandhi is right in reminding us that the Congress became a movement of resistance after Purna Swaraj (complete independence) became the official goal of the Congress.
We must not however forget that the Purna Swaraj idea was first presented in the Ahmedabad session of the Congress in 1921 by two communist delegates, Maulana Hasrat Mohani and Swami Kumarananda.
And Bhagat Singh and his comrades made a clear and bold ideological statement with the launch of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association in 1928.
The battle today is between the only ideological stream that stayed away from, and often opposed, the freedom movement and the diverse ideological currents that fought for and won India’s independence.
The INDIA alliance represents a regrouping of these forces against the Hindutva school of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)-BJP, which is seeking to reshape state institutions and the architecture of parliamentary democracy to advance its ideological agenda.
If the BJP gets a free hand in its push for ‘one nation, one party’, the Congress will suffer no less than other political parties; indeed, it has often proved more vulnerable.
For all our glorious chapters from the history of the freedom movement, there is no accumulated ideological insulation or immunity for any party in the face of today’s all-out fascist offensive and ideological assault.
