Gandhi, Ambedkar, and Constitution: Congress’s trident to take on BJP

Hemmed in by devastating poll losses in Maharashtra, Haryana, and the Jammu region after showing signs of electoral revival in the Lok Sabha elections earlier this year, the Congress will get down to drafting its “action plan” for 2025 when its leaders meet in Karnataka’s Belgaum for a two-day AICC session on December 26 and 27.

As many as 200 senior leaders of the party, including members of the Congress Working Committee (CWC), former chief ministers, state unit and state legislature party chiefs and MPs, will attend the party conclave in Belgaum. The venue has been specially chosen to mark the centenary year of Mahatma Gandhi’s election as the Congress president at the December 26–28, 1924, Belgaum session of the Indian National Congress — the only time he assumed the party post.

Gandhi and Ambedkar

The two-day session, which the Congress has named “Nav Satyagrah Baithak”, will, as such, be high on the symbolism of the Mahatma’s continued, even heightened relevance, in an India that is today in the throes of communal polarisation and hate. More importantly, in its bid to make its socio-political narrative against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP more potent, the Congress leadership hopes to use the party conclave to ambitiously bridge the philosophies of two distinctly diverse personalities — Gandhi and ‘Babasaheb’ BR Ambedkar — who guided India’s freedom struggle in their own way.

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“Gandhi and Ambedkar were both giants of the freedom struggle but it is also a fact that their vision for social justice in an independent India differed. This is perhaps why, in the decades after these stalwarts passed, staunch Ambedkarites and Gandhians disagreed on many sociopolitical issues,” Ashok Bharti, chairperson of the National Confederation of Dalit Organisations (NACDAOR), told The Federal.

“Eventually, the rise of political outfits that claimed, increasingly only in rhetoric but not action, to represent true Ambedkarite thought chipped away Dalit votes from the Congress, which leaned heavily on a mix of Gandhi’s philosophy of social justice and Nehru’s idea of India. I think the Congress today, with a Dalit president (Mallikarjun Kharge) and an ideological anchor who is a Nehru-Gandhi (Rahul Gandhi), realises that the only way it can stand up against a fascist, Manuwadi BJP is if it merges the best of Gandhian and Ambedkarite thought,” he added.

“Jai Bapu, Jai Bhim, Jai Samvidhaan”

The Congress believes that the “Save Constitution” pitch it built along with its INDIA bloc allies to take on the BJP during the Lok Sabha polls remains the most potent ammunition it has against the saffron party, particularly in wake of the infelicitous remarks Union Home Minister Amit Shah made against Babasaheb during the “Constitution debate” in the recently concluded winter session of Parliament.

While Modi and Shah accused the Congress and INDIA bloc partners of “misleading the nation” over the “Ambedkar remark”, the Opposition, in particular the Congress, has latched on to the Home Minister’s contentious comment, dubbing it as evidence of the scant regard the BJP has for the Constitution and its main author.

It is, thus, not surprising that the Congress has chosen to conclude its Belgaum session on December 27 with a “Jai Bapu, Jai Bhim, Jai Samvidhaan” rally. The day before that, Congress leaders will convene at the session’s venue in Belgaum’s Mahatma Gandhi Nagar — the site of the 39th Congress session where Bapu took the party’s reins for nearly five months — to discuss “critical challenges facing the nation under BJP rule: economic inequality, erosion of democracy and attack on constitutional institutions,” KC Venugopal, Congress general secretary (organisation), informed reporters in Delhi, on Tuesday (December 24).

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BJP and British Raj

The 1924 Congress session had seen the Mahatma outline his vision of a non-violent struggle against the British Raj (the session was held nearly two years after the Chauri Chaura incident of February 1922) while also giving a call for communal harmony (in light of the British exploiting growing tensions between the Hindu and Muslim communities at the time). It was also the session where Bapu implored his compatriots and followers in the freedom struggle to become “perfect satyagrahis”.

The 39th party session had marked a turning point not just in the freedom struggle but also in the history of the Congress as the Mahatma had taken command of the party at a time when its then leadership was deeply divided on multiple issues.

The parallels that the Congress of today seeks to draw with the 1924 Session aren’t difficult to decipher. Rahul Gandhi and senior leaders of the party have often likened the BJP, under Modi, with the British Raj, accusing the ruling party of oppressing the country by deepening communal divide, pushing flawed economic policies and curbing individual freedoms. Party sources said each of these strands would find a nuanced iteration in the resolutions that the extended CWC would adopt following its meeting on December 26 while tying them up with the party’s push for protecting “Babasaheb’s Constitution against the assaults of the Modi government”.

Finetuning battle gear, and some introspection

The “Jai Bapu, Jai Bhim, Jai Samvidhaan” rally, which will be held the following day, will see the Congress high command make a spirited attack against the BJP for “its persistent attacks against the ideology of Gandhi and Ambedkar” while renewing the push for “protecting Babasaheb’s Constitution from the assaults of the Modi government”, a senior Congress leader involved with the preparations for the upcoming Belgaum Session told The Federal.

Party insiders said the agenda of the CWC meeting will not only be to discuss the finetuning of the party’s attacks against the BJP but also to “introspect” about its own “organisational and electoral deficiencies”. Though the party is expected to continue projecting its recent poll losses in Maharashtra and Haryana as a “defeat of the people and victory of the system (read: misuse of the electoral apparatus and institutions by the BJP)”, sources said “there will also be a detailed discussion on our own failures that contributed to these defeats”.

Also read: Congress to hold weeklong campaign seeking Amit Shah's resignation for 'insulting' Ambedkar

Time for “organisational audit”

The session, sources said, will also mark the beginning of a long-due “organisational audit” that is expected to culminate with a revamp of the party at the AICC and state level early next year.

“Changes in the organisation, both at the AICC and the state and district levels, are desperately needed. In some states, the Congress president had dissolved the party units, while in others, either the units have not been reconstituted for months or even years (Haryana and Odisha, for instance) or the existing leadership has failed to revitalise the party,” a party functionary told The Federal.

The functionary added, “At the AICC, there are several office bearers who were appointed when Rahul was party president (between December 2017 and July 2019) and have held the same post for over five years now. Some general secretaries also have multiple responsibilities. While this doesn’t mean that all such office bearers will be replaced, there has to be a change in the roles of many after factoring in their performance while non-performers or those occupied with other party work will have to be relieved. The session may not see a detailed discussion on the revamp but the Congress president, in his remarks at the CWC, is likely to make a pitch for big changes in the organisation, setting in motion the process for a revamp”.