Standing as much as be counted once more

It was a daring assertion to carry the Congress Working Committee assembly and the AICC session (8–9 April) in Ahmedabad. It was time the Congress reasserted its deep roots in Gujarat, looking for energy and inspiration from the get together’s historic connections within the state.

Dadabhai Naoroji, one of many Congress founders, and two of the three tallest Congress leaders in the course of the freedom wrestle — Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel — had been from Gujarat. Within the din of the relentless RSS–BJP propaganda, youthful generations of Indians might do with a historical past refresher.

The Sangh’s marketing campaign to defame Nehru and current him as an adversary of Sardar Patel — a devoted comrade and Nehru’s deputy in unbiased India’s first authorities — can be humorous if it weren’t so vile. The Sangh has even put Gandhi’s murderer on a pedestal.

The BJP’s total foundation for staking declare to Patel are lies about his relationship with Nehru, and has no extra substance than hole memorialising within the type of the ‘world’s highest statue’ — sarcastically made partly in China — at an estimated price of Rs 3,000 crore.

As the previous Gujarat chief of the IYC (Indian Youth Congress) Indravijay Singh Govil fairly poignantly mentioned: “The BJP’s Patel is manufactured from bronze, our Patel lived and fought on the bottom.”

The AICC decision takes the BJP–RSS propaganda head on. Invoking the Bardoli Satyagraha (a non-violent protest led by Sardar Patel in 1928 towards a 22 per cent tax hike imposed by the British colonial authorities on farmers in Gujarat’s Bardoli taluka), the decision holds the BJP responsible of replicating the British playbook — particularly in its remedy of farmers. The get together slammed the Centre for diluting the Proper to Honest Compensation legislation and reaffirmed its assist for a assured minimal assist worth (MSP).

Congressmen from Gujarat additionally recalled the 2015 demolition of the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Cricket Stadium in Ahmedabad. The brand new stadium that got here up in Motera was named — what else — the Narendra Modi Cricket Stadium. The state BJP, they mentioned, had accomplished nothing to protect Patel’s ancestral residence in Karamsad (in Anand district), and had in reality stopped the annual state authorities grant of Rs 3 crore for its repairs.

A remarkably candid session

For many who go on concerning the lack of ‘interior democracy’ within the Congress, the AICC session was probably an eye-opener. Not simply veterans like Shashi Tharoor but additionally relative unknowns like Alok Mishra from Uttar Pradesh spoke freely and albeit.

Tharoor underlined the necessity to set a “constructive narrative” and challenge hope as a substitute of showing to be essential, resentful and “destructive” on a regular basis. Mishra was scathing, and even drew applause for his plainspeak. It made no sense, he mentioned, to have folks with youngsters working for different events to move Congress get together organisations. How does it assist if such a head has one son within the Samajwadi Social gathering and one other within the BJP, he requested.

He was repeating what get together president Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi had additionally identified — that there have been BJP sleeper cells within the get together and these wanted to be recognized and eradicated.

One of many delegates voiced his disappointment over the Congress leaders’ silence on the genocide in Palestine. Solely Priyanka Gandhi, he mentioned, had bothered to talk out on X whereas others had maintained a most conspicuous silence. This delegate from Bihar went on to say that the Congress ought to take a stronger stand towards the Modi authorities’s cowardice on Gaza.

One more speaker questioned why the get together was apologetic about secularism and so-called ‘Muslim appeasement’. Why describe victims of focused violence as belonging to marginalised or minority communities? Why not name them what they’re — Muslims and Dalits?

A number of others insisted that the get together’s stand must be clear and constant. Euphemisms just like the ‘oppressed’ must be deserted in favour of straight figuring out the victims of mob lynching, caste atrocities and communal violence.

The sentiment obtained robust endorsement from leaders like Rahul Gandhi. The change in tone was hanging as Kharge gave a rousing name for leaders to carry out or retire. He was additionally candid in acknowledging that the get together was weak in speaking its ideas, its core values.

It was additionally probably the primary time a Congress president had brazenly acknowledged that the get together’s coffers had been empty: “Social gathering ke paas paise nahin hain.”

A report in Ahmedabad Mirror confirmed this. It acknowledged that the BJP had obtained Rs 401.9 crore of the Rs 404.5 crore donated to political events in Gujarat forward of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, i.e., 99.3 per cent of the entire donations made to political events.

In distinction, the Congress had obtained Rs 2.5 crore, donated largely by leaders like Shaktisinh Gohil, Geniben Thakor, Amit Chavda and others. Of the two,153 donations, 2,113 had been for the BJP.

A brand new Gujarat, a brand new Congress

The Congress has been out of energy in Gujarat for the previous 30 years. In 2024, it gained solely a single Lok Sabha seat. The 2017 meeting election was narrowly gained by the BJP. 5 years later, the BJP swept the election in 2022. (That yr, Rahul Gandhi didn’t marketing campaign as he was on the highway with the Bharat Jodo Yatra.) No surprise the BJP appears as unperturbed by the success of the AICC in Gujarat as by Rahul Gandhi’s assured assertion that the Congress will win the following meeting election in 2027.