This Article is From May 25, 2016

Congress' Loyalty Pledge To Gandhis Gives Away Its Desperation

The recent state elections have been analysed by the pundits in the media to a significant degree. There is little left to say, but the common theme seems to be the decline of the Congress. The fact that the party's MLAs in West Bengal have been forced to sign a legal affidavit that "swears unqualified allegiance" to the Congress president and her son is just bizarre. I don't want to comment on another party, but as I understand it, a political party is a voluntary association of like-minded individuals who share certain common principles. Is the Congress so unsure of itself that it has to demand affidavits from its legislators?

Though the story is strange, it has a context. The Congress has been losing its dominance for years, if not decades, bit by bit. Particularly after the defeat in West Bengal, its morale is shaky. Mamata Banerjee's lasting success has jolted it. In recent history, she is perhaps the only politician who has broken away from the Congress, set up her own party, nurtured an alternative political movement, and remained independent of her former party.

In Bengal, where breakaway experiments from the Congress have either not lasted or resulted in the humiliation of the leader who broke away, Mamata Banerjee has achieved history. I can think of no other politician who left the Congress and whose independence just grew. Even the stalwart Charan Singh, who moved out of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh and north India in the 1960s, eventually did a short-lived deal with the party in 1979, when he became Prime Minister.

In contrast, Mamata Banerjee has stood tall. She has improved her position in successive elections, and actually done much better alone in the 2014 Lok Sabha election and 2016 assembly election than she did in alliance with the Congress five years earlier.

This is unlike many previous such attempts in Bengal. In the 1960s, Ajoy Mukherjee set up the Bangla Congress and left the Congress. He even became Chief Minister with Left support, but soon vanished from the political scene. 20 years later, another regional party was set up by a Congress leader who had walked out. The new party contested all 294 assembly seats in 1987 and lost its deposit in every single seat. The leader, now in a top constitutional post, had to come back to the Congress and accept its supremacy. So it was with P Chidambaram and the others who set up the Tamil Maanila Congress. Even ND Tiwari and Sheila Dikshit left to found the Congress (Tiwari). They also came back, quietly.

Sharad Pawar, a veteran I have the privilege of sitting next to in the Rajya Sabha and who I call "Uncle", along with the late P.A. Sangma left the Congress on a matter of principle. But eventually they allied with the Congress, became its understudies and were part of a Congress-led arrangement. In contrast, Mamata Banerjee has not compromised. In fact she has proved that it is possible to be independent of both the Congress and the BJP.

In 1998, Mamata Banerjee left the Congress, 14 years after winning a Lok Sabha contest against Somnath Chatterjee, because she realised the Congress and the CPI(M) were secret friends in Bengal. The party was not allowing her to take on the Communists. She set up Trinamool Congress. The name was well chosen. "Trinamool" means grassroots; this was the revolt of the grassroots, of ordinary party workers, against the establishment in the party, which was on the payroll of the Communists.

Acknowledging the wisdom of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Mamata Banerjee agreed to ally with the NDA in the early years of Trinamool. "Atalji was a mature Prime Minister," she once told me, "his NDA was different from the current NDA. It was inclusive and not so confrontational." In this period, Mamata Banerjee fought hard on the streets and in elections. Results were sometimes disappointing. In 2006, Trinamool was down to 29 seats, not enough for Leader of the Opposition status in the assembly. In 2004, the party was left with a single Lok Sabha MP: Mamata Banerjee herself.

The turning point was Singur and then Nandigram, and more than a dozen other Trinamool-led people's movements. The full ferocity of CPI(M) oppression and state-sponsored terrorism, which Mamata Banerjee had suffered and warned about - even getting brutally beaten up by CPI(M) hoodlums - was now there for the world to see and acknowledge. Bengal's voters responded by delivering justice. In 2008 (panchayat elections), 2009 and 2014 (Lok Sabha elections) and 2011 (assembly elections), Trinamool simply marched ahead. It became the recipient of the people's trust.

This year, 2016, was different. It was a moment of validation for Mamata Banerjee. The Congress and CPI(M) came together in a formal alliance to attack her. Her lament in 1998 that her own party - the Congress at the time - was sabotaging her struggle against the Communists, had been outed as never before. That is why the big victory in the recent assembly elections is doubly gratifying. It has not just defeated the CPI(M) and the Congress, it has exposed them and left them devoid of credibility. With the BJP as a fringe no-hoper, the mandate has showered on Mamata Banerjee the blessings of the collective consciousness of Bengali society.

Politically, this is her biggest moment. Yet, I also believe this is her most humbling moment. The blessings of the voters have been overwhelming. There is so much to do, so much to deliver. Mamata Banerjee can do it - she must and she will.

(Derek O'Brien is leader, Parliamentary party Trinamool Congress (RS), and Chief National spokesperson of the party.)

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