Instead of being peevish about who from its side was put on the list of delegates by the government, the Congress should have been at least as smart as Mamata Banerjee or the Uddhav Shiv Sena in negotiating who would represent the party
Only the irrationally optimistic would have expected the Congress, suffering from its chronic misdirection, to do better in dealing with the Narendra Modi regime’s unusual manoeuvre of putting together seven multi-party delegations, some headed by former Congress ministers like Shashi Tharoor and Salman Khurshid. The delegations, currently touring different parts of the world, present a united India picture in the face of a national security crisis.
Instead of being peevish about who from its side was put on the list of delegates by the government, the Congress should have been at least as smart as Mamata Banerjee or the Uddhav Shiv Sena in negotiating who would represent the party. The message was received and the government conceded that the Trinamul Congress and Shiv Sena UBT had the right to decide; Yusuf Pathan was replaced by Abhishek Banerjee, who is also TMC national general secretary and Ms Banerjee’s heir apparent. The Shiv Sena UBT’s volte face, from demanding a boycott of the delegations by the INDIA bloc to endorsing the Modi government’s choice of Priyanka Chaturvedi was equally instructive.
The two parties successfully made the simple point in response to the government’s high-handedness: we get to call the shots, you don’t.
The Congress failed; it was asked about joining the multi-party delegation to signal solidarity and unity at a moment of national crisis, to which it agreed. Then it was miffed because the Modi government scratched three of the party’s four suggested names. It made its displeasure known by doing what it does best: bad-mouthing those picked by the government to be part of the multi-party exercise. India’s public was happy to be regaled by the spat between two Congress leaders, Jairam Ramesh and Shashi Tharoor, because it was as familiar as a comic routine in a heritage-style circus.
The Congress could have bargained or it could have said what D. Raja of the CPI did, that the choice of delegates was marked by “opacity” and “exclusion”, and that there was “no clarity” on the delegations’ mandate. The Congress achieved nothing by effectively trashing its own leaders. That the government rejected the list sent by Rahul Gandhi obviously annoyed the Congress. The spat turned attention away from the several pertinent questions raised by Rahul Gandhi on the Pahalgam killings, about missing security patrolling of a tourist destination, failure of the intelligence services and external affairs minister S. Jaishankar’s unfortunate disclosure: “At the start of the operation, we had sent a message to Pakistan, saying: ‘We are striking at terrorist infrastructure and we are not striking at the military’.”
Or the Congress could have decided to boycott the multi-party exercise. It could have delegitimised the exercise by staying out. It could have launched a counter-measure of challenging the narrative the Modi government had compiled in the context of the Pahalgam killings.
In order to mark itself as a dissenting voice, the Congress needs to take risks, instead of indulging in petulance. The Congress evidently lacks confidence. It neither stayed out of the multi-party exercise nor joined it in good faith. The party’s representatives -- Salman Khurshid, Shashi Tharoor, Manish Tewari and Anand Sharma -- are not official nominees. They will represent what parliamentary affairs minister Kiren Rijuju said: “One mission. One message. One Bharat”.
Constituted as they are, the delegations are duty bound to purvey the “new doctrine” propounded by the Prime Minister – “Sindoor versus Barood” -- vermillion symbolising a woman’s fidelity versus gunpowder, signalling terrorist attacks from Pakistan-based globally outlawed outfits. The dramatic imagery, if anyone were to parse it, is a message to terror outfits and the host country of such outfits, principally Pakistan, that India will deal with it in different ways. It will be a country that has shifted position to embrace the currently dominant brand of ideological Hindu majoritarianism, and it will use guns and bombs first and then embark on the talking, like the diplomatic outreach of telling India’s side of the story. The “Sindoor versus Barood” imagery is designed to communicate with domestic audiences; its deployment on the eve of the departure of the seven delegations indicates that the Modi government has a split personality: one message for Indian voters and another for the international community.
In the language of diplomacy, which external affairs minister S. Jaishankar is adept at deploying, the two messages the multi-party delegations will convey are, first: “We want a definitive end to terrorism. Our message is therefore: yes, the ceasefire has put an end to military actions against each other for now, but if the terrorist attacks from Pakistan continue, there will be consequences. The Pakistanis must understand that very well.” Second: “for us terrorism is an independent, completely unacceptable international crime that should not be condoned or justified.” The rider that follows is: “If the terrorists are in Pakistan, we will hit them where they are. So, there is a message in continuing the operation but continuing the operation is not the same as firing on each other.”
All the parties that constitute the delegation are committed to delivering this message. Parties in opposition to the ruling BJP did not have much choice in signing on to do so. The killings in Pahalgam affected Indians in the same way, across all geographies, from Kashmir to Tamil Nadu. Opting out of a show of solidarity would have been politically suicidal for the Opposition parties, especially in their home states. That applies to the Congress as well.
The Congress was feisty enough to challenge the Modi government’s narrative on why the Pahalgam killings happened. It was not brave enough to disengage with the “One Bharat” mission. It knows best that it does not have the political capital and the clout to have taken a stand and then undertaken the hard labour of communicating its message of disengagement across the country to angry Indians.
Instead of weighing its options, the Congress has demonstrated its weakness. It has undermined its position as the alternative to the BJP and as a leader of the Opposition. The call for boycott came from the Shiv Sena UBT; the Trinamul Congress struck a deal. The Congress did not formally consult with the parties constituting the virtually-defunct INDIA bloc and it failed to negotiate with the Modi government. The party and its leaders did not close ranks; the cracks between the high command and the 23-member group of dissidents that had apparently been papered over after the selection of Mallikarjun Kharge as president have resurfaced over the row over representation.
