A new approach

THE CALL BY the Congress(I) president, Mrs. Sonia Gandhi, to her partymen to agitate in the streets against the BJP-led Government's attempts to ``spread communalism'' and to ``subvert the Constitution'' marks a new assertiveness in the party's approach. The immediate context - the BJP-led dispensation's order in Gujarat to lift the ban on Government employees being members of the RSS - for embarking upon an agitational programme seems to suggest a realisation within the Congress(I), at long last, that it needs to play its role as the main opposition party. While it remains to be seen as to how long it takes for the Congress(I), as an organisation, to gear itself up to the new course and how far its ranks would be willing to go in this new direction, the party as such is left with no other option to revive itself. And it is clear that the party high command - Mrs. Sonia Gandhi - is convinced about the need for a break from the prevailing political culture of drawing room confabulations. It may be true that the protest march she led in the capital was only symbolic. But then, the fact of the Congress(I) president's participation, the first time ever since she took over the party, must convey some signals to the rank and file.

Indeed, the task set by the Congress(I) president is not all that simple. The agitation course, as and when it takes shape, will certainly have to go beyond what was witnessed in Delhi on the anniversary of the Mahatma's martyrdom. Rather than being occasions which those around Mrs. Sonia Gandhi could use to demonstrate their sycophancy to the leader, an agitation of the nature suggested by the Congress(I) president - to fill the jails until the Gujarat Government rescinded its order - will necessarily require a lot of effort. And the enormity of the task only increases in the case of a party like the Congress(I), whose leaders at various levels have hardly had any exposure to the rough and tumble of agitational politics. That they needed to be virtually goaded by Mrs. Sonia Gandhi to break barricades - even if it was symbolic - clearly shows the inability of the senior leaders to assume any role other than swarming around the party president. This is the only means through which Mrs. Sonia Gandhi's call for an agitational course can be realised. And in such a course, there is hardly any scope for perpetuating the culture of follow-the-high-command. Instead, it is important that the party organisation be revived at all levels and the spirit of democracy infused in its functioning.

Be that as it may, the Congress(I)'s new line should assume significance not just in the context of the party's own future. Instead, any such course becomes significant in the larger political context too. After all, mobilisation of public opinion against any given move by the Government of the day and the right to express such dissent in public are integral to the strengthening of the democratic structure. And the issues involved in this context - the ``decision'' to set up a commission to ``review'' the Constitution and the order by the State Government in Gujarat - involve attempts to tamper with the fundamentals of the democratic civil society; hence, it is the imperative for all those on the other side of the BJP-led combine to mobilise opinion against such moves. And there cannot be a better means to resist the moves than availing of the public space to dissent and protest. And such a course, rather than the customary poll-eve tie-ups, would serve a better way for the coming together of such parties and groups opposed to the BJP-led combine's sectarian agenda in the long run.

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