Ahmedabad: Symbolism was front and centre as the party convened its extended Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting and the 85th All India Congress Committee (AICC) session in Ahmedabad—right in the heart of BJP stronghold, Gujarat.
First, it announced that the home turf of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah will play host to the two conclaves.
What’s more, the party picked the Sardar Patel Memorial to host the extended CWC, while a stretch on the banks of the Sabarmati between Sabarmati Ashram and Kochrab Ashram—both founded by Mahatma Gandhi—was chosen as the venue of the AICC session.
As the CWC unfolded, it became clear that the party was using the occasion to make its strongest pitch so far to reclaim the legacy of Patel, a longtime favourite of the BJP and the country’s first home minister in the cabinet led by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.
The meeting, attended by 158 party leaders, adopted a resolution invoking the legacy of Patel and accused—without naming the BJP or the RSS—the ruling dispensation of spreading a “deliberate web of lies” of conflict between Patel and Nehru through its “fake news factory”.
The resolution states: “In reality, it was an attack on the very ethos of our freedom struggle and the inseparable leadership of Gandhi-Nehru-Patel. The cobweb of deceit and deception couldn’t be sustained, for Sardar Patel himself wrote to Pandit Nehru on 3 August 1947 and unequivocally stated, ‘Our attachment and affection for each other and our comradeship for an unbroken period of nearly 30 years admit of no formalities. Our combination is unbreakable and therein lies our strength’.”
In the past, the Congress has made some feeble attempts, mostly through statements, to prevent the BJP from appropriating Patel’s legacy as a strong-willed leader, whose world views, particularly on matters of religion and Jammu & Kashmir, often collided with that of Nehru. The Congress has long claimed that PM Modi commissioned the creation of Sardar Patel’s Statue of Unity, the world’s tallest statue in Gujarat, as part of the BJP’s bid to appropriate his legacy.
However, it was the CWC’s Tuesday resolution, coupled with Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge’s opening remarks at the meeting, that rang the loudest.
In his speech, Kharge accused the BJP of trying to “steal” the legacy of the country’s first home minister.
He went on to say that over the years, “a well-planned conspiracy has taken place regarding several national heroes”, primarily because the RSS and BJP have “nothing to show” as their contribution to the freedom struggle.
“They conspire to show the relationship between Sardar Patel and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru as if both the heroes were against each other. Whereas, the truth is that they were two sides of the same coin. Many incidents and documents witness their cordial relations,” Kharge went on to say.
However, the purpose of this invocation was not merely to reinstate Patel in the pantheon of the party’s stalwarts, but to drive home a significant message, i.e., the Congress will be able to take its ideology to the masses only if it possesses the required organisational strength.
Kharge concluded saying: “I will end my talk with a quote from Sardar Patel. He had said that numbers are meaningless without organisation. Numbers, in itself, do not possess any strength without organisation. It is only when the threads of a yarn are weaved together, they take the form of a cloth. Then their strength, beauty and utility become meaningful.”
(Edited by Insha Waziri)
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