New Delhi: Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi has said that the Congress did not fight for the rights of Dalits, backward castes, and adivasis with as much zeal post the 1990s—a period which saw two non-Gandhis, P.V. Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh, occupying the post of prime minister in governments led by the party—as it did under the leadership of Indira Gandhi.
At the evening organised by Dalit influencers Thursday, a member of the audience then quipped that P.V. Narasimha Rao had “ruined everything”. The Congress leader smiled and said he wouldn’t name anyone, but stressed the Congress should accept that reality.
He asserted that the party needed an “internal revolution” for members of the marginalised communities to have a greater say in it.
“I can say, as a Congress soldier, that the party did not do what it should have in the past 10 to 15 years. If I don’t say this, I would be lying, and I don’t like lying. It’s a reality that if the Congress had maintained the confidence of Dalits, backward castes, and the extremely backwards, the RSS would have never come to power,” Gandhi said.
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He added that marginalised groups had unwavering confidence in Indira Gandhi, as everyone believed she would “fight and die for them”.
“But we were found wanting after the 1990s. I can see that,” he said, prompting the person in the audience to mention P.V. Narasimha Rao, the prime minister who initiated far-reaching economic reforms.
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Gandhis’ angst over Rao
Rao, the first non-Gandhi prime minister to complete a 5-year term, shared frosty ties with the Gandhis.
In their books, Congress veterans Natwar Singh and K.V. Thomas attributed the bitterness between Rao and Sonia to her unhappiness over the slow pace of the probe into the 1991 assassination of her husband, Rajiv Gandhi.
After his death in 2004, Rao’s body was not allowed in the premises of the Congress headquarters—the cortège was parked outside for people to pay their respects. In 2024, the BJP government posthumously conferred Rao the Bharat Ratna.
Since then, the Congress has been eager to course correct, albeit a little stingily. On the walls of the party’s new headquarters—where it has tried to document its long history—large photographs of the late Rao can be seen.
While the timeline of the party’s journey omits Rajiv Gandhi’s defeat in 1989, as well as those in the 2014 and 2019 general elections, it highlights the loss of the Rao-led Congress government in 1996.
The excerpt on the wall states: “The Congress lost the 1996 general elections, dropping its tally to 140. P.V. Narasimha Rao resigned from the presidency of the party. To keep communal forces at bay, the party decided to provide outside support to the United Front government under the leadership of H.D. Deve Gowda and later Inder Kumar Gujral.”
(Edited by Tikli Basu)
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