The Last Satrap Revolt? (1999)

The bulk of comment on the recent revolt in the Congress Party focuses on the rebel trio’s stated objections. It ignores the elementary political truth that politicians leaving a party to form a new one make statements which have more to do with their political future in their new party than their political past in the old one. All the earnest discussion – of the quality of the nation’s natural progeny or the pro- visions of other constitutions – makes one wonder at the alacrity with which the bourgeois public suspends its normal cynicism, even that especially reserved for the regional politicians, provided principles in question are sufficiently reactionary. And since practically everyone believes that despite the controversy over her ori- gins, Sonia will be the Congress’s electoral deliverance (‘The un-passported, un- visaed masses, my dear, what else do you expect?!’), allegations of political calculation have failed to stick on the rebels. This configuration of attitudes obscures the possibility that the Maratha satrap’s revolt might prove the last act in the long death of the Congress Party, not the first of its revitalised command over another century of Indian politics. What happened, and what can now happen, have little to do with the topics being most loudly discussed – dynasticism, nor that family and certainly nothing with Sonia – either her origins or even her competence. They have to do with others which have been silently passed over.

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