The New Year is a time for making resolutions in the Western tradition. Sonia Gandhi seems to have taken this dictum to heart; her resolve for 2004 seems to be to take lessons in humility. She has certainly begun on the right note by announcing, at a press conference in Mumbai, that it is the right of the people of India to say who shall be prime minister.
The sheer banality of this statement is breathtaking! India has successfully conducted 13 general elections. (Even if the current guardian of the electoral process, our beloved Chief Election Commissioner seems to believe we have been running a sham democracy for over fifty years!) Has it really taken the prospect of the 14th such looming up for the boss of the Congress (I) to realise that this is the fundamental right of the electorate in any democracy worth the name?
However, let us give Sonia Gandhi the benefit of the doubt and accept that she may just have a point. There has been a shadow over the Congress procedure of anointing a prime minister ever since Jawaharlal Nehru's day.
Let me take you back to the year 1946. Everyone knew that Independence was around the corner (though the precise date remained undecided). The choice of Congress president became crucial since it was certain that the Viceroy would invite him or her to head the interim government. Twelve of the 15 Pradesh Congress Committees proposed the name of Sardar Patel; not one of them sent up the name of Jawaharlal Nehru -- not even his native United Provinces (as Uttar Pradesh was then titled). It was at this point that Mahatma Gandhi made his last decisive intervention in the affairs of the nation.
He asked Acharya Kripalani -- who, if I remember correctly was the choice of the United Provinces Pradesh Congress Committee -- to circulate a note to the Congress Working Committee asking that body to nominate Nehru. From this distance in time, the Mahatma¹s reasons seem less than convincing. 'He, a Harrow boy, a Cambridge graduate and a barrister, is wanted to carry on the negotiations with Englishmen.' Again, the Mahatma believed that Nehru could 'make India play a role in international affairs.' More realistically, 'Jawahar will not take second place.' Whatever the rationale -- and the last suggests that our much-worshipped first prime minister was a spoiled brat in the Mahatma's estimation -- the fact remains that Bapu¹s suggestion
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