Don’t be casual and non-serious!
This time the crisis is very formidable!
Letter to Mr.Antony sent by Courier
Dear Mr.A.K.Antony
Today I read in the newspapers about the Congress party appointing you heading a panel to probe the causes for the poll debacle. How many Antony committees have done this sort of probes and they came to nothing. From what you have done starting in Delhi already shows this too seems a ritual. Please take note this time the crisis facing the Congress party is too serious requiring radical thoughts and action. Are you aware of the challenges, we ask you.
How to communicate to you I don’t know. As an old Congressman and knowing your seniority in the party and also your previous many Antony Committee probes, one wonders why one more Antony Committee? How it will be different?
You must have already read we are sure; See Naqvi’s edit-page column in the Deccan Herald dated June 19, 2014. He has almost ridiculed the many Antony Committees of the past! Mr.Naqvi says:”Antony, an acute Gandhi loyalist never in the course of his numerous probes turned the search light on his political masters. But this time he may be left with no room for maneuver. The Gandhis will be on the dissection table.
Reports of irreversible poor health may be leaked. What better way to stop the leak than sink the very idea of the Antony Committee. The mother and son team have undertaken to probe the party’s rout implies that their leadership was not flawed that the fault for the debacle lies elsewhere. “The Gandhis still believe, says Naqvi, there still is a party under their leadership”.
Honestly, we, the ordinary Congressmen and women, old and new, spread all over India believe that this time you have to do a better job.
I am a Kamaraj man
Now Mr.Antony, please understand that I am an old Congress man, an associate of Kamaraj, Atulya Ghosh and Sadiq Ali, among others. I worked at the AICC at 7, Jantar Mantar Road then and I knew you, I had met you of course briefly at the AICC on Akbar Road sometime and therefore I don’t assume you know me at all.
Why this much introduction?
I used to write to Sonia Gandhi many times in the past narrating the Congress downhill marches. In TN and elsewhere. Believe me, Mr.Antony, never for once Sonia cared even to acknowledge the letters!
I wrote now to Sonia Gandhi
Only this time she acknowledges!
A very stringent letter in which I said many things but I also said frankly it is time that she and Rahul Gandhi must resign and put in an interim president and announce elections to the Party within a year.
I have now almost finished writing a book in English on the decline and fall of the Congress party and how the Congress to be revived.
It would naturally be a part-autobiography and part political history, what I had done so far etc.
If I may put it so, I was born in the era of Gandhi certainties, grew into adulthood in the Nehruvian optimism and of course inherited my intellectual certainties and beliefs in the Oxford Logical Positivism! Where truth and proofs for truth have to be vigorous and logically provable.
Alas! I grew up in such certainties and today where are we, where are our credentials? And yet, we try to pretend that life will be the same again? We have to understand history! History is ruthless, unpardonable!
So let us all try to be honest and truthful to ourselves!
I was an elected MLC; I won in a stiff fight against a candidate put up by none other than C.N.Annadurai in 1968 to the Madras Legislative Council. It was when Kamaraj was down and out after he himself lost the 1967 elections. So my election victory ,Kamaraj claimed was his own!
So, you now please kindly listen to what I have got to say. There is no way except to face the reality. The Congress party, as it is, under the one-person driven, sycophantic crowd-fed illusion of a false existence. It lost its moorings. It lost the confidence of the people. People walked away from us, right? It lacks all the moral force it had once. It is not at all inspired by any new world before it. So, where to start?
I have just read the biography of R.C.Dutt (Romesh Chandra Dutt (died in 1909). He was one-time Congress President in Luck now in 1899.
Now my suggestions for the recovery of the Indian National Congress are to identify 100 selfless Congress men and women who won’t seek any political office. They would be named and honored as the moral guardians or mentors of the Congress party. Give them the responsibility to revive the party in their respective States.
Dissolve the CWC instantly
The CWC must be dissolved; new members from each state suitably selected. The CWC members too must be of the 100 selfless workers. 50% CWC members must be elected by an open contest.
Also, give autonomy to the states; to the PCCs. PCC members too as far as possible should not expect any political pecuniary benefits. Audit the party funds openly and transparently.
More important, pass a resolution that dynastic succession will not be the Congress formula for succession. Also, CWC decisions, why, even the president’s decisions must be taken by a vote! The Congress constitution must be radically amended to create confidence!
There are so many other ideas I have put forward in my forthcoming book.
One is to pass a resolution that no party office is for more than 2 years, from President to other state and central office holders.
Annual sessions: every year a new distinguished Congress person should preside as in the past years.
This will lend prestige to the sessions and the party president could be for running the party routinely.
You must have seen the Kishore Chandra Deo interview in the Outlook magazine He says why so many people are continuing at the AICC?
Don’t you also know all these deficiencies?
I am the only Congress man; you know who hasn’t changed the party once in my lifetime? How many had gone out and come back?
Congress men and women have become greedy, land grabbers and violators of all known morals and scruples.
How the party paid such heavy price for keeping the unelected PM for so long? We started blundering from the very start by adopting all unethical practices. Anyway, I leave it at this stage.
You please better don’t fall victim once again! Please come out with really some radical changes. Please understand the enormity of the present crisis and be prepared for a long haul by which time you and me may not be there to see the Congress bouncing back to power!
Kill the thought that the Congress can be revived with Sonia or Rahul or even brining in Priyanka, at the helm this time!
Yours sincerely
V.Isvarmurti