If the Indian National Congress were a business, its shareholders would have long since sold their stock and taken their losses. It has evolved backwards and has become a marvel of entropy, a relic that stumbles forward without conviction, ideas, or even the faintest sense of urgency. The party that once commanded the loyalty of an entire subcontinent now specialises in one thing, losing. Its electoral debacles have become so frequent and humiliating that they have ceased to be news. The Congress does not fight elections as much as participate in them, like a particularly hapless sporting team that shows up, goes through the motions, and then shakes hands with its victorious opponents before returning home to plan its next failure.
The real tragedy here is not just the self-immolation of the Congress, but more importantly, it is the vacuum that this creates - something that has been expertly exploited by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), or more precisely, by its two most formidable figures, Narendra Modi and Amit Shah. The BJP has, in effect, turned the Congress into its greatest asset! With such an incompetent, uninspiring, and strategically inept opposition, Modi and Shah do not have to worry about the routine mechanisms of democratic accountability. They can focus instead on securing their long-term ideological project - the slow, methodical dismantling of the secular, pluralistic vision of India that its founding fathers once envisioned.
The Opposition as the BJP’s Strongest Ally
A healthy democracy requires a strong opposition. This is an elementary fact, as fundamental to political life as oxygen is to breathing. But today’s Congress, and by extension the wider opposition, is not merely weak - it is an embarrassment, a decaying artefact kept on life support by nostalgia and inertia. It is not just failing to challenge the BJP, but is actively making the ruling party stronger by presenting itself as such an unthreatening alternative.
Modi and Shah understand this dynamic perfectly. They do not fear the Congress. They do not even need to suppress it. They are content to let it stagger along, leaderless, rudderless, and visionless, because its continued existence serves as proof that India still has a “democracy,” however hollow that claim may be. Since 2018, India’s electoral democracy has witnessed a sharp decline in quality. The V-Dem Institute, which monitors democratic freedoms worldwide, now classifies India as an "electoral autocracy" - a system where elections continue to be held regularly, but the government operates with increasingly autocratic tendencies.
The BJP, for all its authoritarian instincts, does not want to abolish elections; it wants to win them effortlessly. And the Congress, with its genetically gifted leadership, its utter lack of ideological clarity, and its inability to adapt to the political realities of the 21st century, seems only more than happy to oblige.
Take, for instance, Rahul Gandhi, a man who seems perpetually on the verge of becoming a serious politician but never quite gets there. His periodic reinventions - each hailed as the moment he will finally emerge as the leader India needs – have sadly become a running joke. The problem is not just that Rahul Gandhi lacks charisma, although he does; and it is not just that he lacks political cunning, although he does. The problem is that he and his party, fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the battle they are fighting.
The BJP is not merely a political party. It is an ideological movement with a clear, ruthless, and long-term strategy. It is driven by a vision - one that is explicitly majoritarian, Hindu nationalist, and expansionist in its ambitions. The Congress, on the other hand, has no vision at all. It speaks the language of secularism, but with all the conviction of a schoolchild reciting a lesson he does not understand. It claims to stand for democracy, but proudly flaunts a leadership structure that is a feudal hierarchy. It talks about fighting for India’s constitutional values, but it does so in press conferences and Twitter threads rather than on the ground, where the real battle is being fought.
Modi and Shah’s Long-Term Strategy
The BJP’s strategy is not limited to winning elections - it is about shaping India for decades to come. Modi and Shah are not merely interested in securing the next term in office; instead, they are playing a generational game. They are changing the fundamental nature of India’s institutions, bending them to their will, ensuring that even if they were to lose an election in the future, the ideological shift they have engineered will endure. They have systematically co-opted the judiciary, the bureaucracy, the media, and even the military, ensuring that no meaningful resistance to their project can emerge from within the state. They have built an ecosystem of think tanks, social media warriors, and ideological enforcers who can manufacture consent with ruthless efficiency. They have mastered the art of controlling the narrative, using a combination of propaganda, fear, and cultural symbolism to create an unbreakable bond with their base.
The Congress, meanwhile, cannot even manage its own internal affairs without descending into chaos. It is torn between nostalgia for its past and sheer cluelessness about its future. It still operates as if the Nehruvian consensus is intact, failing to recognise that the ideological landscape of India has changed beyond recognition. It still believes that the mere invocation of “secularism” will be enough to counter Hindutva, failing to understand that this is no longer an argument that moves the masses.
The Death Knell of Nehru’s India
And so, we arrive at the real tragedy; the slow, inexorable demise of the idea of India that was forged in 1947. An India that was meant to be secular, pluralistic, democratic - not just in form but in substance. Modi and Shah are not just winning elections, they are reshaping the very meaning of Indian nationhood. Their project is not merely about consolidating power, but about ensuring that their ideological vision becomes the default setting of Indian politics.
This is how great republics die - not with a sudden coup or dramatic collapse, but with a slow, steady erosion of their foundational principles; not with a bang, but with a whimper. And the Congress, in its pathetic impotence, is not merely a bystander to this process, but it is complicit in it. Its failure to mount a credible opposition is not just a political failure, it is indeed a moral one.
If the Congress cannot reinvent itself - if it cannot develop a coherent ideology, a competent leadership, and a genuine connection with the people - it will not just fade into irrelevance, it will become a cautionary tale, a case study on how a once-great party, through sheer complacency and arrogance, enabled the very forces it once opposed. And by the time it finally realises what has happened, it will be too late - not just for the Congress, but for India itself.
