Making another out-of-the-box statement, noted historian, Ramachandra Guha, has suggested a way for the Congress party to revive its power at the Centre. Calling for a massive change in Congress leadership, Guha suggested that the party can only regain its prominence by projecting Bihar chief minister, Nitish Kumar, as the face of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA).
At the 10th anniversary celebration of his book “India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Decomcary”, the historian had said that India’s oldest political party was without any leader and chances of its revival under the present dispensation are very less.
“Nobody has got any doubts that the Congress is not going to rise again any time soon. Two years (to the next Lok Sabha election) is a long time in politics. If you get away with the Gandhi family in the leadership and if the Congress has a new leader, things can change”, Guha had said.
“There is a genuine leader in India. That is Nitish Kumar. He is a leader without a party, the Congress is a party without a leader. If Congress gives him a chance to lead the UPA, it might have a future,” he added.
The UPA had been in power for a decade from 2004 to 2014 before the ruling NDA party took over.
Guha pointed out similarities between the leadership of both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Nitish Kumar, and said that both are leaders without a “family burden”. However, he also said that Nitish is not a “megalomaniac”, unlike Modi.
Guha also pointed towards the fact that single party dominance in a democracy like India is not good, as it makes a leader more authoritative.
“There is a problem with single party dominance; it made even the great democrat Jawaharlal Nehru unpersuasive, it made the instinctively authoritative Indira Gandhi more authoritative. So what single party dominance would do to Modi and Amit Shah I have started to think (about),” he further added.
“Forty years of Left rule in West Bengal was a disaster, 25 years of BJP rule in Gujarat is a disaster. We are in the 70th year of Independence and have failed in emulating a stable two party module of western democracy,” Guha said.
