While it might be construed as an achievement that as many as 23 parties attended the Congress-organised conclave of the INDIA bloc at Constitution Club, New Delhi, on June 8, 2026, their individual, let alone combined, following, fell far short of the Cockroach Janata Party’s digital following within a fortnight of a Boston-based satirist drawing a caricature and sharing it on social media. And “Hamlet” appears to have been staged “without the Prince of Denmark”, with neither M.K. Stalin nor his DMK putting in an appearance. Indeed, the flurry of statements from key participants at and after the conclave reflected angst more than consensus. So, is INDIA blooming or withering?
In answering this fundamental question, when the country is trembling on the edge of a precipice that threatens to throw our composite civilisation into the abyss of an authoritarian “purna Hindu Rashtra”, perhaps the starting point should be to compare the Congress party’s relationship with its partners in May 2004, when a Congress-led alliance took the reins of government in New Delhi, with what it is today in June 2026.
The main difference, in my view, is that Sonia Gandhi was perceived then to have crafted the BJP’s defeat by drawing into her fold the DMK and other parties and establishing, through the wise counsel of Comrade Harkishan Singh Surjeet, a close rapport with Left parties of all hues, perhaps most of all with the ever-smiling Sitaram Yechury heading the largest communist formation, the CPI(M).
The Left Front parties triumphed in as many as 59 seats and their “outside support” was the key to a sustainable majority in the Lok Sabha. There were many who had not been with the Congress in the election of 2004. However, when they presented themselves at 10, Janpath, on the morrow of the election results, they were courteously escorted into Sonia Gandhi’s presence. Only Amar Singh, Mulayam Singh’s Iago, who had spewed venom on Sonia because she happened to have been born in Italy, was sternly turned back.
Meanwhile, Sushma Swaraj was readying herself for the hairdressers to have her abundant head of hair tonsured as she had promised (threatened?) to do if an “Italian” became India’s Prime Minister. Sonia failed to oblige her, and Sushma Swaraj did not lose even one lock of her beautiful hair. Sonia Gandhi emerged then, and remains now, a magnet attracting the iron shavings of a very disparate opposition.
Rumblings in INDIA
The contrast with the current condition of the INDIA bloc could not be starker. Let alone those who stayed away from the Constitution Club, even those who attended seemed to have been keener on nursing their grievances than on binding themselves in unity.
Recognising that the Congress president is a token stand-in, they listened, and bristled, at the effective leader of the Congress. Some, perhaps, recalled Nitish Kumar, the founder of the alliance, feeling so miffed at the Congress failing to make it to the inaugural conference in Patna of what became INDIA that he actually broke from the alliance not long after its meeting in Mumbai. Then he made common cause with the party against whom he had taken an initiative in Patna, and went on to twice succeed, despite being a firm secularist, in bringing the BJP to power, not only in his State but also at the Centre in 2024.
The problem seems to have started when Nitish Kumar felt denied of his place in the INDIA sun although it was he who had conceived the alliance as the only way to rid the country of Narendra Modi, Amit Shah, and Adityanath. His revenge on INDIA proved the “unkindest cut” of them all.
Sonia Gandhi’s presence in Mumbai was, however, so reassuring that she held the rest of the alliance together. Despite Nitish’s walkout, her self-effacing manner continued to be the glue that kept the alliance together despite the radical, material change in the political scene since her 2004 triumph. There was something soothing in her gentle manner, something about her accommodating ways that did not leave her interlocutors feeling hammered. Her transparent absence of personal ambition allowed other ambitions to simmer.
Former Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar speaks to mediapersons after an INDIA bloc meeting, in Mumbai, on September 1, 2023.
| Photo Credit:
Amit Sharma/ANI
On June 8, 2026, something abrasive about the patronising attitude of the Congress towards its allies seems to have irked the other stalwarts of the alliance. There is no public record of the full proceedings of June 8 in Constitution Club, nor of the whispered confidences in its many corridors, but statements made before and after the conclave point to a disturbing absence of any unity.
The DMK, of course, had made known its fury at the Congress switching sides: “Just for a handful of silver he left us/Just for a ribbon to wear on his chest.” The few seats the Congress won in the Tamil Nadu Assembly election in May were entirely thanks to DMK support.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay was, of course, absent because he has been neither inducted into the INDIA bloc nor does he seem interested in joining the fray.
There are now reports, confirmed by former Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan of the CPI(M), that at the meeting proper there were rumbles of remonstrance from Akhilesh Yadav, the alliance’s strongman in Uttar Pradesh, and even “younger brother” Tejashwi Yadav of the RJD, INDIA’s last hope in Bihar that is dimming.
Significantly, with 41 per cent of West Bengal’s voters still supporting her, Mamata Banerjee did not extend her gesture of reconciliation to the Congress president but did so through a heartwarming hug with Sonia. Mamata remains the sincerest of Rajiv Gandhi’s admirers three decades after many in the Congress seem either to have not heard of Rajiv Gandhi or to have forgotten him altogether. Little wonder then that Sonia reciprocated the hug as warmly as it was given.
Allies trust in Sonia
Sonia Gandhi is perceived by Congress allies as the only prominent Congressperson who is not bruising. Nothing would bring unity back to INDIA than the return to political eminence of Sonia Gandhi.
The Congress has only harmed itself and the country by not reconciling its fundamentally contradictory roles as a national party with regional aspirations and its determination to retain with itself the leadership of the alliance. A politically non-aspirational Sonia Gandhi could perform this Houdini act. Alternatively, a presidium of equals comprising Stalin, Mamata, Akhilesh, Tejashwi, and whomever the Congress chooses to nominate would be the best to infuse a spirit of togetherness into the alliance.
In his address to the INDIA conclave, Rahul Gandhi made the heartening claim that INDIA (and India) had already won 2029 but for the BJP’s malign machinations. I agree. PM Modi has never won more than one-third of the national vote. So, two-thirds of India’s voters, of whatever faith or age group, have never voted for the BJP—neither in 2014, nor in 2019, or in 2024.
Modi knows this, which is why he is celebrating his longevity now and not when he really crosses Jawaharlal Nehru’s 17 years of office. For Prime Minister Modi is shrewdly aware that he will never make it past that milestone, for it lies beyond 2029, the Year of Destiny. To get to where it must, the Congress has to only ensure its allies shed the perception that, in Pinarayi Vijayan’s words, the Congress is “not strengthening the INDIA bloc” but “becoming an aide of the BJP”.
There is a simple way to do so. Let the upcoming State elections in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab be. Leave it to Akhilesh and the AAP to hold their own against the BJP. Focus on 2029 with Arjuna’s eye. Bend your head, as the willow does, while “the legions thunder by” so as to straighten yourself to the full height of your stature in just a thousand days from now as the saviour of both INDIA and India. Then will be when the accolades come. Then you will not be chasing shadows.
Mani Shankar Aiyar served 26 years in the Indian Foreign Service, is a four-time MP with over two decades in Parliament, and was a Cabinet Minister from 2004 to 2009.
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