Rajaji foresaw the rot in Congress

The corrupt-beyond-belief Congress party of today is just the ripened fruit of this corruption’s roots which go back several decades. Indeed, eminent Congress leaders and statesmen of the past foresaw this during their own lifetimes. These leaders include but are not limited to Mohandas Gandhi who wanted to disband the Congress once Independence was attained. Yet another tall Congress leader was C. Rajagopalachari or Rajaji who was more eloquent in his criticism of the corruption that had already made significant inroads into the party and Government.

Here is what Rajaji wrote in his journal Swarajya on 10 May 1958 [emphasis added]:

Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru’s satyagraha against the Congress is over. There can be no change in the situation unless a drastic rule is enforced on the party that, barring those who non-co-operated in the first campaign of 1920 by withdrawing from courts and schools and colleges, no one should be allowed to hold any office or executive membership in any committee of the Congress or be put up as a candidate for any of the legislative bodies unless he has an occupational or other known means, be it high or low, by which he maintains himself and his family.It must be made impossible for anyone to live on the Congress or on the political influence obtained therefrom, be it at the lowest village committee level or anywhere higher up in the party hierarchy. The whole-time congressmen bossing at the various levels and parasiting on the Congress and the rivalries, dissensions and intrigues among them have brought the organisation to this pass.

A healthy nexus should be brought into being between honest family life and national life. We shall then have healthy conditions for political life. At present politics has became an alternative and attractive occupation by itself. The Congress organisation has become something like a mutt which attracts and supports people who have no calling of their own and who obtain power over the affairs of the mutt itself. Need we wonder at the deteroration we deplore? The distempers of the Congress arising out of the continuance of power after the lapse of its revolutionary passion, unchallenged by any effective Opposition, cannot be dealt with merely by paternal threats from inside, which the party knows how to meet by fresh confessions of complete dependence and promise of obedience.

IndiaFacts thanks reader Sridhar K Swamy for contributing to this piece.