 If I say the word Congress Party, what comes to your mind? What image comes to your mind? To my mind, it is Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi. Now, if I use the phrase Congress Party before independence, or the National Movement Congress Party, to my mind, it is always Mahatma Gandhi. And more specifically that black and white footage that we see of Mahatma Gandhi with his stick walking furiously marching along with his band of followers, that's the image I get. Again, if you say Congress Party after independence, then it is Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, followed by Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. The Congress Party after independence is almost entirely identified with the Nehru Gandhi family. That same Congress Party is going to now have a presidential election, election for the top post of the party and rumor has it that this is going to be a non-Gandhi president. Now, this is not the first time that has happened as recently as 1996 to 1998. There was a non-Gandhi who was the party president. But if I ask you to name a few Congress Party presidents who are not named Nehru or Gandhi, you are going to have some trouble finding those names unless you're someone who follows political party politics, someone who's interested in the history of the Congress Party. You would find it difficult to name Congress Party presidents who are not either named Nehru or Gandhi. In 1978, after the Congress lost its first elections, a Gandhi has been Congress president for 36 out of 44 years. And even before that, during the emergency, the Congress president was a minor poet from Assam called Devkant Barua, who was famous, or should I say notorious for coining the phrase, India is Indira and Indira is India. So a clear Gandhi family loyalist straight from 1975 with a short interregnum of about five years till now. But the question is why did this happen? The reason for this is that after independence, the Congress Party was identified with governance. It was seen as the party of government, party of rule. And it ruled for 45 out of the first 50 years after independence. In other words, the Congress Party was identified with the central government. In fact, the interesting thing is that right from the beginning, there was a conflict within the party over who will be more important, the party or the government, the first president of independent, first Congress president of independent India who had been elected Congress president in 1946 at the turn of independence, J.B. Kripilani had complained right in the beginning that the government is not listening to the Congress Party. His view was that the Congress Party embodied the spirit of the national movement and the government or the Congress government needed to listen to the Congress Party, needed to follow whatever the Congress Party was saying. And Jawaharlal Nehru and Sadar Patel, Prime Minister and Home Minister, didn't want any of that. They were pushed back and Kripilani did not survive. Within a few months, just three to four months of independence, Kripilani had to resign and he quit as president. The person who replaced him, Patabi Sitaramaiya, told the party line he was more or less a Nehru loyalist and he remained there till 1950. By 1950, the average Indian's mind, the Congress Party was equal to central government and central government or governmental power was being increasingly personified in the Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. So, if you look at the equation, it was Congress equal to central government, central government equal to Nehru, removed central government, Congress equal to Nehru. Now, obviously senior leaders in the Congress they weren't very happy about that and an interesting thing happened in 1950. A Congress leader called Purshotam Das Tandon emerged as the majority consensus candidate for the party president's post. Elections were held in 1950. He had the backing of the second most powerful person in the Congress, which is Sadar Patel. But, as far as Nehru and Tandon were concerned, they were ideologically like chalk and cheese. If Tandon had been alive today, he would have definitely been part of the BJP and Nehru was the exact opposite of that. So, Nehru did not want Purshotam Das Tandon to be president. So, he put up his own candidate against Tandon and he believed he would win. And who was the candidate? The same person who had resigned earlier, J.B. Kripilani. They had kind of come to a truce and Nehru put up Kripilani as his candidate. What happened in the 1950 election? Tandon won and Nehru's candidate lost. In effect, Nehru lost control of the party. Unfortunately for Tandon, within a few months, Sadar Patel died. And Nehru began flexing his muscles. The first thing he did was, he got resolutions passed which backed his policies. Remember, as soon as Tandon came, the party started flexing its muscle against the government and Nehru was pushing back. And soon, Nehru then resigned from the Congress Working Committee, saying that he cannot work with a president who is completely opposed to his views, his policies, effectively telling the party leadership to choose between Tandon and his line and himself. Tandon had no option but to quit. And I'm going to quote what he said when he resigned. He said, Pandit Nehru is not an ordinary member of the Working Committee. He represents the nation more than any other individual today. So, to the party leadership and Tandon, it was clear that Congress Party was now equal to the Prime Minister or Nehru. And that was one reason why Nehru wanted early general elections against the advice of the majority of top Congress leaders who believed that the Indian people are still not mature enough to vote in elections. Nehru knew that the people would back him. He was that popular. And once that happened, he knew that he would be able to stamp his authority completely on the party. And that is what happened. After the first general elections, Nehru's control over the party was complete till his death. Every president was a Nehru loyalist. And the Congress Party brand and the Nehru family brand got so closely intertwined that when Nehru died, even though he had officially anointed Lal Bahadur Shastri as his successor, Lal Bahadur Shastri went to Indira Gandhi. Grieving in Indira Gandhi, his father had just died and told her, Now take care of your nation. It was a token offer that I won't be Prime Minister, you be Prime Minister. The Congress leadership didn't want Indira Gandhi at that time. But that was the power of the Nehru brand at that time. And when Lal Bahadur Shastri died, the obvious choice became Indira Gandhi. But the party was once again, the leadership was trying to flex its muscle and say, We will determine what the government does. And they thought that Indira Gandhi would be a goongi goody eyes. They would call her later on, a dumb doll who would listen to them. Indira Gandhi showed that it's the Prime Minister who determines what the Congress party will be, who controls the Congress party. After 1969 when she split the party, took control of the party apparatus and showed who was the boss, the Gandhi family's control over the Congress party was complete. Unchallenged. Since then the only time when a non-Gandhi family member has been the top boss in the party was when Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated and P.V. Narasimha Rao became both President of the Congress and the Prime Minister. Once again, the Prime Minister controlling the party. When Narasimha Rao's government lost the elections in 1996, Narasimha Rao was removed and Sita Ramkeshwari, a Gandhi family loyalist, was appointed. Presidents of the party, again in 1998 when the Congress lost again, Sita Ramkeshwari had to quit and Sonia Gandhi finally took over as party president, a position that she held till 2017 when she gave way to her son, Rahul Gandhi. And as you know that after the 2019 election debacle, Rahul Gandhi quit the party saying that the party doesn't listen to him and he doesn't want to lead the party and that created a leadership vacuum. There was stock of an immediate Congress party election. It didn't happen. Sonia Gandhi has come back as so-called interim president and effectively the president. And three years have gone by and it's only now that again elections are likely to be held. During this period, there was a lot of angst at the top of the Congress party which was out of power for so long and had been whittled down to a shadow of itself and a letter was sent by 23 top leaders which was seen as a veiled criticism of the way in which Rahul Gandhi functions, the so-called G23, out of them many have left the Congress party. This includes Madhav Rao's India and some of them were not part of G23. Madhav Rao's India, there's Jithin Prasad, there's Captain Amrindar Singh, there's Kapil Sibyl, the former minister, Art Pien Singh and recently Gulaam Navi Azad. Top leaders who have left the party and moved on. So now finally after Gulaam Navi Azad has left there is talk about leadership election and election for the top post of the Congress party. The last time someone had contested against the Gandhi family was in 2000 when Jithin Prasad's father Jithindra Prasad had fought the elections against Sonia Gandhi. He had got only 1% of the vote share but he stayed in the party till his death. Now there is talk that one of the G23 signatories, Shashi Tharoor could contest the elections. He recently wrote an article where he said that the Congress party needs to have an open, transparent election for the top post like the conservative party in the UK had recently and the world saw it after Boris Johnson had acquitted prime minister. That is a hint that Shashi Tharoor wants to contest the elections for president of the Congress party but efforts are on to ensure there's no election, no contest and a consensus candidate can take over as party president. Some say it will be the Gandhi family loyalist Ashok Gelot who might take over. But whoever contests, whoever fights the elections, whether there's an election or not, one thing is clear, the Congress party will still be about the Gandhi's because look at the Bharat Jodo Yatra. Its face is only one, Rahul Gandhi and as long as that happens, as far as campaigning goes, as far as electoral politics goes, the Gandhi family will dictate terms to the Congress party. That's the show today keep watching news click, subscribe to us, like this video, share it as well.