Bengal, TN spark hope for Congress, but revival is going to be hard work

The Congress senses an opportunity for revival in Tamil Nadu and Bengal after the recent Assembly elections decimated DMK, its long-standing ally, as well as the Trinamool Congress (TMC).

Yet, even as the party sees openings created by tectonic political shifts in both states, it must still find the language and method for reinvigorating itself, lest it fall prey to newer challenges while struggling to resolve old ones.

Also read | VD Satheesan as Kerala CM: Congress got it right, but handled it wrong

Congress leaders insist that the party’s swift somersault in Tamil Nadu from MK Stalin’s DMK-led alliance to one headed by the victorious Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) of Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay was driven less by the lure of power-sharing and more by the hope of revival and expansion. In Bengal, party leaders believe the ruling BJP will hasten to hollow out Mamata Banerjee’s TMC and that its unravelling could aid the Congress in rebuilding itself.

In theory, the optimism may not be entirely unfounded.

Poll results spark optimism

The Congress’s post-poll pact with the TVK has opened the door for its return to government in Tamil Nadu after nearly six decades. The party's Tamil Nadu in-charge Girish Chodankar told The Federal that the names of Congress MLAs to be inducted into Vijay’s cabinet “have been finalised”.

The party is eyeing cabinet berths for two of its five MLAs and is hopeful that its leaders will also be accommodated in boards and corporations. Chodankar says the Congress sees its alliance with the TVK as a “partnership for the long term that will benefit both our parties”.

In Bengal, the Congress believes its revival story has already begun. After drawing a blank in the 2021 polls despite an alliance with the Left Front, the Congress managed to win two seats this time, despite contesting without allies.

Also read | Beaten, yet Congress could see green shoots in Mamata-less Bengal

Its vote share increased only marginally, but across several constituencies in its erstwhile strongholds of Muslim-dominated Malda, Murshidabad and Uttar Dinajpur districts, a sizeable section of minority voters who had shifted to the TMC five years ago returned to the Congress fold.

'No direct correlation'

Former Congress MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, who finished second in Baharampur behind the BJP in his first Assembly contest since 1996, told The Federal that the Congress must now “consolidate gains it made in the Malda-Murshidabad region and gradually rebuild itself in other parts of the state”.

Even as Congress sees openings created by tectonic political shifts in the two states, it must still find the language and method for reinvigorating itself, lest it fall prey to newer challenges while struggling to resolve old ones.

One of Mamata Banerjee’s sharpest critics within the Bengal Congress, Chowdhury cautioned that “just because the Trinamool has lost, the Congress will not gain... we have been out of power in the state since 1977, we will have to work systematically to revive”. He rebuffed Mamata’s call for the Congress and the Left parties to unite with the Trinamool against the BJP.

Some in Bengal Congress believe the party should keep the door open for a future understanding with the Left Front if needed, particularly since the BJP’s immediate focus would be to either co-opt or intimidate Trinamool cadres. “The Trinamool is staring at an escalating pushback from the BJP… this is the time when the Congress must redouble its efforts at revival,” says Rohan Mitra, co-chairperson of the Bengal Congress media wing.

Congress recalibrates in TN

At first glance, the poll results in Tamil Nadu and Bengal appear to have helped the Congress shape two distinct strategies for organisational renewal – a solo journey in Bengal and a new, unevenly symbiotic alliance in Tamil Nadu.

For a party known for institutional inertia and attachment to the status quo, that is at least a beginning. Yet many within the Congress also sound a note of caution. A senior AICC functionary who has previously handled party affairs in Tamil Nadu told The Federal that the alliance with Vijay offers the Congress “a hope that is deeply ensnared with deception”.

Hoping that Vijay’s popularity and the lack of TVK’s grassroots structure will help the Congress regain its mojo in Tamil Nadu, party leaders say their contribution would lie in sharing institutional wisdom, administrative insight and ideological grounding.

The functionary argued that the Congress’s earlier alliances with the DMK and AIADMK “pushed us further towards irrelevance even in times of victory… we never got a share of power, we could not expand our electoral footprint and we had no voice in the governance agenda of the coalitions we were supposedly part of."

Also read | Kerala fixed now, but does it reflect Congress' internal crisis?

The alliance with Vijay appears more equitable because the Congress is now in government and may have a say in policymaking and the coalition’s political direction. “But the obvious flipside to this arrangement is that we will now be party not just to the good things that TVK will be known for but also the bad; we won’t have any deniability,” the leader added.

For most Tamil Nadu Congress leaders who pushed for an alliance with Vijay, the attraction of the TVK stemmed from the incompleteness of its politics. Unlike the Dravidian giants DMK and AIADMK, the TVK, despite its stunning debut victory, is not yet a fully institutionalised political outfit. It lacks an entrenched leadership structure, its cadre base is still rooted in Vijay’s fan following rather than grassroots political workers, its ideological moorings remain unclear and it has no administrative experience.

Coalition calculations around Vijay

While Vijay brings visibility, emotional appeal and mass popularity, all of which contributed to the TVK’s momentum, how he governs, navigates coalition politics and defines his party’s ideology remains to be seen.

Hoping that Vijay’s popularity and the lack of TVK’s grassroots structure will help the Congress in both returning to electoral ascendancy and expanding its footprint in Tamil Nadu, party leaders say their contribution to the alliance would lie in sharing institutional wisdom, administrative insight and ideological grounding.

Yet many within the Congress are not entirely in Vijay’s thrall. A senior MP told The Federal that those claiming Vijay’s lack of political and administrative experience gives the Congress a natural advantage are “under the delusion that the TVK has roped in the Congress not as a political ally but as some independent consultant”.

Another party leader pointed out that while politics has often been a natural transition for Tamil film stars, the state has never rewarded charisma alone. “If MGR(AIADMK founder MG Ramachandran) and Jayalalithaa dominated Tamil politics at different times, we also have examples ranging from Sivaji Ganesan to Kamal Haasan who were superstars but failed politically… right now Vijay is somewhere in between these two ends of the spectrum,” the leader said.

He added, Vijay’s first electoral success has been phenomenal, but “whether he stays the course remains uncertain… Karunanidhi, MGR and Jayalalithaa each developed political styles rooted in Dravidian politics; Vijay, by contrast, still represents political anticipation more than a coherent political model”.

Debate over electoral strategy

The Congress must also recognise that long years of DMK and AIADMK duopoly had already absorbed Congress’s planks of backward caste mobilisation, welfare populism and added to it the emotive dimension of linguistic nationalism long ago. The Congress now survives largely on fragments of minority support, inherited goodwill and nostalgia for the Kamaraj era, which the TVK may eventually see as inadequate compensation for the share in power it is offering the party.

This leaves the Congress trapped. If Vijay fails, the Congress does too. If Vijay succeeds, political logic would suggest he will seek to expand rather than cede space to the Congress. The party should by now be familiar with this trap: alliances across states such as Jammu and Kashmir, Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh may have helped preserve relevance but also deepened the Congress’s long-term dependency on regional forces.

Also read | Why Vijay's TVK win doesn't mark the end of Dravidian politics in TN

Perhaps for this reason, Congress leaders in Bihar after the defeat of the RJD-led Grand Alliance last year, and now in Bengal, have begun advocating an ekla chalo – go solo – strategy for revival. Yet this approach too comes with challenges.

Electoral space under pressure

The Congress’s modest revival in Bengal and its rout in neighbouring Assam exposed another uncomfortable reality. In states with sizeable Muslim populations, the party’s room for recovery has been steadily constricted by the BJP’s communal polarisation and its success in portraying rivals as “minority appeasers” indifferent to followers of Sanatan Dharma.

Of the 19 Congress MLAs elected in Assam, 18 are Muslims. In Bengal too, both winning Congress candidates are Muslims. The party’s inability to effectively counter the BJP’s communal rhetoric and the growing perception of secularism as a political liability rather than a virtue has pushed the Congress to the margins in Hindu-dominated districts and urban centres across Bengal and increasingly in Assam as well.

Need for new idiom

To revive in either state, with or without alliances, the Congress will need to discover a new idiom for its politics; something its current strategies in Tamil Nadu and Bengal do not reveal. Merely invoking the party’s glorious past without offering a convincing blueprint for the future, or professing commitment to revival without sustained grassroots work, will not suffice.

Tamil Nadu and Bengal may have offered the Congress tactical openings. To project them as evidence of course correction, or worse, mistake them for structural revival, would be a grave error. The party should know by now that temporary alliance adjustments or anti-incumbency against dominant regional players cannot substitute for the social coalition, ideological clarity and grassroots strength essential for long-term electoral survival.