Jayalalithaa burial: Did Rahul Gandhi, Ghulam Nabi Azad harm Congress with ill-timed smiles?

This is a picture that would haunt the Congress in Tamil Nadu. Party vice president Rahul Gandhi and senior leader Ghulam Nabi Azad were caught by the cameras smiling during the funeral ceremony of AIADMK leader and former chief minister J Jayalalithaa on 6 December while the crowds around them were wailing. The photo, which also had newly appointed state Congress chief S Thirunavukkarasar in the frame, not surprisingly, went viral.[caption id=“attachment_3146386” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Congress vice -president Rahul Gandhi pays his respects to former Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa during her funeral ceremony at MGR Memorial in Chennai on Tuesday. PTI[/caption] The photo may turn out to be an albatross round the state unit’s neck each time it makes an effort to mark its presence. As it is the state Congress has been in somnolence — some would call it coma — in Tamil Nadu, the southern state that elects 39 MPs to Lok Sabha and 234 legislators to the state assembly. Even Rip Van Winkle, the fictional character in Washington Irving’s story, woke up after two decades — only to find that the people and the landscape around him had dramatically changed. But five decades after it was overrun by the Dravidian parties in 1967, the 130-year-old party has failed to shake itself out from its deep slumber. The tell-tale photo, notwithstanding will it be able to do so now? State of flux Tamil Nadu is presently in a situation of flux — notwithstanding the veneer of stability — following Jayalalithaa’s death on 5 December. Parties have already started to reposition themselves in an effort to carve out a slice of the vast space left behind by the 68-year-old charismatic filmstar-turned-political leader who was revered as Amma by lakhs of followers. Jayalalithaa’s man for all crises, O Panneerselvan is once again chief minister and her confidante Sasikala may continue to call the shots, with the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for one, trying to ensure that the AIADMK is not disturbed, destabilised, split or poached upon as its 138 legislators and 51 MPs would be critical for it in the mid-2017 presidential and vice-presidential polls. At the same time, the other major force in the state, the DMK has been in the process of overhauling itself as its supreme leader, the wheelchair bound 92-year-old ailing M Karunanidhi has still to sort out the internecine succession battle in the family though his son MK Stalin is tipped to take over from him. Stalin seems to have established his credentials by ensuring that the DMK emerged as a strong opposition force in 2016 with 89 MLAs in the AIADMK dominated Tamil Nadu assembly. But a divided family bodes ill for the DMK. In a way, the state is going through a crisis of leadership. Can the Congress stand up and make itself be counted in the new situation? Can it inveigle its way into the reckoning? Factionalism and infighting As in any other state, the Congress is Tamil Nadu is riven with dissensions, infighting and factionalism, with the central leadership unable to deal with it. Ever since its debacle in 2014, it has been seized with convulsions that bled the party further. Former Union minister GK Vasan split from the Congress and veteran leader Jayanti Natarajan quit the party after the 2014 polls. So did it its former state unit chief BS Gnanadesikan. In June 2016, EVKS Elangovan resigned as state Congress chief when the party got only eight seats and 6.4 percent votes in the assembly polls — three seats more and three percentage points less than its 2011 show. “We do not have a leader or an organisation in the state which can tap the opportunity,” wailed a senior Congress leader. Though the party has national leaders from Tamil Nadu in the likes of P Chidambaram and Mani Shankar Aiyar, it has a limited pool in selecting its state chief. Indeed, the Congress high command took almost three months to choose Elangovan’s successor. But instead of papering the cracks or inspiring the cadres, the appointment of 66-year-old Thirunavukkarasar added to the heartburning. Seen as a late comer and a party hopper, he had hobnobbed with the undivided DMK, the AIADMK and the BJP and even floated his own outfit, the MGR All India Anna DMK before joining the Congress in 2009. He was also a minister in the Vajpayee government. What the Congress construes as an advantage is also perhaps its disadvantage in the state. As a national party with a long history, the Congress name and flag are easily recognised across the state. It has its own offices in different districts even if many of its workers have switched their loyalties or quit the scene as the party’s fortunes dipped and those of regional forces rose. But along with this is the negativity of an aged party which failed to reinvent or rebrand itself in accordance with changing times, scenarios and demands, lost out in the popularity stakes and chose the soft option of surrendering its identity to regional forces so that it is now considered an outsider. Shrinking base For 50 years, Tamil Nadu has elected home-grown parties like the DMK or the AIADMK to power, reducing the once powerful Congress to an appendage that has been shrinking over time. And if this continues, as part of the non-adaptive evolutionary process, the Congress may soon wither away unless it wakes up to the herculean challenge of somehow reversing the trend that has even started corroding its Lok Sabha performance in the state. Until now the Congress has been drawing comfort from the fact that even if it rode piggyback on the DMK or the AIADMK in the state, the alliance paid it dividends in the Lok Sabha polls. Barring five of the 16 general elections, the Congress benefited from it in Tamil Nadu. While no party can be written off completely, there are ominous signs that this trend may not hold for long. In 2014, the Congress got a mere 44 Lok Sabha seats across the country and drew a blank in 19 states and Union Territories, including Tamil Nadu. Jayalalithaa’s party had walked away with all the 39 seats, much like the DMK- UPA had done in 2004. In the 2016 state elections, while the DMK won 89 seats, the Congress could rustle up just eight. The big question is whether the Congress be able to use the changing situation in Tamil Nadu to arrest and reverse its decline? Not many would bet on it.