On the eve of the 2024 general election the INDIA bloc was barely in existence. Rahul Gandhi did not attend the first meeting of the proposed anti-BJP alliance called by Nitish Kumar in Patna because he was in the US. A second meeting was convened in Mumbai and was a huge success because it was graced by Sonia Gandhi, a magnet who has a remarkable capacity to attract the iron shavings of a disparate opposition.

But there was a minor disagreement that came to light only much later. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin had sent an English-speaking envoy to caution Rahul that Praveen Chakravarty, a Brahmin Iyengar whom he proposed to field in my place as the Congress candidate from my former parliamentary constituency of Mayiladuthurai, was “unacceptable” to the DMK—for various sordid sins that need not detain us further. The envoy told me he had never had a “rougher” conversation with Rahul.

That little glitch, however, did not come in the way of constituting INDIA well before the election. Tragically, it was constituted but not consolidated. It went into the election as a tentative and fragile alliance, without a common platform or symbol, or even a common leader.

Yet, astonishingly, the INDIA bloc came just a handful of seats behind the BJP, which won only a minority of votes and a minority of seats. Had the INDIA bloc been given a distinct political identity before the election, perhaps a common symbol, and, best of all, a common minimum programme that focused on saving the country from majoritarian communalism, authoritarianism, and jingoism, I do not have the least doubt that INDIA would have won a dozen more seats, making it, even in June 2024, the largest political entity in Parliament.

Rahul Gandhi would have been invited by the President to take oath and try his hand at forming a government. The notorious opportunists Nitish Kumar and Chandrababu Naidu would have extended support to be invited into the Council of Ministers. And the country could have drawn a deep breath of relief at India that is Bharat being rescued from the shark’s jaws of Hindutva.

The need now is to get into stride for the next opportunity that, inshallah, will come our way in 2029, a mere 1,000 days away. While individual parties resurrect themselves from the mortuaries into which they have been laid, the more urgent need is to bring INDIA into focus.

Viable challenge to Hindutva needed

For that, the first requisite is a president or national convenor who will concentrate on building INDIA into a viable and credible challenger to Hindutva. The latter has never received much more than a third of the electorate’s vote, which means the remaining two-thirds must include at least 60 per cent of Bharat’s Hindus who have seen through the pseudo-Hinduism of Modi and his cohort.

To my mind, the obvious option for such a national convenor is Stalin. I am setting out my reasons below for this proposal.

First, it follows the example set by Jawaharlal Nehru after his political reversal following the disastrous performance of the Indian armed forces against the Chinese in October-November 1962. Nehru requested Kamaraj in distant Madras to take over the national presidency of the Indian National Congress. Kamaraj, in turn, promptly proposed the “Kamaraj Plan”, which was predicated on senior Congress Ministers who had spent years in the Cabinet resigning their ministerial posts to devote themselves to party work.

India (and the INDIA bloc) need a Kamaraj in the 21st century. Stalin is the obvious choice and for the very same reasons that led Nehru in 1963 to pick Kamaraj.

Second, no alliance can be consolidated under its major component. The major component of INDIA is the Congress. Its dominance is assured. Why then cavil at Stalin taking Rahul’s place? A smaller partner is a better assurance of alliance unity.

Third, since October 13, 2003, when Jayalalithaa’s goons almost murdered me and the DMK’s M. Karunanidhi reached out to save me, that is for the last 23 years, the Congress’ most reliable friend has been the DMK.

Keeping partners in alliance

Fourth, Stalin has proven to be an exceptional administrator, first as Mayor of Chennai and later as Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. He knows how to knock heads together and create a consensus out of chaos. That is exactly what INDIA needs. If Mamata Banerjee or Akhilesh Yadav or Tejashwi Yadav want to wear the crown of thorns, then Stalin is the right man to negotiate deals to keep them in the alliance, not reluctantly but grimly satisfied.

Fifth, the Congress needs to remember that Rahul can become Prime Minister only if the INDIA bloc wins the next general election, and that cannot happen without a strong bloc, for which only Stalin can provide the leadership, because, after his predicted victory in the upcoming Tamil Nadu election, he can sit back and let his son, Udhayanidhi, and senior colleagues run the State government while he carves out a well-deserved niche in the annals of our ancient nation’s history.

Sixth, he is totally secular. He is the only INDIA leader capable of making Rajiv Gandhi’s definition of secularism his own. For, as Rajiv said on the floor of the Lok Sabha on May 5, 1989, “Only an India that is secular can survive. And perhaps an India that is not secular does not deserve to survive.”

Seventh—and most important of all—he has proved since the INDIA bloc’s near-victory in June 2024 that he has the unerring ability to zero in on issues that matter to the people instead of endlessly repeating trite slogans.

Greater federalism needed

He has a solution to India’s greatest problem, which is preserving the unity and integrity of the nation in the face of the divisiveness to which it has been subjected since 2014: the revision of the Constitution to make it more federal by revisiting Schedule Seven that lists the responsibilities of the State and Central governments and the Concurrent list to make India less a “Union of States with federal features” (to quote the Father of the Constitution, Babasaheb Ambedkar) and more a “Federation of States with Unionist features”.

Please recall the circumstances in which our Republic was made a Union of States in preference to a federation. Our beloved country had just been viciously partitioned, leading to a massacre of at least 2,00,000 innocents; a million people had been displaced, countless women, girls, and even children raped, and lakhs seriously injured. Waiting to grab their share of freedom’s cake were nearly 600 “princes”. In the shadows was the saffron parivar (although Modi himself was yet to be born), one of whom was nursing a pistol with which to take the Mahatma’s life. In these circumstances, a strong Centre was the only way out of murder and mayhem.

Now, nearly 80 years later, we are a strong, united nation, deeply embedded in unity with diversity. We can boldly and wisely relook at the Constitution, especially in two respects.

First, while the State list is by far the longest list of responsibilities, the devolution of finances does not correspond to the devolution of duties.

Second, the biggest threat to our unity no longer comes from balkanisation but from majoritarian communalism. It is, therefore, incumbent on Dravidian India to restore sanmati (or good sense, as Gandhiji called it) to the Aryan mind. No one is better suited to perform both tasks than Stalin. That, in itself, is reason enough to entrust the leadership of the INDIA bloc to the one person capable of rising to this responsibility.

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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