Recently, the Congress celebrated its 125th annivarsary. Was this the Congress founded by A O Hume? The Indian National Congress, founded 125 years ago, was led by greats such as Madam Cama, Annie Besant, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Bal Gangadhar Tilak. Later, the party was led by M K Gandhi, Motilal Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Acharya Kripalani. The Congress gave us leaders such as Lala Lajpat Rai, Bankim Chandra Pal, Sarojini Naidu, Raj Kumari, Amrit Kaur, C Rajagopalachari, Chittarajnan Das, Madan Mohan Malaviya and Rafi Ahmad Kidwai, all titans who devoted their lives to the cause of India’s freedom. Their’s was the party that was founded 125 years ago, not the one that was celebrating the anniversary.

Post-independence, Bapu had suggested that the Congress be disbanded. He had realised that people with conflicting ideologies had come together for the sake of independence and would now find it difficult to work together. He also knew that many people in the pre-independence Congress were basically social workers who had no interest in electoral politics, while some others were getting ready to savour the fruits of power.

Being a shrewd strategist, Bapu realised that Congress was the only party capable of holding together the diverse humanity that constituted the fledgling nation. The village workers, freed of political hindrances, would be able to work for village development and social reform and the goodwill that they earned would rub off on the political party, which would reap electoral rewards. This strategy worked for the Congress for the first four decades, till the Congress that was founded 125 ago, disintegrated.

In the late 1960s, after the untimely death of the then prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, the Congress was split by the growing ambitions of Pandit Nehru's daughter. Indira split the Congress down the middle into the Congress Syndicate, which was later called Congress Old. The faction headed by Indira and propped up by Kamraj formed the government. It was called Congress (R) or Ruling. At this stage, the party founded by Hume 125 years ago, was disbanded and, as its name suggests, became Congress Old.

After this, Congress experienced a split in every decade. In Maharashtra, the young Sharad Pawar split the party and named his faction as Congress (S). Pawar had a homecoming during Rajiv Gandhi’s reign.

In the 1970s, India witnessed an insult to its democracy, inflicted by Indira Gandhi in the form of the Emergency. When she was forced to restore democracy, Babu Jagjivan Ram walked out and formed the Congress for Democracy. Then the Ruling Congress was rechristened Congress (I). I was for Indira, not India, as Hume had christened his party, the Indian National Congress 125 years ago.

Those who remained with Indira Gandhi in 1978 consider themselves the elite 'loyalists' of the present Congress. So, honestly, the Congress that is celebrating its 125th annivarsary this year was formed 32 years ago in 1978, not 125 years ago.

Of course, more splits were to follow. After Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination during the Narasimha Rao years, when the Congress (I) was headed by Sitaram Kesari, the loyalist troika of N D Tiwari, Jitendra Prasada and Arjun Singh formed the Congress (T), but it was a shortlived split.

The most recent split came when Pawar, P A Sangma and Tariq Anwar walked out along with their loyalists and formed the Nationalist Congress Party that, ever since the split, is trying to rejoin the parent party formed in 1978.

I have some memorablia of the party formed by Hume. There is a poster of Congress presidents since the time it was formed till just after independence. The poster shows photographs of some of the most illustrious leaders ever to have served the cause of India, none of them related to each other, except the Nehru father-son duo and the Bose brothers — Sarat and Subhash. There is also a photograph of the Congress working committee meeting and the famous photograph of the troika Pandit Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Patel.

When the 32 year-old party was celebrating its 125th anniversary, the pictures of the party’s present lot of leaders on stage saddened me. In Maharashtra, there was Shiv Sainiks Narayan Rane and Sanjay Nirupam masquerading as Congressmen. In Gujarat, RSS pracharak Shankar Sinh Vaghela was passing himself off as a Congressman. Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar, accused of mass murder of Sikhs in 1984, and the latest black sheep N D Tiwari, were celebrating the 125th annivarsary of the Congress founded by Hume.

The contrast is stark between the names of glorious leaders mentioned earlier, who were part of Hume's Congress, and the rogue's gallery of the Congress that was formed 32 years ago. So, why was a 32 year-old party celebrating its 125th anniversary?

The writer is founder

president, Mahatma

Gandhi Foundation