Surname Wars

It seems that the Congress party has developed a remarkable talent that whenever it is handed a rare political victory, it treats it not as a mandate to govern but as an opportunity for collective nervous collapse. Having been reduced to a shrinking archipelago amid the BJP’s continental expansion, the party finally managed to secure Kerala this time. And yet, instead of focusing on issues, it has immediately begun heckling its own Chief Minister V. D. Satheesan over his surname.

When Satheesan took oath using his full name - Vadasseri Damodara Menon Satheesan, a section of his own party erupted into moral panic. Apparently, uttering the wor “Menon” in public now qualifies as ideological deviation. One Congress leader performed ritual outrage on Facebook, solemnly explaining that he himself preferred not to use an elaborate caste identifier. Another advised the new CM to

read more Ambedkar, as though Satheesan had just announced the restoration of feudal Travancore.

The absurdity was almost operatic. Here was a man speaking emotionally about his deceased parents and saying he wanted to honour his father’s name and regretted not being able to mention his mother’s, and the Congress reaction was to launch a seminar on caste semiotics. In most functioning political parties, this would have passed as a personal moment. But in today’s Congress, it has become a prosecutorial inquiry.

Parties in decline cease to distinguish between symbolism and substance. They begin policing atmospherics because they no longer possess the confidence to shape reality. The Congress, once India’s great umbrella party, increasingly resembles a debating society trapped in an endless postgraduate tutorial on identity etiquette while the country moves on without it.

The irony is exquisite. The Congress likes to portray itself as the last bastion of pluralism against the BJP’s muscular ideological certainty. Yet it has become astonishingly inflexible in its own way.

The row over the full rendition of ‘Vande Mataram’ during the swearing-in ceremony revealed the same pathology. Satheesan explained, plausibly enough, that the inclusion came from Raj Bhavan protocol and that he realised the full version was being sung only after standing up. Instead, the Congress’ ideological guardians immediately swung into action, warning that secularism itself had been imperilled.

The Congress and the Left often seem incapable of understanding that most Indians do not experience patriotism and pluralism as mutually exclusive categories. They can stand respectfully during ‘Vande Mataram’ without secretly plotting majoritarian revolution.

Kerala was supposed to offer the Congress a revival narrative, a sign that the party could still organise, campaign and govern. Instead, within hours of assuming office, its ecosystem descended into a quarrel so self-defeating that it bordered on parody. A party that once led the freedom struggle now seems unable to survive a swearing-in

ceremony without accusing itself of ideological betrayal. One almost fears what might happen if it ever wins two states in a row.