The Myth of the Missing Opposition

The Congress’ crisis is not merely electoral decline, but the slow exhaustion of imagination, organisation and ideological clarity.

For a long time, my understanding of opposition was deeply personal. It began at the dining table. I had just entered college. We had moved to a new house. New friends, new influences, and conversations that stretched late into the evening. At home, the dining table became a miniature parliament. Strong Hindu voices surrounded me in conversations about the RSS. There was admiration for the BJP and fierce arguments about nationalism and culture. Someone once challenged me, saying I would never be able to read M.S. Golwalkar’s ‘Bunch of Thoughts.’ Out of sheer stubbornness, I read it.

Every election season, I would watch my father return after voting, quietly proud that he had voted for the BJP. My reaction was anger, not political disagreement alone but a sense of betrayal. How could an educated man support what I then saw as a ‘non-secular’ political force? Joining the Congress party years later was less about ideological conviction and more about rebellion. It was my way of standing against the dominant voices around me.

Credible Alternatives

Perhaps opposition often begins that way, as rebellion before it becomes philosophy. Years later, more experience, more reading, and seasoned political observation compelled me to confront a more uncomfortable truth that democracies are not sustained by outrage alone. They survive through the disciplined construction of credible alternatives.

That distinction matters because one argument has increasingly entered India’s political discourse — namely, that the present government is somehow responsible for the absence of a strong opposition.

While that argument may sound emotionally satisfying, but democratically it is deeply flawed. No ruling party in any democracy is responsible for ‘manufacturing’ its own opposition. Political opposition is not a constitutional entitlement handed down by governments. It is built through ideology, organisation, leadership, credibility, electoral patience, and relentless political work.

Indian political history itself makes this clear. Independent India did not begin with a thriving opposition ecosystem. For nearly two decades after Independence, the Congress party dominated Indian politics almost absolutely. In the first three general elections, Congress won close to three-quarters of the Lok Sabha seats. Opposition parties existed, but mostly as scattered ideological islands — socialists, communists, Jana Sangh leaders, and regional voices with limited national reach.

Yet nobody seriously argued then that Indian democracy had failed because Congress remained electorally dominant. Congress’s dominance was understood as the natural consequence of political legitimacy, organisational depth, and its association with the freedom struggle.

The Congress party was not merely another political organisation. It was the principal vehicle of Indian nationalism. Born in 1885 as a moderate colonial platform, it transformed under Gandhi into a mass political movement that brought together liberals, socialists, conservatives, secularists, caste reformers, believers, and atheists under one broad umbrella.

That adaptability became its greatest strength. Eventually, it also became its greatest weakness. Over time, Congress evolved continuously — from Nehruvian socialism to Indira Gandhi’s populism, and from Rao’s liberalisation to the rights-based welfare politics of the UPA years. But somewhere along the way, adaptation gradually became ideological ambiguity.

Incoherent Resistance

The party that once represented India’s national imagination increasingly struggled to define what it stood for beyond opposing the BJP. Resistance gradually became its identity. But opposition built entirely around resistance eventually exhausts itself.

Simultaneously, its organisation weakened. Internal democracy declined. State-level leadership weakened. Electoral setbacks were rationalised rather than studied. Dynastic dependence replaced institutional regeneration.

The BJP did not emerge suddenly in 2014. The Jana Sangh and the later BJP spent decades in political irrelevance. In 1984, the BJP won just two seats in Parliament. Yet over four decades, it built organisational discipline, ideological clarity, booth-level machinery, communication networks, and a political narrative that linked nationalism with aspiration and governance.

One may agree or disagree with the BJP’s politics. But no serious observer of democracy can deny the organisational labour behind its rise.

The same is true of India’s regional parties. DMK in Tamil Nadu, TMC in Bengal, SP and BSP in Uttar Pradesh, and RJD in Bihar — none emerged because the ruling parties voluntarily ‘created space’ for them. They built social coalitions, invested in leadership, and converted regional aspirations into political power.

That is how democratic opposition emerges — not by complaint, but by construction. The present argument also rests on another unstated assumption — that the Congress party is the only acceptable opposition in India. That assumption is deeply undemocratic. Democracies do not preserve parties out of historical sentiment. They preserve the freedom to create alternatives. If Congress weakens, the responsibility does not automatically fall to the government to revive it. It falls to political workers, citizens, regional leaders, and emerging movements to build something credible enough to challenge power.

If the government is truly responsible for the absence of opposition, the larger question is this: has the Congress party become so politically fragile that its revival now depends not on its own strength but on its opponent's restraint?

That is not an argument against authoritarianism. It is an admission of organisational exhaustion.

For years, criticising the weaknesses of a party I had once joined in rebellion felt almost like betrayal. Later, defending it out of habit felt intellectually dishonest. Over time, I realised that opposition cannot survive on outrage alone. The seeds of opposition lie in preparation — in building leadership, organisation, ideas, credibility, and public trust.

Congress today seems caught between memory and relevance. It continues to draw emotional legitimacy from history, yet history alone does not sustain political movements indefinitely.

History may explain relevance for a while. It cannot indefinitely substitute for it. A coalition of memories must ultimately become a movement of ideas. Nostalgia must give way to imagination.

Democracy certainly needs opposition. But it needs an opposition capable of competing for power, not merely explaining why it lost it.

(The writer is a learning and development professional. Views personal.)