Mani Shankar Aiyar invokes Indira Gandhi's Emergency to warn Congress: ‘Crushing dissent will spell doom'

Mani Shankar Aiyar (File photo)

• Mani Shankar Aiyar warns Congress against stifling dissent
• He cites party history, saying growth depends on internal debate
• Congress distances itself, says Aiyar speaks personally

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Veteran Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar has once again taken aim at the party’s top brass, arguing that its survival and growth have always depended on internal disagreement rather than enforced conformity. In a video posted on his YouTube channel titled “No space for dissent in today's Congress?”, Aiyar revisits more than a century of party history to contend that suppressing alternative voices has repeatedly proved disastrous.

“If, therefore, the current establishment cannot stand a dissident, then I'm afraid it is the doom of the Congress,” he warned, adding, “The Congress lives because of dissidents. The Congress grows because there are many opinions.”

Emergency as turning point

Aiyar identified the Emergency under Indira Gandhi as the only period when dissent was completely stifled within the party. “There was just one time when a complete ban was placed on any kind of dissidents. That was during Indira Gandhi's Emergency,” he said.

He described the fallout as severe and immediate. “The Congress not only lost,” he stated, “Indira Gandhi lost her Rae Bareli seat, and Sanjay Gandhi lost his Amethi seat. That is what happens if you crush dissidents in the Congress party.”

According to him, the Emergency marked a decisive departure from the organisation’s long-standing culture of accommodating sharp internal differences.

A tradition of disagreement

Tracing the party’s past, Aiyar argued that friction and rivalry have existed since its earliest years. He cited the appointment of Badruddin Tyabji as Congress president in 1888 and the resistance he encountered from sections of the Muslim elite as one of the first recorded instances of dissent.

Moving to the early 20th century, Aiyar referred to the ideological rift between moderates and extremists that culminated in the Surat split of 1907. Leaders such as Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai and Bipin Chandra Pal were pitted against figures like Gopal Krishna Gokhale and M.G. Ranade. Yet, he stressed, such divisions did not spell the end of the party.

“The real strength of the Congress has been in the variety of opinion which the Congress has always accommodated,” Aiyar said. Despite fierce arguments, Tilak later went on to become Congress president, and Mahatma Gandhi publicly acknowledged Gokhale as his political mentor. For Aiyar, these examples illustrate a tradition of absorbing contradictions rather than eliminating rivals.

Father, son,and ideological battles

Recalling events from 1929, Aiyar mentioned Subhas Chandra Bose’s jibe that the Congress was being run by “the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.” He underscored that Bose was not expelled for the remark. “Nobody expelled Subhas Chandra Bose for what he had said,” Aiyar noted.

Although Bose eventually left after fundamental differences with Mahatma Gandhi over non-violence and went on to form the Forward Bloc, Aiyar emphasised, “He walked out of the Congress. He was not expelled.”

He also pointed to tensions within the Nehru family, saying clashes between Jawaharlal Nehru and Motilal Nehru were so intense that “it became impossible to have dinner in Anand Bhavan because the father and son were quarrelling so much among each other”. For Aiyar, this illustrated how dissent was managed internally rather than punished. “That is how you deal with dissidents in the Congress party,” he remarked.

A message for today’s leadership

Turning to more recent history, Aiyar recalled two lines spoken by Rajiv Gandhi in the Lok Sabha on May 5, 1989: “Only a secular Bharat can survive,” and, “And if India is not secular, then perhaps it does not deserve to survive.”

Addressing the current leadership, Aiyar said, “I say to the Congress Party high command who have kept me out of the Working Committee, which now has 60 members, do you have the courage to repeat the words in the mouth of the son of Rajiv Gandhi?”

He concluded with a pointed warning: “If we do not have the courage to answer the dissident in polite but firm language, then we do not deserve to rule.”

Party distances itself

The remarks come amid controversy over Aiyar’s recent statements on the leadership and his praise for the Kerala chief minister.

The Congress has formally distanced itself from him. Party leader Pawan Khera wrote on X that Aiyar “has had no connection whatsoever with the Congress for the past few years. He speaks and writes purely in his personal capacity.”