Keeping up with UP: Sonia Gandhi-Mamata Banerjee meeting and politics of hugs

POliticians feature a path of electronic messaging. Slow every handshaking and hug lies a reason. One such warm hug hit the headlines when Congress leader Sonia Gandhi met former chief minister Mamata Banerjee this month. The meeting coincided with a series of exits from the crisis-hit Trinamool Congress (TMC) following its loss of power in West Bengal in May after 15 years.It was not the first time Gandhi and Banerjee had met warmly. Apparently, Gandhi did not merely comfort the embattled Banerjee, who quit the Congress in 1998 to form the TMC. She pushed for unity, triggering speculation about the breakaway faction’s merger with the Congress.A merger would not only salvage the TMC but also infuse fresh life into the Congress in West Bengal, potentially creating a semblance of an Opposition against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The Left parties, which the TMC decimated along with the Congress during its 15-year rule, have not shown any signs of recovery.The two parties must overcome structural hurdles for any merger attempt to reach fruition, years after Banerjee, known as a street fighter, became West Bengal’s first woman chief minister, thanks to her resilience, overcoming a severe head injury sustained during a public protest against the Left Front government in the 1990s. The merger may or may not happen, but Gandhi’s hug set the tone for greater synergy between the two parties.In 2018, Gandhi embraced Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leader Mayawati at HD Kumaraswamy’s swearing-in ceremony as Karnataka chief minister, as non-BJP leaders assembled to showcase their unity, which did not last long.Gandhi has shown special bonhomie towards women leaders. In 1999, she drove to Mayawati’s residence with a bouquet of pink flowers on her birthday, three years after the BSP leader abandoned the Congress after contesting the 1996 Uttar Pradesh assembly polls together. Pink is Mayawati’s favourite colour. She wears pink on her birthday.In 2003, Gandhi sent a bouquet when BSP founder Kanshi Ram was hospitalised. Gandhi followed it up with a telephone call to Mayawati to inquire about her mentor’s health.Political embraces and handshakes have been a part of India’s political culture. Friends-turned-rivals Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad Yadav hugged in Patna before contesting the 2015 assembly polls in alliance with the Congress. The alliance got the better of the BJP even as it returned to power with a full majority on its own at the Centre a year earlier. The Yadav-Kumar hug was seen as an end to their 20-year acrimony and the return of the social coalition of Kurmis and Yadavs. The two soon parted ways and are now avowed rivals again.Ahead of the 2014 national elections, Sonia Gandhi shared the dais with Sharad Pawar at a rally in Maharashtra’s Bhandara, marking the reconciliation between the two leaders. Pawar broke away from the Congress in 1999 and formed the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) the same year over Sonia Gandhi’s foreign-origin issue. There has been talk of the Sharad Pawar-led NCP faction’s merger with the Congress.The NCP founder lost his party after his nephew, Ajit Pawar, split it and allied with the BJP. Sharad Pawar is 85 and ailing, while Ajit Pawar died in a chopper clash this year, leaving his faction literally rudderless. The NCP and the TMC, two major breakaway factions from the Congress, are now in shambles.In Uttar Pradesh, which is due to go to the polls early next year, the disarray necessitates a further cementing of the Samajwadi Party (SP)-Congress alliance. The SP has shed the old equidistance policy of its late founder, Mulayam Singh, from the BJP and the Congress.Yadav avoided sharing dais with Congress leaders until he attended the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government’s ceremony unveiling its report card, flanked by Sonia Gandhi and then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Yadav later joined the dinner with the top UPA leaders. When asked about his presence there, he replied: “They have given a lot of respect.” Years later, the reply offers one of the ways that Congress could rebuild alliances when many of its previously difficult allies need it more than it needs them.