Take the fact that the Congress does not appear to be even interested in unseating the BJP alliance from power. This is not so much because Congressmen and Congresswomen have suddenly recognised that the BJP alliance has got the popular mandate and the Congress should hence be content with providing what its leader has delicately termed "constructive opposition". The cruel fact is that Sonia Gandhi's battalions are unable to push the BJP out of power on account of the Congress' own "compulsions",a term popularised in recent days by that master of opportune anti-Congressism, Chandrababu Naidu. To paraphrase a saying used to deride the strategy of non-violence during the freedom struggle, Majboori ka naam Sonia Gandhi!

For one, Sonia Gandhi is aware that parliamentary activism at present can only be led by Sharad pawar, a prospect that would enable the victor of the Maharashtra electoral battle to claim greater glory. This is not an attractive idea for what Congressmen have got used to calling their High Command. In the imperial system that is the Congress a satrap cannot be allowed to get too powerful. As it is, Bal Thackeray has queered the pitch by making allegations of friendship between Maharashtra strongman Sharad Pawar and Chief Minister Manohar Joshi. Reports that at least in part the swings of the Jayalalitha mood match the Pawar pendulum and that the khas Congress of Sharad Pawar provided some manure for the ghas Congress of Mamata Banerjee are only intended to add tothe unease in 10 Janpath.

Secondly, Sonia Gandhi has also to contend with others who can ruin her party. Two of her predecessors have a sufficient sense of self-importance to hate being pushed into her shadow. Sitaram Kesri is in a deep sulk, and who knows what lies behind the perpetual pout of P.V. Narasimha Rao? Indeed, not only past presidents but even those who have graced the position of party vice-president can become significant power-brokers. In this respect, the wily Arjun Singh is matched step by step by the intriguing Jitendra Prasada. And then there are mufassil leaders with metropolitan ambitions with whom Sonia Gandhi must contend. Her inexperience showed first when she gave a Rajya Sabha ticket to Santosh Mohan Deb days after he had bitten the dust in the Lok Sabha fray. It showed even more when she responded to the fuss made by Matang Singh, hardly one to carry conviction when he invokes principles. The likes of Singh got her to say that giving a Rajya Sabha ticket to defeated Lok Sabhacandidates is wrong. This sealed the fate of Arjun Singh. And it sent him precariously close to becoming a dissident.

Third, Sonia Gandhi's choice of the committee to revitalise the Congress also occasioned inner-party carping. Congressmen who are quick to notice and comment on caste and creed, even as they claim undying faith in secularism, started whispering sinisterly that three of the five committee members are Christians. While this was surely due to basing the selection on merit, the message that Sonia Gandhi was not adhering to the traditional Congress Amar-Akbar-Antony formula was interpreted as denominational partiality.

Fourth, Sonia Gandhi has taken over an organisation which has lost the most important part of its base in the country's politically most important part. The traditional vote bank of the Congress has long been depleted. The upper castes, euphemistically and often inaccurately called "Forwards", voted with their feet and moved to the BJP. The Muslims were appropriated by the likesof Mulayam Singh Yadav and Laloo Prasad Yadav. The Dalits in Uttar Pradesh became foot-soldiers in Kanshi Ram's motley army and in Bihar they organised themselves in radical formations like the CPI (ML-Liberation). And such Backwards as remained with the Congress parivar, such as Ram Lakhan Singh Yadav, had more pressing familial concerns such as shielding offspring like the infamous Prakash Chandra from the arm of the law.

Fifth, Sonia Gandhi was therefore left only with an appeal to that small section of the public that says or pretends that it is "modern", above caste and communal considerations, globalised Indians and other exotic elements. She also has no choice but to premise her politics on "issues", and not only those of the familial kind. In this, she perforce had to echo her public bete noire, V.P. Singh, who had earlier talked of the need now to transcend casteism (read aggressive Yadavism) and evolve a multi-party consensus on national issues.

Sixth, Sonia Gandhi's dilemma wasaccentuated because while on the one side politics threw her close to the likes of V.P. Singh (who even advanced her a conditional "clean chit") and Chandra Shekhar, she had necessarily also to gloss over the contentious Jain Commission. Others, however, are not equally eager to forgive and forget other acts of omission and commission and even the proximity to power of what has been called the Vishwa Hinduja Parishad did not guarantee the final silencing of the Bofors howitzer.

Seventh, the dilemma of the Congress is even more acute because even as it seeks to stand above contentious caste and communal matters, it has inevitably to make up its mind about whether to woo "secular mass leaders" like Laloo Prasad, Mulayam Singh and Mayawati or to fight against them. For when the party seeks to revitalise itself by shifting from the politics of mandate to the politics of mass base, it cannot ignore them.

For the moment, however, Sonia Gandhi has decided to concentrate on rebuilding the independent base of theCongress In Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The various leaders of the party have also pushed her into that direction, as a challenge to her leadership abilities. And, like an earlier Gandhi, she too has started from Champaran, an area once made famous and then forgotten. The people of that unfortunate district may well say that events and personalities come twice in history, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.