The Congress Party And Chandragupta

The Indian National Congress was formed during British rule as an independence movement. After independence in 1947 it became the Congress Party and would mostly dominate Indian politics until the election of Narendra Modi in 2014. 

The Congress Party revolved around the Nehru-Gandhi family. Mahatma Gandhi was the leader of the independence movement and the spiritual leader of India. The first prime minister of independent India was Jawaharlal Nehru, until his death in 1964. He had a daughter named Indira, who would become prime minister. Indira Gandhi would be assassinated in 1984 and her son, Rajiv, would become prime minister until 1989. He would be assassinated while campaigning in 1991.

Indira Gandhi was not related to Mahatma Gandhi, she was Nehru's daughter. But she happened to marry a man named Gandhi, thus gaining the name.

Much earlier in India's history, there had been the Mauryan Empire. This had been founded by Chandragupta Maurya and can be considered as India's first golden age. About 650 years after the beginning of that came another golden age as the Gupta Empire was founded by a leader who would take the name Chandragupta I. His grandson would rule as Chandragupta II. 

Indira Gandhi started her own faction of the Congress Party, called Congress I with the "I" standing for "Indira", which eventually took over the whole party. So not only had she gotten the name of Gandhi by marriage, she had also linked herself with the founder of the Gupta Empire just as he had linked himself with the earlier Mauryan Empire, Chandragupta Maurya.

The "I" implied that Indira Gandhi's rule would begin a dynasty. Sure enough her son Rajiv would become prime minister following her assassination, effectively becoming "Congress II", the modern democratic version of Chandragupta II.

Attempting to link to India's past golden ages is nothing new. Chandragupta II, of the Gupta Empire, had an iron pillar made with his inscription. The pillar is now about 1,700 years old. Centuries after it was made the Delhi Sultanate, which was an Islamic empire that preceded the Mughals, moved the pillar to their Qutb Complex, the monuments and tombs in Delhi. This linked them with the greatness of the Gupta Empire.

The "I" in Indira Gandhi's Congress I also evoked this famous iron pillar. Image from Google Street View.

The way that the President of India makes the Independence Day speech from the Red Fort, which is outside the capital district of New Delhi, links him with the Mughals, which were India's Fourth Golden Age. Shah Jahan moving the capital from Agra to Delhi linked the Mughals with the earlier Delhi Sultanate and the pillar of Chandragupta which they had brought to Delhi.

But, the way I see it, Narendra Modi of the Hindu party effectively became Chandragupta III and is now leading India into it's Fifth Golden Age. India's predominance in our digital era is a reenactment of the mathematics of the Gupta era. Modi's term in office began in 2014, the same year that India became the first nation to launch a successful Mars mission on it's first attempt and this was the beginning of India's new golden age.