Ramachandra Guha’s recent essay on the Congress party and the Gandhi family has generated considerable discussion. Given Guha’s stature as one of India’s most respected historians and public intellectuals, his arguments deserve serious engagement. His central contention is familiar: the Congress party became excessively dependent on the Gandhi family, failed to democratise its leadership, and thereby contributed significantly to the rise and consolidation of Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).There is considerable truth in this argument. Congress has undeniably struggled with organisational renewal, leadership transition, internal democracy and strategic coherence. Its decline cannot be understood without acknowledging those failures.But the central weakness in Guha’s thesis is that though not completely not wrong, it is dangerously incomplete.His explanation elevates the Gandhi family into the principal cause of a political transformation that was shaped by much larger historical forces: the rise of regional parties, the social churn unleashed by Mandal politics, the organisational expansion of the BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the consequences of economic liberalisation, changes in media ownership, and the growing role of money in electoral competition.In effect, tracking the remaking of Indian politics has been reduced to a story about one family.That explanation is too narrow for a democracy as vast, diverse and politically dynamic as India.The first difficulty with the dynasty thesis is that it inadvertently understates the BJP’s own achievements.If Congress dynastic politics is the primary explanation for the BJP’s rise, how do we explain the party’s expansion in states where Congress was not even the principal political adversary?In West Bengal, the BJP’s primary challenge was not Congress but the Trinamool Congress. In Odisha, it confronted Naveen Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal. In Tamil Nadu, it entered a political arena dominated for decades by Dravidian parties. In Uttar Pradesh, the defining political contests of the post-Mandal era were fought largely among the BJP, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party.Bihar presents an even stronger counter-example.For more than three decades, Bihar’s politics revolved around the competing and occasionally cooperating formations led by Lalu Prasad Yadav and Nitish Kumar. Congress had long ceased to be the state’s principal political force. Yet the BJP steadily expanded its organisational reach, built social coalitions among non-Yadav OBCs and upper castes, and eventually emerged as one of the dominant poles of Bihar politics.JD(U) President Nitish Kumar, right, with Bihar Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary, left, during a meeting, at the CM’s residence, 5 Deshratna Marg, in Patna, Saturday, April 18, 2026. Photo: PTI.None of these developments can be explained away through Rahul Gandhi or Congress dynastic politics.The BJP’s rise was not merely the consequence of Congress’s decline. It was also the product of decades of ideological consolidation, cadre-building through the RSS, organisational discipline, electoral innovation and the ability to create new social coalitions.To attribute the BJP’s success primarily to Congress’s failures is to deny the BJP agency in its own ascent.A second problem with the dynasty thesis is that it often relies on a simplified reading of Congress history.Take the case of Indira Gandhi. The conventional narrative assumes that she inherited power simply because she was Jawaharlal Nehru’s daughter. The historical record is more complicated. When Nehru died in 1964, Indira Gandhi did not become prime minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri did. Only after Shastri’s death in 1966 did she emerge victorious in a leadership contest within the Congress Parliamentary Party against Morarji Desai.Certainly, her family name mattered. Political inheritance exists in every democracy. The Kennedys, Bushs and Clintons in the United States, the Bhuttos in Pakistan, the Bandaranaikes in Sri Lanka, Rehmans in Bangladesh and numerous political families across Europe and Asia demonstrate this reality.But there is an important distinction between benefiting from a political legacy and being installed through a prearranged succession.The same complexity applies to Sonia Gandhi. After Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination in 1991, Sonia Gandhi did not immediately assume leadership of either the Congress party or the government. For seven years Congress functioned under non-Gandhi leadership. P.V. Narasimha Rao served as both prime minister and Congress president. Later, Sitaram Kesri led the party. If Congress was incapable of functioning outside the Gandhi family, this experiment should never have occurred.The more interesting question is why Congress workers repeatedly sought Sonia Gandhi’s return. Critics of the Gandhi family often focus on the persistence of the family itself but devote much less attention to the recurring demand for that leadership from within the organisation. That question becomes even more intriguing when one examines the history of failed alternatives.In 1969, the Congress party split. On one side stood the powerful Syndicate, comprising some of the party’s most influential and pro-business organisational leaders like S. Nijlingappa, Morarji Desai and Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy, among others. On the other side stood Indira Gandhi, virtually alone.A 1977 picture of Biju Patnaik with Morarji Desai (centre) and George Fernandes (extreme left) in New Delhi. Photo: Facebook/George FernandesIf organisational control alone determined legitimacy, the Syndicate should have prevailed. Instead, Congress workers and large sections of the electorate rallied behind Indira Gandhi. The Syndicate gradually faded into political irrelevance. The pattern repeated itself repeatedly over subsequent decades.After the Emergency, leaders such as Jagjivan Ram and Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna joined the Janata experiment. They possessed stature, experience and the momentum of anti-Congress sentiment. Yet they did not replace Congress as India’s principal national political force.After Sanjay Gandhi’s death, Maneka Gandhi launched the Sanjay Vichar Manch. If political inheritance were merely about surnames, she should have attracted a substantial segment of Congress support. She did not. During the Narasimha Rao era, the Tiwari Congress attempted to create an alternative centre of Congress politics. It failed.Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party achieved regional significance in Maharashtra but never emerged as a national replacement for Congress.The lesson is not that the Gandhi family is beyond criticism. The lesson is that its persistence cannot be explained solely through organisational manipulation or dynastic entitlement. Repeated attempts to construct alternatives failed to command comparable legitimacy among Congress workers and supporters. Any serious analysis must explain that fact rather than simply assume it away.Another aspect often overlooked in discussions of dynastic politics is Sonia Gandhi’s conduct in 2004. After the United Progressive Alliance secured a parliamentary majority, she had every constitutional and political right to become prime minister. Yet she declined the office and nominated Manmohan Singh instead. One may interpret that decision in different ways. It may have reflected political calculation, personal preference or a combination of both. But it undeniably complicates the portrayal of a family singularly driven by the pursuit of executive power.The discussion also requires a broader sociological perspective. Many analyses of Indian politics implicitly employ standards derived from Western liberal democracies. Those standards have value. Yet they cannot simply be transplanted onto Indian realities without adjustment.India remains a postcolonial society less than eight decades removed from independence. Historical memory, symbolic legitimacy, family networks and social identity continue to play significant roles in public life. Whether one approves of these realities is beside the point. They exist.In this image posted on December 14, 2025, NCP (SP) President Sharad Pawar, right, party Supriya Sule, centre, and others during the award ceremony of the ‘Sharad Pawar Inspire Fellowship’, in Mumbai. Photo: X/@PawarSpeaks via PTI.Political inheritance is hardly unique to Congress. It is visible across ideological and regional lines. The Samajwadi Party, DMK, Shiv Sena, National Conference, Rashtriya Janata Dal, TMC, NCP and Janata Dal (Secular) all feature prominent political families. Even parties that define themselves through organisational discipline have witnessed the emergence of second-generation leaders.To single out one family while treating the broader phenomenon as exceptional risks confusing a structural feature of Indian politics with a uniquely Congress problem. Yet perhaps the most significant omission in Guha’s analysis lies elsewhere. It lies in political economy. No serious account of India’s political transformation can be complete without examining the profound changes unleashed by economic liberalisation after 1991.Liberalisation undoubtedly generated growth, investment and new opportunities. But it also transformed the relationship between politics, capital and media.Election campaigns became dramatically more expensive. Corporate influence expanded. Media ownership became increasingly concentrated. Political finance grew more centralised. The relationship between economic power and political power deepened in ways that fundamentally altered the terrain on which parties compete.The consequences for democratic competition have been immense.A national election today bears little resemblance to one conducted in the 1970s or even the 1990s. Campaigns require vast resources, sophisticated communication machinery, extensive digital operations and unprecedented media outreach.The extraordinary rise of the BJP cannot be understood solely through leadership questions within Congress. It must also be understood through changing campaign finance structures, the consolidation of media influence, growing asymmetries of political resources and the evolving relationship between economic and political power.To refuse to acknowledge these developments while telling the story of contemporary India is to leave out one of the most consequential transformations of the last three decades.Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and the latter’s children Miraya and Raihan after paying tribute to former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi on his death anniversary, at Veer Bhumi, in New Delhi, Thursday, May 21, 2026. Photo: PTI.The larger issue, therefore, is not whether the Gandhi family deserves criticism. It does. Congress’s decline cannot be understood without examining leadership failures, organisational decay and strategic misjudgements. But neither can India’s political transformation be understood by reducing it to those failures alone.The BJP’s ascent involved ideological mobilisation, organisational expansion and social coalition-building. Regional parties reshaped the electoral map. Economic liberalisation transformed the relationship between politics and capital. Media ownership patterns changed. Electoral competition became increasingly resource-intensive.These forces altered Indian politics in ways far deeper than the fortunes of any single family. The most important question, therefore, is not why the Gandhi family survived. It is why alternative centres of legitimacy within the Congress tradition repeatedly failed to command comparable support. It is how regional movements transformed national politics.It is how economic and political power became increasingly intertwined. And it is how a party that once appeared peripheral to large parts of India succeeded in constructing a genuinely nationwide political coalition. Those questions do not produce simple answers. But they are closer to the questions historians should be asking.The remaking of India was not the story of one family’s political success or decline. It was the story of multiple forces – social, political, organisational and economic – interacting across three turbulent decades.Any explanation that places one family at the centre of that transformation risks mistaking a chapter of the story for the story itself.Sheetal P. Singh is a senior journalist.