First Tharoor, now Digvijay: Between admiration and ambiguity!

Raju Korti
I have watched the Congress long enough to know that its deepest anxieties are rarely triggered by open defection. They are provoked by ambiguity. That is precisely why Digvijay Singh’s praise of the RSS’s organisational discipline and his sharing of an old photograph with Narendra Modi caused more discomfort within the party than many overt acts of dissent. The unease is not about ideology alone. It is about the suggestion that there may be lessons to learn from the very adversary the Congress defines itself against.

In that sense, Digvijay's moment has an unmistakable echo from the past. I remember meeting Digvijay Singh in 1985 in Raipur and Bhopal during election coverage, long before he became a two-time chief minister of Madhya Pradesh. Then known affectionately as Diggy Raja, the Raja of Raghogarh operated in a Congress ecosystem crowded with heavyweights like Arjun Singh, Kamal Nath and Ajit Jogi. Even at that stage, what stood out was not confrontation but navigation. Digvijay Singh always seemed adept at surviving within undercurrents, maintaining relationships that were neither fully cordial nor openly hostile, but calibrated to political necessity.

Comrades in arms! 

Those undercurrents never really disappeared. Over decades, Digvijay Singh remained a figure who could unsettle his own party without formally stepping out of line. His recent praise of the organisational strength of the RSS, accompanied by an old photograph of Narendra Modi, must be read in that context. It was less an ideological endorsement and more a statement about structure, discipline and political mobility. Yet in today’s hyper-polarised environment, nuance rarely survives first contact with social media.

Shashi Tharoor’s response to this episode is revealing. By supporting Digvijay Singh on the need for organisational discipline while carefully distancing himself from the content of the praise, Tharoor mirrored a path he himself has been walking. Technically within the Congress, intellectually restless, and increasingly vocal about what the party lacks rather than what it opposes. Like Digvijay Singh, Tharoor seems less interested in rebellion and more invested in signalling that the Congress cannot afford institutional complacency.

The Congress leadership’s reaction also fits an old pattern. Public levity combined with private discomfort. Rahul Gandhi’s joking remark to Digvijay Singh at the party headquarters, delivered in Sonia Gandhi’s presence, was telling. It defused tension without resolving it. Humour, in such moments, is often a holding operation rather than a closure.

The larger question, then, is not whether Digvijay Singh or Shashi Tharoor are inching towards the BJP. That would be a simplistic reading. The more pertinent issue is where leaders like them eventually find themselves in a party that struggles to accommodate internal critique without reading it as ideological drift. Digvijay Singh has long been described by critics as a spent force, while allies continue to see him as a strategist with residual influence. Both assessments can coexist. Political relevance today is not only about electoral clout but also about the ability to shape conversations.

Tharoor and Digvijay Singh share a common predicament. They articulate what many in the Congress privately concede but publicly resist acknowledging, that organisation matters, discipline matters, and narratives of ideological purity do not substitute for political machinery. By saying this aloud, they unsettle a party still unsure whether introspection is a strength or a liability.

My sense is that neither is in a hurry to cross over. Their trajectories suggest something subtler. They are testing the elasticity of the Congress, probing how much dissent framed as analysis it can absorb. If the party responds by closing ranks and narrowing space, it risks pushing such leaders further to the margins. If it listens, even grudgingly, it might rediscover a capacity for self-correction.

For now, both men remain inside the tent, but closer to its edges than its centre. And in Indian politics, that is often the most precarious place to stand.