3 defining political blunders

Indira Gandhi targeting the RSS during the Emergency and legitimising it, Rajiv Gandhi deciding to give up the mandate in 1989, and Vajpayee and Advani advancing general elections - these errors changed the course of India's politics

In his replies during the debate on the motion of thanks on the President's address in both Houses of Parliament, Prime Minister Narendra Modi took us back seven decades to count what he sees as the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty's errors across our independent history.

This gives us the cue for another question: What is the biggest, the most consequential political blunder made by any party or leader in independent India? It is challenging to name just one, so we will list three. We are also confining our search to the past 50 years.

As we go along, I will also put them in my order of significance or consequentiality. We need to clarify, however, how we define such a blunder.

First, it has to be purely related to our politics. Any policy errors - economic, foreign, or social are excluded.

Second, morality or propriety is no criterion for judging what was worse or the worst.

And third, a big qualification to be really bad and feature among the three, and then top this list, a blunder must have consequences that altered the course of politics for decades. The longer the impact is felt, the worse the error.

At this point, I shall name my choices for the three worst. I am only listing them chronologically yet: Indira Gandhi targeting the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) during the Emergency and jailing thousands of its workers, mostly anonymous people. This is distinct from the Jana Sangh leaders she jailed.

Rajiv Gandhi deciding to sit out and not stake a claim to form a government despite winning 197 seats in the Lok Sabha in 1989.

The mandate was against him, and he respected it, he said. Never mind his party was the largest by far.

In 2004, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and LK Advani advancing the general elections by nearly six months, buoyed by their sweep in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.