State leaders | Age of satraps
If the centre cannot hold, things fall apart—goes the line. But the colossal figures who rose across the Indian map were a sign of a rainbow nation, a democracy speaking many languages
THE BIGWIGS: Veteran West Bengal Cm Jyoti Basu with CPI(M) comrade Sitaram Yechury; (below) BSP’S Fiery Mayawati (Photo: Saibal Das)
ISSUE DATE: Jan 12, 2026 | UPDATED: Jan 5, 2026 16:28 IST
Till the BJP came in to restore high centralism, Indian politics had taken on a distinctly fragmented look. They were all obeying a certain centripetal logic running through the polity: weak centre, powerful peripheries. Take a roving camera’s view of the entire cast of characters who filled the canvas. The internal fragmentation of the Congress was one part of the story. Splinters broke off as if from a cooling sun, forming independent planets. The mood was such that even the docile veteran G.K. Moopanar spun off a Tamil Maanila Congress in 1996, attracting the likes of P. Chidambaram. Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress was born in 1998, though it took time to cover the meadow. Sharad Pawar, an old hand at dissidence, created his Nationalist Congress Party in 1999.
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