At its plenary session in Burari, we are told, the Congress did not have time to ponder over its history. It should have, if for no other reason than the fact that 2010 is its 125th anniversary.

Yes, there was a dramatised enactment of the first session of the Indian National Congress held in what was then called Bombay in December 1885, but it would have a predictable script. If the party veterans had bothered to find out what actually happened in that first session – as also in the annual sessions over the next few decades – they would have been stuck by one uncanny similarity with what was happening at the current plenary session.

Because, in those decades, the Congress was what the British parliament was for Carlyle: a talking shop. All Congress leaders back then were educated (preferably western educated), middle-class (preferably upper middle-class), and with little touch with the rest of India. Underlining this alienation, they made their speeches invariably in English. And all they did at the annual Congress meets was to make speeches, pass resolutions and go home, till meeting again next year.

Any resolution could be passed, even without voice vote, if enough leaders supported the person who wanted to move the resolution. These resolutions did not need any follow-up action (nobody had time for it). So, if indigo farmers in Champaran met a Congress leader and talk of the grave injustice they were facing, the leader would be only too happy to pass a resolution petitioning the government to do something about it. What more do you want? In short, there was a yawning gap between words and deeds.

The Grand Old Party seems to have come a full circle, when prime minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi give a call to fight corruption. Passing a resolution (or giving a call) is not the solution, doing something about it in this real world is the solution.

Another similarity: as in those days a century ago, the Congress leaders today seem little in touch with the real India. You cannot readily think of one policy move or scheme from the UPA II that was taken up because people demanded it.

If the party wants to come out of this morass, it needs to learn lessons from its own history – during 1915-35.