134 years before it was established, the Indian National Congress – the country's fabulous old gathering, the gathering that aided success India its independence from the British, the gathering that has governed India for almost 54 out of its 72 years – is somewhere down in the pains of an existential emergency.

It is hard to say accurately when this started. It might have begun sooner or later somewhere in the range of 2009 and 2014, while, during its latest spell in government, debasement outrages started to tumble out of its storage room. It might have begun in May 2014, when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) destroyed the Congress in the overall political decision, diminishing it to an untouched low of 44 parliamentary seats.

Or on the other hand it very well might be just about as later as May this year, when, in spite of a striving economy, the BJP enrolled a significantly greater triumph, permitting the Congress a simple eight-seat improvement in its count.

Be that as it may, the most representative marker of the gathering's unsure future came recently, when Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the Congress, surrendered his post. Mr Gandhi, 49, assumed liability for the Congress' poor electing results as he quit. He additionally would not select his replacement. "While it is significant for another person to lead our gathering, it would not be right for me to choose that individual," he wrote in his renunciation letter.

By venturing down, Mr Gandhi leaves the Congress with a vacuum it is significantly new to. For the majority of its advanced history, the gathering has been driven by the Nehru-Gandhi administration. The latest spell when somebody outside the family directed the Congress was in 1998, preceding Mr Gandhi's mom Sonia took the gathering's reins.

The Congress has, accordingly, been projected in the picture of the tradition. Its chains of command arrange themselves around the Gandhis. Its positions are loaded up with supporters. It capacities as per the impulses of the family.

Certainly, Mr Gandhi will in any case employ huge force inside the gathering. So will his mom and his sister Priyanka Vadra. However, Mr Gandhi's demand that the following leader of the Congress be browsed outside the family has opened the chance of an incredible change for the gathering. What that change will be is as yet open to address. Without the family's outward power, the Congress may separate into more modest gatherings, each spinning around its own force community. There might be no Congress by any means, in any event in the manner in which we know it today.