By CHAITANYA KALBAG  

New Delhi, Dec 11. India’s ruling Congress (I) Party, which celebrates its centenary next year, is fighting for political survival as much as a parliamentary majority in national elections in two weeks’ time.  

After years of unchallenged supremacy as India’s dominant political force, the party is being rocked by an internal debate about its future.  

Its roots go back to December 28, 1885, when 72 Indian nationalists met in Bombay and set up an organisation called the Indian National Congress to “discuss matters of importance to the brightest jewel in the crown of the British Empire.”  

The party took India to independence in 1947 and has ruled for all but three years since then.  

When Mrs. Indira Gandhi became prime minister in 1966, she inherited a party still headed by several leaders who, like her father Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru, had spearheaded the fight for freedom from British colonial rule.  

Her personalized brand of leadership caused splits in 1969 and 1978, which pushed out the independence old guard and in came an army of followers who owed her unquestioned loyalty.  

The party became known as Congress (I) for Indira and now political analysts are wondering about new names.  

Although the party tried to present a united front behind her son and successor Rajiv, revolts broke out in several key states after he dumped nearly a quarter of the 339 sitting Congress members in parliament’s lower house last month.  

The purge reflected growing worry among Congress’ campaign managers that the party would not regain the majority it won in the last elections in 1980 despite a wave of popular sympathy over Mrs. Gandhi’s assassination.  

“Mrs. Gandhi converted Congress into a mindless power machine, designed to win elections,” says Mr. Lal Krishna Advani, secretary-general of the rightwing Bharatiya Janata Party.  

“The proximity of another election is a powerful glue, but can Rajiv continue to hold a quarrelsome party together?”