Shekhar Gupta on Leadership in India

 

Piecing together Modi's electoral strategy

 

India v Pakistan History - Muzammil Shah

Indira Gandhi "The Indian Army wanted to finish off West Pakistan after the fall of East Pakistan"

 

Why the BJP must read the Harvard paper quoted by Modi

 

Indian Political Parties are Family Fiefdoms or Personality Cults

 

The Buddha Speaks on Swadeshi and the RSS

In Hindi

Pranab Mukherjee's visit to RSS HQ explained

Jawed Naqvi in The Dawn

TWO lobbies were clearly worried by a photograph that was clicked during the swearing-in celebrations of the Karnataka anti-BJP coalition. It showed Congress leader Sonia Gandhi locked in a rare embrace with Dalit leader Mayawati. The picture had other leaders who were opposed to the Modi-led BJP government basking in the glory of the Karnataka victory, but the hugging of the two women was a defining moment. Insidious advisers to the Congress leadership had stalled their coming together in the past.

Among the understated reasons was the stark reality that some of the Gandhi family’s upper-caste advisers also happened to be conduits for the mercantile lobbies based in Mumbai. The photograph threatened both, the tycoons and their caste protégés adorning the upper houses of legislatures, where those who cannot win the Lok Sabha or assembly polls are given a cosy perch, not just in Congress.

There is a brouhaha about former president and former Congress minister Pranab Mukherjee’s visit to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh headquarters. It’s surprising why no one has linked the visit with the Karnataka photo. Mukherjee is an educated Brahmin, flaunting the requisite links with Mumbai businesses, which could be a temptation for the RSS leadership to sound him out.

It is possible of course that the nudge for the meeting came from the mercantile club in Mumbai. It has acquired the habit of late of playing kingmakers. Remember how hard they had lobbied with the RSS to make Narendra Modi the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate? 

They finance other parties too, not the least the Congress party. But there is a silent caveat here. The Congress that forms the government or heads a coalition should not offer the prime minister’s job to a Gandhi, and we have had two such non-Gandhi Congress prime ministers to press the point.

-----Also Read

The Marwari hegemony of Indian Media

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There is a history to this reasoning and the Gandhi family has been pitchforked as the villains, or the heroes, depending on where you are vis-à-vis crony capitalism. Jawaharlal Nehru had no love lost for the mercantile leaders whom Gandhiji otherwise saw as the trustees of a free India. Nehru put their biggest icon in jail for fraud. (R.K. Dalmia’s close friendship with Mohammad Ali Jinnah may have been an added allergen.)

Then came Indira Gandhi. She nationalised the cabal’s ‘usurious’ banks and also locked up several of them under the draconian Conservation of Foreign Exchange and Prevention of Smuggling Activities Act, the law she passed just before the 1975-77 emergency.

Mr Mukherjee recently chronicled his political innings from 1980 onwards. That marked the post-emergency return for Indira Gandhi who was looking vulnerable after her traditional left supporters deserted her over the emergency. Mr Mukherjee’s proximity to the Mumbai tycoons is well documented in books that predictably did not make it to bookshops. He became a darling of the media as her finance minister, the same media that is celebrating his visit to the RSS headquarters although he said perfectly liberal, pro-constitution things there. When Mrs Gandhi was killed, Mr Mukherjee reportedly saw himself as her natural successor, a thought resented by her family friends.

Rajiv Gandhi arrived to throw the ‘moneybags off the backs of the Congress workers’. He sent Mukherjee into political oblivion. The tycoons, however, swung into action. Every inch of media space they owned was harnessed to tarnish the young prime minister with financial scams. His death brought the cabal and Mukherjee back into the heart of Indian politics, both firmly embraced by Narasimha Rao.

One more twist followed. When Rao lost the elections in 1996, he handed over the Congress presidency to Sitaram Kesri, a canny grass-roots Congressman. The change was accepted by the Gandhis who saw in Kesri a better chance of getting to the bottom of Rajiv’s murder mystery than Rao had delivered. Also Kesri shored up two prime ministers with the help of communists.

I remember asking him at a news conference why he had taken the unusual step to ally with Dalit leader Mayawati in 1998. Did he see her as an asset as a woman leader, or was she a potential Dalit ally? Kesri exploded with joy. Both, he yelled. We don’t know which of the Congress rivals locked him up in the bathroom subsequently and handed the leadership to a still reluctant Sonia Gandhi, who had evidently not yet recovered from the shock of her husband’s assassination. Mukherjee was part of the group, or perhaps its leader, that went after Kesri in what can only be described as a palace coup. Kesri saw himself as a Gandhi loyalist and didn’t know what hit him. He died from the shock.

It is said that the Mumbai club has applied a financial squeeze on the Congress party for flirting with state leaders they do not control. This could be a blessing in disguise for the party. It could bring the Gandhis close to crucial leaders like Mayawati, Arvind Kejriwal, Lalu Yadav and Mamata Banerjee who have to fend for themselves financially.

If, like Kejriwal, Rahul Gandhi goes for crowd funding instead of leaning on crony tycoons for support, he might become a richer, cleaner leader. But before that, he must do with the current potential ‘Congress Syndicate’ what Emperor Akbar did with his regent Bairam Khan or Nehru did with his detractors clothed as advisers. They could be sent to work with the masses under a new Kamraj Plan to borrow from the Congress history.

Above all, it was Mayawati’s sacrifice and not ambition that has reaped rewards for a rejuvenated opposition. Rather than aim to become prime minister, Rahul Gandhi would do well to watch out for deserters, no matter how educated they are, while embracing the game-changing picture from Karnataka.

Fables of Modi’s first year in power

Jawed Naqvi in The Dawn

Some left-wing activists these days are worriedly discussing post-16th May India. According to them Narendra Modi’s consummate victory on this day last year marked a paradigm shift in the nation’s politics — for the worse, they assert. Others who shared the traumatic perspective changed their view earlier this year after Arvind Kejriwal emerged as Modi’s unlikely foil and bête noir.

Before we continue with Kejriwal’s near mythological role in stalling the rightist juggernaut led by Modi, let us briefly look at the prime minister’s Achilles heel, which, ironically, happens to be the clear majority he won exactly a year ago. In other words, a majority in parliament in the Indian system is no assurance of stability, a weakness that was best illustrated by Rajiv Gandhi’s turbulent tenure.

Gandhi’s four-fifths majority in the Lok Sabha remains unmatched to this day. Ideally, it should have given him five years of solid, stable government between 1985 and 1990. Instead, what he got was a crippling defence procurement scandal that haunted him till his death. His own party acolytes deserted him and some even conspired to topple the young prime minister.

Amitabh Bachchan, Arun Singh, Arun Nehru were among the younger lot who had come close to the prime minister after his mother’s assassination. They left him before his term was over. Others from the Gandhi Camelot moved over to the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). His trusted aide Vishwanath Pratap Singh subsequently became prime minister in 1990. The BJP and the communists supported him.

Look at the contrast. Indira Gandhi who split her party to be able to become prime minister at the head of a minority government in 1966, ruled with far greater confidence with support from communists and other assorted liberals.

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Worried leftists should unequivocally thank Kejriwal for relieving them of their trauma over the Indian PM.

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Her legacy still energises Indian politics, its economy and culture too. The banks that were nationalised by her remain state-owned. The two words she added to the preamble of the constitution — secular and socialist — have resisted periodic assaults from the right. The liberal arts and the scientific spirit she gave the academia with no impressive majority in parliament is planted as firmly as a sturdy molar that can only be uprooted by a painful surgery.

Easily the best example of someone without a majority who completed three full terms, first as finance minister and two as prime minister, is Manmohan Singh. He introduced sweeping economic reforms though his government had to bribe a few tribal MPs to stay in majority. He got support from the communists in his first tenure as prime minister and earned enough brownie points to win a second term. He faltered after he evicted the left, not because he did not have a majority in parliament.

Atal Behari Vajpayee was invited to form a bizarre minority government in 1996. It lasted all of 13 days. How could the president invite anyone who did not have the remotest proximity to finding a majority? Indian presidents have not always been transparent. Anyway it was a two-week government that signed the damaging Enron electricity deal, majority or no majority.

My worried leftist friends should unequivocally thank Kejriwal for relieving them of their trauma over Modi. The Aam Aadmi Party he heads has single-handedly changed the contours of possibilities for India’s political cobblers. When I see former BJP minister Arun Shourie laying into Modi on the eve of his completing his first year in office, the criticism reminds me of Rajiv Gandhi’s disloyal friends. However, Shourie could only speak because of Kejriwal’s amazing victory, which took the wind out of the prime minister’s sails.

If Mufti Mohammed Sayeed in Indian Jammu and Kashmir got the BJP MLAs to swear by the Kashmiri constitution they were loath to, he had his way because AAP’s victory in Delhi had emboldened him. Sonia Gandhi, ever so reclusive since the drubbing of her party by Modi, suddenly found spring in her walk. She led the entire opposition, including communist leader Sitaram Yechury, to the presidential palace to protest Modi’s land acquisition bill. Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal and the backward caste satraps in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have benefited from Kejriwal’s humbling of Modi. Even Modi’s ally the Shiv Sena is now growling thanks to AAP.

Modi’s choreographers, which include the bulk of the media, are projecting his foreign policy in glowing terms not the least to mask his reneging on most domestic promises — rural, urban, rich, poor. With his claims of head transplants in ancient India, the prime minister has also become a caricature of the tough cookie he was thought to be. His gag measures against certain NGOs have boomeranged, inviting an earful from foreign governments.

He might have felt close enough to President Obama to call him by his first name, but it was more gracious for India that Obama called Manmohan Singh his learned guru.

Examples are galore of leaders being spurred by domestic difficulties to make foreign policy choices, and visits. Rajiv Gandhi was laying into Pakistan with Operation Brass Tacks before the Bofors scandal broke. When the scam raged he found himself signing a major agreement with Benazir Bhutto for nuclear safety with Pakistan.

Modi can wear any headgear in China, but he can’t approach the simple handshake between Deng Xiaoping and Rajiv Gandhi nor Narasimha Rao’s game-changing 1993 agreement with premier Li Peng for “peace and tranquillity on the borders”. In Mongolia, as I write, Modi is having a great time. Who showed him the way?

Indira Gandhi got Mongolia to second the resolution for the recognition of Bangladesh at the UN in 1972. The job done, she invited the Mongolian prime minister to Delhi, took him out for a quiet chat under a tree at Teen Murti House. When she offered him a cigarette, the guest hesitated. She lit one herself, helping her friend to pick one from the pack.

Nehru and Indira laid down principles of secularism and nationalism that today’s politicians can’t ignore

Vinod Mehta in The Times of India

It is open season on Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. No opportunity is lost to demonise and denigrate father and daughter. Even October 31, the day the lady was assassinated, became a day-long festival for celebrating her wickedness, besides proclaiming she was no martyr but a case of self-destruction. Fortunately, we are told, a set of rulers, or shall i say ruler, is at hand, with the wisdom and vision to repair the damage.

We need to talk about Jawaharlal and Indira. That’s for sure. But we also need to keep some touch with historical veracity. For their lifelong opponents truth lies in the eye of the beholder. Consequently, 2014 onwards provides an excellent window to demolish once and for all the myth about their contribution to nation-building. What they built, so the argument goes, is their family dynasty.

Party politics can and is used to float falsehoods with the help of state power. Witness how the fable concerning our glorious Vedic past is being represented triumphantly (in which allegedly plastic surgery and stem cell research flourished) without a murmur of incredulity, or a titter of mirth. If truth is the first casualty in war, it is the second casualty in times when, as Lawrence Durrell puts it, “truth is what contradicts itself”.

The systematic and organised campaign to vilify the Nehru legacy and replace it with the more ‘muscular and patriotic’ legacy of Sardar Patel is top of the agenda. The exercise is ludicrous and an insult to the great Sardar. But let us leave that falsehood alone for the moment.

At the heart of the demolition project is the announcement that a new Idea of India, contrary to the one proposed by Nehru, is available, and in need of urgent execution. It is an abiding irony that the sole politician in the current pantheon of saffron leaders the present prime minister pays obeisance to is Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who ruled the country with Nehru as his lodestar.

What is this new Idea of India? I think we should be told. Alas, its architects have provided no blueprint except to declare it exists. If i were say Mani Shankar Aiyar, i would argue it consists of one part jingoism and one part xenophobia. Perhaps that is a slight exaggeration. More accurately, it rejects the legendary poet Raghupati Sahay aka Firaq Gorakhpuri’s thesis, “Sar zamiin-e hind par aqwaam-e alam ke Firaq/ Kaafile baste gae, Hindustan bantaa gayaa”. (In the sacred land of Hind, caravans of the world Firaq went on settling, and Hindustan kept on being formed.)

If one takes the short view of history, Nehru is an easy target, and Indira even easier. To compile a list of ‘sins’ the duo committed would be superfluous since the compilation has already been lovingly done by the Sangh Parivar. Many of the sins are not without basis but they are not black and white either, except the Emergency. They were committed at a specific moment in history. Happily, we have access to material which provides us with full, balanced assessments – warts and all. We are therefore neither astonished nor shocked when these transgressions are presented. No verdict on Nehru or Indira is possible without its share of criticism.

Perhaps this is the right time to ask the hunters looking for two prized scalps some questions. Where did Narayana Murthy and the entire information technology industry come from? Where did Indra Nooyi come from? Where did Warren Buffett’s financial wizard, Ajit Jain, come from? They all came from the IITs, IIMs and other world-class education centres Nehru had the foresight to set up.

If India has the ‘bomb’ and internationally renowned research labs, the credit must go to the same man. At a time when the republic struggled, he insisted a newly independent, backward nation be fully engaged with the contemporary first world through advanced learning and progressive thinking. Nehru ensured a society steeped in superstition, ritual, religious dogma and belief in kismet embraced a scientific temper so that the temptation to wallow in a mythical ‘glorious’ past could be resisted. The modern nation state – outward-looking, open, rational, argumentative, sceptical – armed with universal adult franchise, is the creation of Jawaharlal Nehru. Rubbish that if you like.

I yield to no one in my abhorrence for aspects of Indira Gandhi’s prime ministership. Because i entered journalism in 1974, i experienced the full horrors of civilian dictatorship. That she wrecked critical democratic institutions is undeniable. But we must also remember she dismembered Pakistan and made sure it could never pose a threat. There is a good Indira and a bad Indira.

Incidentally, when i read opinion polls reveal she is easily the most popular prime minister the country has produced, when i see long queues outside her Safdarjung Memorial, I wonder if our Iron Lady needs more than one yardstick (Emergency) to assess her term in office.

If Nehru’s legacy is the real obstacle holding India back, why don’t its adversaries throw it into the wastepaper basket? And govern on the majoritarian doctrine? Not a chance. When it comes to self-preservation, the new rulers are wise. They know they would soon be out of a job, if they abandoned the idea (secularism) which has held the country together.

Sonia Gandhi - A Blot on the Nation

(Editor's Note: This article was received by email and unable to verify journal of publication. But the points raised are important.)
by Mark Tully

Sir William "Mark" Tully, OBE. He worked for BBC for a period of 30
years before resigning in July 1994. He held the position of Chief of
Bureau, BBC, Delhi for 20 years Padma Shree, KBE, Padma Bhushan, one
of the most respected journalists in the world, writes on Indian
Politics: An eye opener account, not known to most of the Indians.

"I can say without the shadow of a doubt that when history will be
written, the period over which she (Sonia Gandhi) presided, both over
the Congress and India, will be seen as an era of darkness, of immense
corruption and of a democracy verging towards autocracy, if not
disguised dictatorship, in the hands of a single person, a non-Indian
 and a Christian like me. Truth will also come out about her being the
main recipient for kickbacks from Bofors to 2G, which she uses to buy
votes."

The sun has already set; darkness is just about to start. Do you blame
it on bankruptcy/blindness of Congress or country's misfortune. It is
both. Now read the complete analysis, which follows. THE TRUTH & THE
HIDDEN FACTS. I was surprised when the Congress party gave me a Padma
Shri – I am the   only foreign journalist to ever get it. For, in my
forty years of political reporting in India, I have always been a
vocal critic of the Nehru dynasty. Someone even called me recently: “a
vitriolic British journalist, who in his old age chose to live back in
the land he never approved”.

It started with Operation Blue Star. I was one of the few western
correspondents who criticized Indira. As I have said since then
numerous times, the attack on the Golden Temple and the atrocities
that followed the army operations, produced in all sections of the
Sikhs a sense of outrage that is hard today to alleviate. I believed
then that the large majority of Hindu India, even if politically
hostile to Indira Gandhi, openly identified with – and exulted in –
her will to overwhelmingly humble a recalcitrant minority.

As everybody knows, Indira Gandhi helped my fame grow even more, by
wanting to imprison me during the Emergency she clamped and finally
throwing me out of India for a short while. But the result was that
the whole of India tuned in, then and thereafter, to my radio’s
broadcasts, ‘The Voice of India’, to hear what they thought was
‘accurate’ coverage of events.

When Rajiv Gandhi came to power, I first believed that he was
sincerely trying to change the political system, but he quickly
gave-up when the old guard would not budge. I criticized him for his
foolish adventure in Sri Lanka, although I felt sorry for him when he
was blown to pieces by Dhanu, the Tamil Tiger.

It is in Kashmir, though that I fought most viciously against his Govt
and subsequent Congress ones for its human right abuses on theKashmiri Muslims of the Valley. The Congress Governments tried indeed
several times to censor me and the army even took prisoner my Kashmiri
stringer, whom I had to rescue by the skin of his teeth. I am also
proud that I was the first one to point out then, that the Indian
Government had at that time no proof of the Pakistani involvement in
the freedom movement in Kashmir.

Thus I always made it a point to start my broadcasts by proclaiming
that the Indian Government accuses Pakistan of fostering terrorism»,
or that “elections are being held in Indian-controlled Kashmir”…As I
was so popular, all the other foreign journalists used the same
parlance to cover Kashmir and they always spoke of the plight of the
Muslims, never of the 400.000 Hindus, who after all were chased out of
their ancestral land by sheer terror (I also kept mum about it).

As for Sonia Gandhi, I did not mind her, when she was Rajiv Gandhi’s
wife, but after his death, I watched with dismay as she started
stamping her authority on the Congress, which made me say in a series
of broadcasts on the Nehru Dynasty: “It’s sad that the Indian National
Congress should be completely dependent on one family; the total
surrender of a national party to one person is deplorable. You have to
ask the question: what claims does Sonia Gandhi have to justify her
candidature for prime-ministership? Running a country is far more
complicated than running a company. Apprenticeship is required in any
profession — more so in politics”.

I heard that Sonia Gandhi was unhappy about this broadcast. Then,
after President APJ Abdul Kalam called her to the Raj Bhavan and told
her what some of us already knew, namely that for a long time, she had
kept both her Italian and Indian passports, which disqualified her to
become the Prime Minister of India, she nevertheless became the
Supreme leader of India behind the scenes. It is then that I
exclaimed: “the moribund and leaderless Congress party has latched
onto Sonia Gandhi, who is Italian by birth and Roman Catholic by
baptism”.

She never forgave me for that. Yet, today I can say without the shadow
of a doubt that when history will be written, the period over which
she presided, both over the Congress and India, will be seen as an era
of darkness, of immense corruption and of a democracy verging towards
autocracy, if not disguised dictatorship, in the hands of a single
person, a non Indian and a Christian like me.Truth will also come out
about her being the main recipient for kickbacks from Bofors to 2G,
which she uses to buy votes, as the Wikileaks have just shown.

Finally, I am sometimes flabbergasted at the fact that Indians –
Hindus, sorry, as most of this country’s intelligentsia is Hindu –
seem to love me so much, considering the fact that in my heydays, I
considerably ran down the 850 million Hindus of this country, one
billion worldwide. I have repented today: I do profoundly believe that
India needs to be able to say with pride, “Yes, our civilization has a
Hindu base to it.” The genius of Hinduism, the very reason it has
survived so long, is that it does not stand up and fight. It changes
and adapts and modernizes and absorbs – that is the scientific and
proper way of going about it.

I believe that Hinduism may actually prove to be the religion of this
millennium, because it can adapt itself to change. Hindus are still
slaves to MUSLIMS and CHRISTIANS On the name of secularism, lots of
facilities and cash incentives are given to Muslims and Christians.
Haj subsidy is given to Muslims for Haj yatra, wages of Muslim
teachers and Imams are given to Muslims are given by looting the Hindu
temples. No such subsidy is given to Hindus for going to Hindu
religious places or any wages to Hindu religious priests or Hindu
teachers. In fact congress secular government creates many obstacles
for Hindus for going to Amarnath Yatra.

Even after 65 years of independence reservation is given on religious
grounds while it should have been abolished by this time. If at all
reservation or subsidy is needed, then it should be purely on economic
grounds rather on the grounds of minorities. Such reservations affect
the quality of work. Congress party giving various kinds of
allurements to minorities to buy their votes with Hindu money. In the
government, many people are with Hindu names but in fact many are
Muslims and Christians with Hindu names  to fool Hindus and to
show in the government, majority   people are Hindus.

 

Narendra Modi - The man who would rule India

 Ramachandra Guha in The Hindu

 

  

Like Indira Gandhi once did, Narendra Modi seeks to make his party,his government, his administration and his country into an extension of his personality.

A journalist who recently interviewed Narendra Modi reported their conversation as follows: “Gujarat, he told me, merely has a seafront. It has no raw materials — no iron ore for steel, no coal for power and no diamond mines. Yet it has made huge strides in these fields. Imagine, he added, if we had the natural resources of an Assam, a Jharkhand and a West Bengal: I would have changed the face of India.”(see The Telegraph, January 18, 2013). 

Tall claims

This conversation (and that claim) underlines much of what Narendra Modi has sought to do these past five years — remake himself as a man who gets things done, a man who gets the economy moving. With Mr. Modi in power in New Delhi, says or suggests Mr. Modi, India will be placed smoothly on the 8 per cent to 10 per cent growth trajectory, bureaucrats will clear files overnight, there will be no administrative and political corruption, poverty levels will sink rapidly towards zero and — lest we forget — trains and aeroplanes shall run on time. These claims are taken at face value by his admirers, who include sundry CEOs, owner-capitalists, western ambassadors and —lest we forget — columnists in the pink papers, the white papers, and (above all) cyber-space.

Mr. Modi’s detractors — who too are very numerous, and very vocal — seek to puncture these claims in two different ways. The unreconstructed Nehruvians and Congress apologists (not always the same thing) say he will forever be marked by the pogrom against Muslims in 2002, which was enabled and orchestrated by the State government. Even if his personal culpability remains unproven, the fact that as the head of the administration he bears ultimate responsibility for the pogrom, and the further fact that he has shown no remorse whatsoever, marks Mr. Modi out as unfit to lead the country.

The secularist case against Mr. Modi always had one flaw — namely, that what happened in Gujarat in 2002 was preceded in all fundamental respects by what happened in Delhi in 1984. Successive Congress governments have done nothing to bring justice to the survivors, while retaining in powerful positions (as Cabinet Ministers even) Congress MPs manifestly involved in those riots.

With every passing year, the charge that Mr. Modi is communal has lost some intensity — because with every passing year it is one more year that the Sikhs of Delhi and other North Indian cities have been denied justice. (They have now waited 28 years, the Muslims of Gujarat a mere 11.) More recently, the burden of the criticism against Mr. Modi has shifted — on to his own terrain of economic development. It has been shown that the development model of Gujarat is uneven, with some districts (in the south, especially) doing very well, but the dryer parts of the State (inland Saurashtra for example) languishing. Environmental degradation is rising, and educational standards are falling, with malnutrition among children abnormally high for a State at this level of GDP per capita.

As a sociologist who treats the aggregate data of economists with scepticism, I myself do not believe that Gujarat is the best developed State in the country. Shortly after Mr. Modi was sworn in for his third full term, I travelled through Saurashtra, whose polluted and arid lands spoke of a hard grind for survival. In the towns, water, sewage, road and transport facilities were in a pathetic state; in the countryside, the scarcity of natural resources was apparent, as pastoralists walked miles and miles in search of stubble for their goats. Both hard numbers and on-the-ground soundings suggest that in terms of social and economic development, Gujarat is better than average, but not among the best. In a lifetime of travel through the States of the Union, my sense is that Kerala, Himachal Pradesh and (despite the corruption) Tamil Nadu are the three States which provide a dignified living to a decent percentage of their population.

To be sure, Mr. Modi is not solely responsible for the unbalanced development. Previous Chief Ministers did not do enough to nurture good schools and hospitals, or enough to prevent the Patels of southern Gujarat from monopolising public resources. Besides, Mr. Modi does have some clear, identifiable achievements — among them a largely corruption-free government, an active search for new investment into Gujarat, some impressive infrastructural projects, and a brave attempt to do away with power subsidies for rich farmers.

Both the secularist case and the welfarist case against Mr. Modi have some merit — as well as some drawbacks. In my view, the real reason that Narendra Modi is unfit to be Prime Minister of India is that he is instinctively and aggressively authoritarian. Consider that line quoted in my first paragraph: “I would have changed the face of India.” Not ‘we,’ but ‘I’. In Mr. Modi’s Gujarat, there are no collaborators, no co-workers. He has a chappan inch chaati — a 56-inch chest — as he loudly boasts, and therefore all other men (if not women) in Gujarat must bow down to his power and his authority.

Mr. Modi’s desire to dominate is manifest in his manner of speaking. Social scientists don’t tend to analyse auditory affect, but you have only to listen to the Gujarat Chief Minister for 15 minutes to know that this is a man who will push aside anyone who comes in his way. The intent of his voice is to force his audience into following him on account of fearing him.

The proclamation of his physical masculinity is not the sole example of Mr. Modi’s authoritarianism. Like all political bullies he despises free speech and artistic creativity — thus he has banned books and films he thinks Gujaratis should not read or watch (characteristically, without reading or viewing these books and films himself). He has harassed independent-minded writers, intellectuals and artists (leading to the veritable destruction of India’s greatest school of art, in Vadodara). His refusal to the spontaneous offer of a skull cap during his so-called ‘Sadbhavana Yatra,’ while read as an example of his congenital communalism, could also be seen as illustrating his congenital arrogance.

The most revealing public display of Mr. Modi’s character, however, may have been a yoga camp he once held for the IAS officers of his State. They all lined up in front of him — DMs, DCs, Secretaries, Under-Secretaries, of various sizes, shapes, ages, and genders — and followed the exercise routine he had laid down for them. Utthak-baithak, utthak-baithak, 10 or perhaps 20 times, before a diverting Surya Namaskar was thrown in by the Master.

I do not know whether that yoga camp was held again (it was supposed to be an annual show), and do not know either how Mr. Modi appears to these IAS officers when they confront him one-on-one. But that the event was held, and that the Chief Minister’s office sought proudly to broadcast it to the world, tells us rather more than we would rather wish to know about this man who wishes to rule India.

To be sure, Mr. Modi is not the only authoritarian around in Indian politics. Mamata Banerjee, J. Jayalalithaa, and Mayawati (when she is Chief Minister) also run their States in a somewhat overbearing manner. Naveen Patnaik and Nitish Kumar are intolerant of criticism too. However, the authoritarianism of these other State leaders is erratic and capricious, not focused or dogmatic. This, and the further fact that Mr. Modi has made his national ambitions far more explicit, makes them lesser devils when it comes to the future of our country.

 

Resemblance to Indira Gandhi

Neither Mr. Modi’s admirers nor his critics may like this, but the truth is that of all Indian politicians past and present, the person Gujarat Chief Minister most resembles is Indira Gandhi of the period 1971-77. Like Mrs. Gandhi once did, Mr. Modi seeks to make his party, his government, his administration and his country an extension of his personality. The political practice of both demonstrates the psychological truth that inside every political authoritarian lies a desperately paranoid human being. Mr. Modi talks, in a frenetic and fearful way, of ‘Rome Raj’ and ‘Mian Musharraf’ (lately modified to ‘Mian Ahmed Patel’); Mrs Gandhi spoke in likewise shrill tones of the ‘foreign hand’ and of ‘my enemies.’

There is something of Indira Gandhi in Narendra Modi, and perhaps just a touch of Sanjay Gandhi too — as in the brash, bullying, hyper-masculine style, the suspicion (and occasional targeting) of Muslims. Either way, Mr. Modi is conspicuously unfitted to be the reconciling, accommodating, plural, democratic Prime Minister that India needs and deserves. He loves power far too much. On the other hand, his presumed rival, Rahul Gandhi, shirks responsibility entirely (as in his reluctance, even now, to assume a ministerial position). Indian democracy must, and shall in time, see off both.

Indians Great, Greater, Greatest?

Ramachandra Guha in The Hindu

Choosing the ‘Greatest Indian After Gandhi’ is di icult when the present exerts such a strong pull over our view of the past and there is a wide variation between how the ‘greatness’ of an individual is assessed by the aam aadmi and by the expert, says Ramachandra Guha




Nations need heroes, but the construction of a national pantheon is rarely straightforward or uncontested. Consider the debate in the United States about which faces should adorn the national currency. The founding figures of American Independence — Jefferson, Washington, Hamilton, Madison, and Franklin — are all represented on the dollar bill, albeit on different denominations. So are the 19th century Presidents Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and Ulysses S. Grant. In recent years, right-wing Americans have campaigned for their hero, Ronald Reagan, to be represented on the national currency. This, it is said, is necessary to bring it in line with contemporary sentiments. Of 20th century Presidents, Franklin Delano Roosevelt is represented on the dime, and John F. Kennedy on the dollar. Both were Democrats. Republicans now demand that the pantheon feature one of their ilk. In 2010, a Congressman from North Carolina, Patrick McHenry, canvassed for a law mandating that Ulysses S. Grant be replaced on the fifty dollar bill by Ronald Reagan. “Every generation needs its own heroes”, said McHenry. The American hero he was anointing for our times was Reagan, “a modern day statesman, whose presidency transformed our nation’s political and economic thinking”.


Turn now to that other large, complex, cacophonous, democracy — our own. After India became independent, the national pantheon offered to its citizens was massively dominated by leaders of the Congress Party. Mahatma Gandhi was positioned first, with Jawaharlal Nehru only a short distance behind. Both had played important roles in the freeing of the country from colonial rule. Both were truly great Indians. That said, the popular perception of both was helped by the fact that the party to which they belonged was in power for the crucial decades after Independence.


Newspapers, the radio, and school textbooks all played their role in the construction of a narrative in which Gandhi was the Father of the Nation and Nehru its Guide and Mentor in the first, formative years of the Republic’s existence. Until the 1960s, the dominance of Nehru and Gandhi in the national imagination was colossal. When, in that decade, the American scholar Eleanor Zelliot wrote a brilliant dissertation on B.R. Ambedkar and the Mahar movement in Maharashtra, she was unable to find a publisher. But then the Congress started to lose power in the States. In 1977 it lost power for the first time at the Centre. The rise of new political parties led naturally to revisionist interpretations of the past. New heroes began to be offered for inclusion in the nation’s pantheon, their virtues extolled (and sometimes magnified) in print, in Parliament, and, in time, in school textbooks as well.


The Indian who, in subsequent decades, has benefited most from this revaluation is B.R. Ambedkar. A scholar, legal expert, institution builder and agitator, Ambedkar played a heroic (the word is inescapable) role in bringing the problems of the untouchable castes to wider attention. He forced Gandhi to take a more serious, focused, interest in the plight of the depressed classes, and himself started schools, colleges and a political party to advance their interests.


Ambedkar died in December 1956, a political failure. The party he founded scarcely made a dent in Congress hegemony, and he was unable to win a Lok Sabha seat himself. But his memory was revived in the 1970s and beyond. His works began to be read more widely. He was the central, sometimes sole, inspiration for a new generation of Dalit activists and scholars. Obscure at the time of his death in 1956, condescended to by the academic community until the 1980s (at least), Ambedkar is today the only genuinely all-India political figure, worshipped in Dalit homes across the land. Notably, he is not a Dalit hero alone, his achievements recognised among large sections of the Indian middle class. No one now seeking to write a book on Ambedkar would have a problem finding a publisher.


The (belated) incorporation of Ambedkar into the national pantheon is a consequence largely of the political rise of the subaltern classes. Meanwhile, the pantheon has been expanded from the right by the inclusion of Vallabhbhai Patel. Paradoxically, while Patel was himself a lifelong Congressman, the case for his greatness has been made most vigorously by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). BJP leaders and ideologues speak of Patel as the Other, in all respects, of Jawaharlal Nehru. They claim that if Patel had become Prime Minister, Kashmir would have been fully integrated into India. Under Patel the country would have followed a more pragmatic (i.e. market-oriented) economic policy, while standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Western democracies against godless Communism. Nor, if Patel had been in charge, would there have been (it is claimed) any appeasement of the minorities.


The BJP reading of history is tendentious, not least because Patel and Nehru were, in practice, collaborators and colleagues rather than rivals or adversaries. To be sure, they had their disagreements, but, to their everlasting credit, they submerged these differences in the greater task of national consolidation. Theirs was a willed, deliberate, division of labour and responsibilities. Nehru knew that Patel, and not he, had the patience and acumen to supervise the integration of the princely states and build up administrative capacity. On the other side, as Rajmohan Gandhi demonstrates in his biography of Patel, the man had no intention or desire to become Prime Minister. For Patel knew that only Nehru had the character and personality to take the Congress credo to women, minorities, and the South, and to represent India to the world. 


That the BJP has to make the case for Patel is a consequence of the Congress’s capture by a single family determined to inflate its own contributions to the nation’s past, present, and future. Sonia Gandhi’s Congress Party recognises that a pantheon cannot consist of only two names; however, in their bid to make it more capacious, Congressmen place Indira and Rajiv alongside Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi. Thus the ubiquitous and apparently never-ending naming of sarkari schemes, airports, buildings, and stadia, after the one or the other.


The preceding discussion makes clear that political parties and social movements play a crucial role in how the national past is conveyed to citizens in the present. Indians admired by parties and movements, such as Ambedkar and Patel, have had their achievements more widely recognised than might otherwise have been the case. By the same token, great Indians whose lives are incapable of capture by special interests or sects have suffered from the enormous condescension of posterity.


Consider, in this regard, the current invisibility from the national discourse of Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya. Married to a man chosen by her family, she was widowed early, and then married a left-wing actor from another part of India. She joined the freedom movement, persuading Gandhi to allow women to court arrest during the Salt March and after. After coming out of jail, Kamaladevi became active in trade union work, and travelled to the United States, where she explained the relevance of civil disobedience to black activists (her turn in the South is compellingly described in Nico Slate’s recent book Colored Cosmopolitanism). After Independence and Partition, Kamaladevi supervised the resettlement of refugees; still later, she set up an all-India network of artisanal cooperatives, and established a national crafts museum as well as a national academy for music and dance. Tragically, because her work cannot be seen through an exclusively political lens, and because her versatility cannot be captured by a sect or special interest, Kamaladevi is a forgotten figure today. Yet, from this historian’s point of view, she has strong claims to being
regarded as the greatest Indian woman of modern times.

Earlier this year, I was invited to be part of a jury to select the ‘Greatest Indian Since Gandhi’. The organisers did me the favour of showing me a list of 100 names beforehand. Many of the names were unexceptionable, but some strongly reflected the perceptions (and prejudices) of the present. For example, Kiran Bedi was in this list, but Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay wasn’t, a reflection only of the fact that the latter did not live in an age of television. There was also a regional bias: compiled in Delhi, the preliminary list did not include such extraordinary modern Indians as Shivarama Karanth, C. Rajagopalachari, and E. V. Ramaswami ‘Periyar’. There was also a marked urban bias: not one Indian who came from a farming background was represented, not even the former Prime Minister Charan Singh or the former Agriculture Minister (and Green Revolution architect) C. Subramaniam. Nor was a single Adivasi on the list, not even the Jharkhand leader Jaipal Singh.


Since this was a provisional list, the organisers were gracious enough to accommodate some of these names at my request. The revised list was then offered to a jury composed of actors, writers, sportspersons and entrepreneurs, men and women of moderate (in some cases, considerable) distinction in their field. Based on the jury’s recommendations the 100 names were then brought down to 50. The names of these 50 ‘great’ Indians were then further reduced to 10, in a three-way process in which the votes of the jury were given equal weightage with views canvassed via an online poll and a market survey respectively. The results
revealed two striking (and interconnected) features: the strong imprint of the present in how we view the past, and the wide variation between how the ‘greatness’ of an individual is assessed by the aam aadmi and by the expert.


Here are some illustrations of this divergence. In the jury vote, B.R. Ambedkar and Jawaharlal Nehru tied for first place; each had 21 votes. The online poll also placed Ambedkar in first place, but ranked Nehru as low as 15th, lower than Vallabhbhai Patel, Indira Gandhi, and Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Even Sachin Tendulkar, A.R. Rahman, and Rajnikanth were ranked higher than Nehru by Net voters. In the jury vote, the industrialist J.R.D. Tata and the social worker Mother Teresa were ranked immediately below Ambedkar and Nehru. Vallabhbhai Patel was ranked fifth by the jury, but an impressive third by Net voters. This suggests that like Ambedkar, Patel has a strong appeal among the young, albeit among a different section, those driven by the desire to see a strong state rather than the wish to achieve social justice. Nehru, on the other hand, is a
figure of disinterest and derision in India today, his reputation damaged in good part by the misdeeds of his
genealogical successors.The most remarkable, not to say bizarre, discrepancy between the expert and the aam aadmi was revealed in the case of the former President of India, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. Only two (out of 28) jury members voted for Kalam to be one of the shortlist of 10. On the other hand, Kalam was ranked first by those surveyed by market research, and second in the online polls.


What explains this massive variation in perception? The jury was motivated perhaps by the facts — the hard,
undeniable, if not so widely advertised facts — that Kalam has not made any original contributions to scientific or scholarly research. Homi Bhabha, M.S. Swaminathan, and Amartya Sen, who have, were thus ranked far higher than the former President. Nor has Kalam done important technological work — recognising this, the jury ranked the Delhi Metro and Konkan Railway pioneer E. Sreedharan above him.
In the popular imagination, Kalam has been credited both with overseeing our space programme and the nuclear tests of 1998. In truth, Vikram Sarabhai, Satish Dhawan, U.R. Rao and K. Kasturirangan did far more to advance India’s journey into space. Kalam was an excellent and industrious manager; a devoted organisation man who was rewarded by being made the scientific adviser to the Government of India. It was in this capacity that he was captured in military uniform at Pokhran, despite not being a nuclear specialist of any kind.


A key reason for Abdul Kalam’s rise in public esteem is that he is perceived as a Muslim who stands by his
motherland. In the 1990s, as there was a polarisation of religious sentiment across India, Kalam was seen by many Hindus as the Other of the mafia don Dawood Ibrahim. Dawood was the Bad Muslim who took refuge in Pakistan and planned the bombing of his native Bombay; Kalam the Good Muslim who stood by India and swore to bomb Pakistan if circumstances so demanded. This was the context in which Kalam was picked up and elevated to the highest office of the land by the Bharatiya Janata Party. The BJP wanted, even if symbolically, to reach out to the minorities they had long mistrusted (and sometimes persecuted). In this rebranding exercise, the fisherman’s son from Rameswaram proved willing and able. A second reason that Kalam is so admired is that he is an upright and accessible public servant in an age characterised by arrogant and corrupt politicians. As President, Kalam stayed admirably non-partisan while reaching out to a wide cross-section of society. He made a particular point of interacting with the young, speaking in schools
and colleges across the land, impressing upon the students the role technology could play in building a  prosperous and secure India. A.P.J. Kalam is a decent man, a man of integrity. He is undeniably a good Indian, but not a great Indian, still less (as the popular vote would have us believe) the second greatest Indian since Gandhi. Notably, the Net voters who ranked Kalam second also ranked Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay 50th, or last. At the risk of sounding elitist, I have to say that in both cases the aam admi got it spectacularly wrong.


III

A nation’s pantheon is inevitably dominated by men and women in public affairs, those who fought for independence against colonial rule, and thereafter ran governments and crafted new laws that reshaped society. One of the appealing things about the exercise I was part of was that it did not choose only to honour politicians. The longlist of 50 had actors, singers, sportspersons, scientists, and social workers on it. Commendably, in their own selection of Ten Great Indians since Gandhi, expert as well as aam admi sought to have a variety of fields represented. Collating the votes, a final list of 10 was arrived at, which, in alphabetical order read: B.R. Ambedkar; Indira Gandhi; A.P.J. Abdul Kalam; Lata Mangeshkar; Jawaharlal Nehru; Vallabhbhai Patel; J.R.D. Tata; Sachin Tendulkar; Mother Teresa; A.B. Vajpayee.
Reacting both as citizen and historian, I have to say that six of these 10 choices should be relatively uncontroversial.

Ambedkar, Nehru and Patel are the three towering figures of our modern political history. J.R.D. Tata was that rare Indian capitalist who promoted technological innovation and generously funded initiatives in the arts. Although in sporting terms Viswanathan Anand is as great as Sachin Tendulkar, given the mass popularity of cricket the latter has had to carry a far heavier social burden. Likewise, although a case can be made for M. S. Subbulakshmi, Satyajit Ray or Pandit Ravi Shankar to represent the field of ‘culture’, given what the Hindi film means to us as a nation, Lata had to be given the nod ahead of them. It is with the remaining four names that I must issue a dissenting note. Taken in the round, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay’s achievements are of more lasting value than Indira Gandhi’s. If one wanted a non-Congress political figure apart from Ambedkar, then Jayaprakash Narayan or C. Rajagopalachari must be considered more original thinkers than A.B. Vajpayee. Mr. Vajpayee’s long association with sectarian politics must also be a disqualification
(likewise Indira Gandhi’s promulgation of the Emergency).

As for Mother Teresa, she was a noble, saintly, figure, but I would rather have chosen a social worker — such as Ela Bhatt — who enabled and emancipated Indians from disadvantaged backgrounds rather than simply dispensed charity. My caveats about Abdul Kalam have been entered already. In the intellectual/scientist category, strong arguments can be made in favour of the physicist Homi Bhabha and the agricultural scientist M.S. Swaminathan Although I wouldn’t object to either name, there is also Amartya Sen, acknowledged by his peers as one of the world’s great economists and economic philosophers, and who despite his extended residence abroad has contributed creatively to public debates in his homeland.

To choose 50 and then 10 Great Indians was an educative exercise. One was forced to consider the comparative value of different professions, and the claims and pressures of different generations and interest groups. However, I was less comfortable with the further call to choose a single Greatest Indian. For it is only in autocracies — such as Mao’s China, Stalin’s Russia, Kim Il-sung’s North Korea and Bashir Assad’s Syria — that One Supreme Leader is said to embody the collective will of the nation and its people.


This anointing of the Singular and Unique goes against the plural ethos of a democratic Republic. To be sure, one may accept that politics is more important than sports. Sachin Tendulkar may be the Greatest Indian Cricketer but he cannot ever be the Greatest Indian. But how does one judge Ambedkar’s work for the Dalits and his piloting of the Indian Constitution against Nehru’s promotion of multiparty democracy based on adult franchise and his determination not to make India a Hindu Pakistan? And would there have been an India at all if Patel had not made the princes and nawabs join the Union?


In his famous last speech to the Constituent Assembly, Ambedkar warned of the dangers of hero-worship in politics. In a less known passage from that same speech he allowed that a nation must have its heroes. That is to say, one can appreciate and admire those who nurtured Indian democracy and nationhood without venerating them like gods. In that spirit, one might choose hundred great Indians, or fifty, or ten, or even, as I have ended by doing here, three. But not just One.