It is generally assumed that the intelligentsia in India constitutes a distinct class and that by and large it is distrustful of, if not hostile towards, Mrs. Gandhi on account of her record during the emergency and her refusal to dissociate herself from Mr. Sanjay Gandhi and his “cronies.” While there is some merit in these propositions, they are open to question.
Members of the intelligentsia come from too different backgrounds in terms of language, region, community, caste, income and schooling to constitute a distinct class with common attitudes and aspirations. Upper middle class products of Christian missionary schools and competently run colleges, where English is still the medium of instruction have, for example, little in common with the lower middle mofussil graduates who can barely handle the English language. And the gap between the unsuccessful and even the moderately successful in the professions, services and private enterprises is so vast in our country that they virtually belong to two different worlds.
The situation was somewhat different in the earlier part of the century on several counts. English was the medium of instruction in all colleges throughout the country and its teaching was emphasised in most schools. The better students made some attempt to acquaint themselves with the European history and thought and were to some extent influenced by these in their thinking and behaviour. They were on the defensive about their own social practices such as dowry, ill-treatment of widows, early and arranged marriages and untouchability and wished to get rid of them. On top of it, they came to be imbued with the spirit of patriotism and nationalism.
Sympathetic
Though only a relatively small portion of the intelligentsia participated actively in the freedom struggle, the majority of its members were sympathetic to it. They were not prepared to forgo government jobs and contracts. Hardly anyone resigned from the government during the independence struggle. Most Indian bureaucrats implemented their orders without much qualm of conscience. Even so, the nationalist sentiment made an impact on them.
In all probability the freedom movement would not have acquired the momentum and the sweep it did if Gandhiji was not there to lead it. He brought the common traders and even peasants into it. But if anyone could be said to be the leader of the intelligentsia which was the backbone of the movement, it was Mr. Nehru and not he. Indeed, it should be evident in retrospect that Mr. Nehru, too, did not command its loyalty beyond a point.
The better educated and the more articulate among the intelligentsia acquiesced in Gandhiji’s leadership mainly because there was no alternative to him. He did not deliberately use his mass appeal to cow them down or win them over. But they were cowed down by it. In the clash between him and Mr. Subhas Chandra Bose, their sympathies were more with the latter than with him and not just in Bengal alone where the intelligentsia never reconciled itself to the Mahatma. Mr. Nehru’s presence on his side helped mitigate this hostility but only to a limited extent.
This point does not need to be pressed for those who remember the controversies of that period. But even they assume all too easily that Mr. Nehru spoke for most of the intelligentsia during the freedom struggle, that he carried this asset with him when he took over as Prime Minister on August 15, 1947, and that this enabled him to evolve a national consensus on issues facing the country.
No Alternative
This view is, of course, not without substance. Mr. Nehru was more a spokesman of the intelligentsia than any other individual or group among the country’s political leaders either before or after independence. But he, too, was able to consolidate his authority on the strength of the support he got from the weaker sections of the Hindu society and the minorities. As in Gandhiji’s case, the better educated Indians fell in line with him because there was no alternative to him. He did not evolve a consensus. He imposed one on the intelligentsia. There was a national debate. But essentially it was a phoney one. This point is best illustrated by the fact that men like Mr. Morarji Desai and Mr. S.K. Patil, who did not share his outlook, moved resolutions in parliament and elsewhere – the AICC and Congress sessions, for instance – favouring his policies of non-alignment with its emphasis on friendship with Communist countries, including China up to the late ’fifties, and placing the “commanding heights” of the economy under the control of the public sector.
Mr. Nehru managed to keep the Congress in power both at the centre and in the states and himself as its unchallenged leader. Centralised planning in the name of economic growth and egalitarianism, two propositions favoured by most members of the intelligentsia, also reinforced the powers of New Delhi. Thus under M, Nehru the country’s administration was in effect run along the lines of the presidential or even viceregal system.
Mr. Nehru was, no doubt, responsible to parliament and he showed due deference to that institution. But for most of his years in office parliament was a rubber-stamp. It asserted itself from 1959 to 1962 on the question of the country’s China policy with consequences which have been there since for anyone to see.
If the British-style education through English as the medium of instruction had given the old intelligentsia the facade of being a distinct community with a distinct outlook and purpose, the spread of education and the increasing emphasis on Indian languages in the post-independence period gradually and inevitably reversed the process. It subjected the new intelligentsia to the same divisive pulls which plague the Indian society as a, whole.
The impression of continuity, however, survived under Mr. Nehru for a variety of reasons. The Congress continued to be in power and Mr. Nehru its supreme leader. He did not pursue any policy which any section of the intelligentsia would find intolerable. He did not seek to abridge civic freedoms either in the name or for the sake of quick economic growth, national consolidation and power; he did not favour one Indian language (Hindi) at the cost of others; he expanded the public sector without unduly restricting the scope for private enterprise; he interpreted the concept of secularism to mean only non-discrimination on the basis of religion; even in the field of foreign policy he balanced the growing friendship with the Soviet Union with reasonable ties with the West.
But as the Nehru era drew to a close, the Indian intelligentsia had more or less taken the shape of the larger society. Like the latter, it was badly divided. As such its commitment to national integration and a strong central authority had become feeble. The defeat of the Congress in all north Indian states in 1967 was not primarily the result of this development. But the defeat reinforced the trend. The opposition to Mrs. Gandhi, a strong champion of a powerful centre, has to be viewed at least as much in this context as in that of her personality and actions before, during and after the emergency.
Alienated
The evidence is so overwhelming that it is difficult to resist the conclusion that large sections of the intelligentsia are opposed to her primarily because she stands for a strong centre, and seeks to embody it in her person, which is a dangerous approach. Indeed, the surprise, if any, is that she was able to overcome this opposition between 1969 and 1971. Going by her recovery since her own and her party’s humiliating defeat in March 1977, it would appear that even then she could do so on the strength of the support she could mobilise among the depressed sections of society and the minorities. But that did not appear to be the case in that period. It then seemed that by and large the intelligentsia was with her. If that was in fact the case, a convincing explanation of it has yet to be offered.
Mrs. Gandhi has alienated a lot of people who were not opposed to her, at least not as trenchantly as now, before the emergency. They find her style of functioning too arbitrary and her unflinching support for Mr. Sanjay Gandhi unacceptable. But essentially the constituents of the opposition have remained unchanged. Thus while her performance during the emergency has aggravated the problem, it has not created it.
The issue transcends Mrs. Gandhi’s future. The country has run into a basic contradiction. While the intelligentsia has got badly fragmented, the country’s requirements call for greater centralisation of authority and sophistication in management. Like bureaucratisation, centralisation, whatever its disadvantages, is an unavoidable feature of modern economy. In our case, a weakening of central authority has set other warning bells ringing in the shape of the recent unrest and revolts in the police, the CRPF, and the CISF and the upsurge of insurrections in the north-eastern part of the country.
The Times of India, 21 November 1979
