It is obvious that Congress (I) MPs want a discussion in Parliament on the Reddy-Desai correspondence because they believe that they can thereby embarrass not only the former prime minister but possibly also opposition parties which then constituted the Janata. In the process, however, they may embarrass their own leadership as well.
Basically, the correspondence raises two issues – whether as prime minister, Mr. Desai was within his rights under the Constitution to take certain decisions, and whether as president, Mr. Reddy was entitled, not to say obliged to criticize those decisions, not just in a private talk but in a formal exchange of letters. It is difficult to see how a party led by Mrs. Gandhi, a firm advocate of the primacy of the prime minister, can in principle side with Mr. Reddy.
Politics, of course, has a moral dimension. In that perspective it can be argued that Mr. Desai should not have done certain things. The appointment of Mr. V Shankar as his principal secretary and of his own son, Mr. Kanti Desai, as his private secretary can be cited as examples to illustrate the point. But who is to be the arbiter on such issues? Surely not practicing politicians.
From what we know of the correspondence, Mr. Reddy raised two kinds of issues – one set pertaining to policy decisions and the other to morality. On the first group, there can be little doubt that he was more in the wrong than in the right. He might, for instance, have been within his rights to advise Mr. Desai that the latter should not make a firm commitment that India would never go in for nuclear weapons. But was it proper for him to press this point? Certainly, he exceeded his authority in trying to determine how Mr. Desai was to implement the policy of befriending the Shah of Iran. It is shocking that he should have questioned the desirability of a visit to India by the Shah’s twin sister and even insinuated that the plan that brought her to this country could have been used for smuggling God knows what.
Moral Issues
The specific moral issues which Mr. Reddy raised were not earth- shattering. He could not be sure of the facts and even if he was, he could not have established them. How, for example, was he to prove that Mr. Kanti Desai has gone to a casino on one of his visits abroad and lost a lot of money in foreign exchange? But we should set aside these details and confront the central issue – the president’s role in ensuring a respect for moral values on the part of members of his council of minister and their entourages.
Opinion is bound to be divided on this issue. The morally earnest, in words if not in deeds, will take the view that the president should not keep silent in the face of wrong-doing by ministers, their relations and staff. The pragmatists are, on the other hand, likely to take the stand that the process of correction should be left to parliament and that an interventionist view of the President’s role can open a Pandora’s box. Mrs. Gandhi has sided with the second view. There is a great deal of merit in it. India cannot afford a diarchy in New Delhi; morality can be a cover for self-aggrandizement of which even presidents can be guilty.
In certain cases, the dividing line between constitutionality and morality can also be pretty thin. Or so at least the morally earnest have argued. The supporters of Mr. Jayaprakash Narayan were, for example, utterly convinced that it was President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed’s duty, both moral and constitutional (in terms of the spirit of the Constitution) to reject Mrs. Gandhi’s proposal for proclaiming an internal emergency in June 1975 and subsequent ordinances. Many of us did not worry about the possible consequences of such an action on the part of the president then. We should be more careful now.
Unsuitable For Role
A president can, of course, find himself in a terrible dilemma. There can be occasions when he feels that as an honorable man he has a choice only between resignation and precipitating a crisis by denying the Prime Minister. But even in such a contingency he should remember that his main obligation is to uphold the existing order and not to give it a rude shock. A Jayaprakash Narayan would be a misfit in Rashtrapati Bhavan. This is precisely why Mrs. Gandhi did not countenance a proposal to that effect when it was put her by Mr. CB Gupta in 1967.
Returning from the general to the specific, in 1977 India was landed first with an unlikely prime minister in Mr. Desai and then with an equally unlikely president in Mr. Reddy. Neither was particularly suitable for the role in which history in its confusion and turbulence cast them. A clash between them was unavoidable. Mr. Desai, it is well known, is too self-righteous, obstinate and inflexible to be able to lead a team. As it happened, the team he was called upon to lead was too heterogeneous and unruly for a man of his temperament.
Mr. Reddy is equally self-opinionated, perhaps even more loquacious, and certainly more ruthless. The so-called syndicate in the united Congress headed by Mr. Kamraj chose him as its candidate for the presidency in 1969 precisely because it had decided to put in Rashtrapati Bhavan someone who could harass and in course of time drive Mrs. Gandhi out of the office of prime minister. Apparently, he was willing to play the role.
Mrs. Gandhi frustrated Mr. Reddy in 1969 just as Mr. Nehru had frustrated Mr. Desai in 1963. It is an irony of history that in 1963 Mr. Kamaraj, subsequently Mr. Desai’s ally, should have served as Mr. Nehru’s principal instrument for damaging Mr. Desai’s prospects, and that in 1969 Mr. Reddy and Mr. Desai should have been on the same side of the great divide in the Congress party.
The irony of history does not end there. Mr. Desai owed his job of Prime Minister to two men – Jayaprakash Narayan for whom he had no respect and Mr. Charan Singh with whom he fell out within months, if not weeks, of the formation of the ill-fated Janata government. And in 1977 Mrs. Gandhi readily, indeed only too readily, endorsed Mr. Reddy as the republic’s next president, the same Mr. Reddy whom she had opposed in 1969 for the same office.
JP was, of course, the victim of circumstances. Left to himself, he would in all probability have chosen Mr. Jagjivan Ram for the august office of prime minister. But Mr. Charan Singh would not have Mr. Jagjivan Ram and he finally agreed to accept Mr. Desai if only because the latter was senior in terms of age.
In a sense, Mrs. Gandhi too did not have much of a choice. She could not have defeated Mr. Reddy even if she had so wished. In fact, she was not even in control of her own party, with many of her colleagues anxious to fix the responsibility for the emergency and the recent electoral disaster on her and her younger son, Mr. Sanjay Gandhi. But knowing Mr. Reddy as well as she did, she could not have been unhappy to see him move into Rashtrapati Bhawan. No, she did not need to try to make a deal with him. She could expect him to play her game on his own. He did. He began to harass Mr. Desai within months of becoming president.
It is difficult to say how Mr. Reddy would have behaved if Mr. Desai had stood up to him. But Mr. Desai did not, and he lost the very first round. The issue was relatively small – unrest in Jawaharlal Nehru University and Delhi University. Mr. Desai was inept. A prime minister does not personally look into such matters. But he is not disqualified from doing so. Mr. Reddy’s status as visitor of the two universities did not make him superior to the prime minister and entitle him to deny the head of government a formal authorization to go ahead with an inquiry once he had chosen to conduct one. Mr. Desai acquiesced in it. This was the other face of a self-proclaimed strong man and it remained on display throughout his term as prime minister as far as Mr. Reddy was concerned.
Republic Day Speech
Mr. Desai, on Mr. Arun Gandhi’s sympathetic account, yielded again and again – early in 1978 when Mr. Reddy returned to him an address to Parliament which the cabinet had prepared; in the summer of 1978 when he (Mr. Desai) allowed himself to be coerced into sending to Mr. Reddy the correspondence between him (Mr. Desai) and his intransigent home minister, Mr. Charan Singh; in the winter of 1978 when in a public speech Mr. Reddy virtually incited ministers to resign; and early in 1979 when he chose not to “make an issue” of the fact that Mr. Reddy had drafted his own speech for Republic Day.
Mr. Desai replied to but did not make an issue of even a most provocative letter Mr. Reddy wrote to him on January 14, 1979, listing his “crimes” of omission and commission. Perhaps he did not wish to precipitate a crisis, believing that things would somehow sort themselves out. Perhaps he was in no position to take on Mr. Reddy in view of the open split in the Janata. Perhaps he felt handicapped on account of the reputation of his son, deserved or undeserved. But whatever the reason, Mr. Desai behaved like an ordinary politician and not as a great man of principle and courage. He would have lost his office anyhow. But Mr. Reddy assisted the process. Neither emerges with much credit from the account of the exchanges available to us.
The Times of India, 24 August 1983