In a sense, 1983 has also been the year of Indira Gandhi in India. She has continued to dominate the national scene as she has done in one way or another since she came to the office of Prime Minister in 1966, the period of her so-called political wilderness not excluded.
Indeed, in 1983 she has staked her claim to being a major world figure. She has hosted and presided over two international conferences – the nonaligned summit and the meeting of the Commonwealth heads of government – and spoken as never before on issues such as the nuclear arms race, East-West, tension, the North-South stalemate, the need for South-South cooperation, the Lebanese crisis and the future of the Palestinian people.
Nehru’s initiative
It can be argued that her exertions have not made much difference to the reality of international relations, nor have they won her the kind of laurels Jawaharlal Nehru accumulated when he took the initiative for organising the first-ever Afro-Asian conference in Bandung in 1955 and the first-ever nonaligned summit in Belgrade in 1961. But that has been so at least partly because there are no longer Third World leaders of the stature of Tito, Nasser, Sukarno and U Nu to provide the backing.
Indira Gandhi has been no more a synonym for India in 1983 than she was in 1975 when this absurd formulation was first put across. But unlike in 1975 when she symbolised, if not accounted for, India’s temporary failure as a democracy, in 1983 India’s pride and success have been on display and she has sought to embody them.
Never before has India been so sought after since its humiliation at the hands of the Chinese in 1962 as in 1983 – not just by Third World leaders but by industrialised western nations such as Britain, France, West Germany and Italy in search of orders for weapons and contracts for plants. Even President Reagan has been willing to bend a little to accommodate India’s need for spare parts for the Tarapur nuclear power station.
There have been good reasons for this external interest in this country and its leader. Despite all its troubles – in Punjab and Assam – which have inevitably loomed large on our horizon, India has been one of the most stable societies and polities in the Third World. Its democratic institutional framework has shown a remarkable flexibility and capacity to absorb all kinds of shocks and its economy has come of age. Unlike most other developing countries, India has acquired an almost unlimited capacity to absorb sophisticated technology and capital and, of course, it has never defaulted on its repayments.
But despite solid achievements duly acknowledged by the outside world, in 1983 Mrs Gandhi has not shown the confidence these should have normally produced and justified. And for good reasons. Cracks have been all too visible on the ground under her feet.
The cracks surfaced as the year opened – with a humiliating defeat for her party in Andhra and a loss of majority and office in Karnataka as well. Since the two states had been bastions of the Congress (I) even in the “dark days” of 1977 and 1978, it appeared as if the earth was opening up and the once proud party of independence would soon be swallowed up.
It turned out to be an unduly pessimistic or optimistic view (depending on which side of the great divide one stood). Most of us ignored the fact that there are too many variables in politics, especially Indian politics since the mid-sixties, and Mrs Gandhi’s ruthless determination to fight back. Fight back she did. Within weeks of the disaster in Andhra and Karnataka, in January she won a landslide victory in the election to the Delhi metropolitan council and municipal corporation.
This was more than the proverbial shot in the arm for her. It would be more appropriate to compare it with a rolling back of the tide which threatened to sweep her and her works away. This helped her to go through the nonaligned summit with her usual aplomb.
Incidentally, the summit was a testimony to India’s organisational skills and resources. It had been sprung on us because Iraq at war with Iran could not host it. Iraq had spent over $1.5 billion on establishing the necessary facilities and would in all probability have spent another $1 billion if it had not become clear several months in advance that the conference could not be held in Baghdad. New Delhi hardly needed to create new facilities. It had enough in place, thanks partly to Asiad.
Remarkable aplomb
Despite the victory in Delhi, supposedly the stronghold of the RSS and, therefore, of the BJP, the aplomb at the nonaligned summit was, however, truly remarkable even for Mrs Gandhi. For, two other highly disturbing developments had taken place earlier. The election in Assam had been accompanied by a carnage the like of which this country had not witnessed since the post-partition holocaust in 1947 and the election had been a farce. In constituency after constituency barely 5 to 10 per cent of the electors had voted. And in Punjab the extremists among the Akalis had not only made it virtually impossible for the moderates to reach an agreement with the Union government but also taken to violence against fellow citizens.
In retrospect, however, it must be admitted that the dangerous gamble in Assam has paid off. The state government cannot claim much legitimacy in terms of the electoral support with which it came into office. But it has managed to pacify the situation. Things continue to be extremely difficult in Punjab despite the imposition of President’s rule. Mrs Gandhi has said repeatedly that hostile external forces are at work in the state but has so far not produced a shred of evidence in support of her charge.
As we review the scene at the end of the year, it becomes clear that the pattern had been set by the end of last March. The wave arising out of Andhra and Karnataka had not spread. Mrs Gandhi was behaving as if it was business as usual. If there was some hope after the debacle in the South that she would learn the lesson and take urgent steps to strengthen the Congress organisation and enforce some norms of public morality on those who ruled in her name, especially in the states, it had been proved unfounded. And moves to bring opposition parties together had been initiated.
It could not still be predicted with any measure of confidence that the Congress (I) and the National Conference would confront each other at the hustings in Jammu and Kashmir and that Mrs Gandhi and her party would sweep away the apparently well-entrenched BJP (a reincarnation of the old Jana Sangh) from the Jammu region. This rather unexpected development and the resulting unsurprising victory of Dr. Farooq Abdullah and his National Conference last June have influenced the course of events since, but not in a significantly critical way.
Dr. Abdullah has taken a leading role in organising conclaves of opposition leaders and for some reason, which is not quite clear, Mrs Gandhi has acted in a manner as if his removal from office is a matter of vital national interest. But moves to bring the opposition together on one platform would have gone ahead even if Dr. Abdullah had made common cause with Mrs Gandhi last June or if she had subsequently reconciled herself to him.
In the event, the moves have been neither a success nor a failure. Two broad alliance systems, one consisting of Mr Charan Singh’s Lok Dal and the BJP, and the other of a number of other left-leaning parties, including the Janata, have come into existence. In 1983 they have shown as much antipathy to each other as to the Congress (I) which justly proclaimed itself to be the Indian National Congress at its plenary session in the last week of the year. This clearly gives an advantage to the Congress.
As the year progressed, two speculations became the staple of conversation. Will Mrs Gandhi spring an early election to the Lok Sabha and will she anoint her son, Mr Rajiv Gandhi, as her successor? Neither has turned out to be justified as we ring out 1983 almost as quietly as we ushered it in, thanks to the high and rising prices.
Even so, Mr Rajiv Gandhi enjoys all the powers of the party chief except in name and Mrs Gandhi may yet order an early poll to the Lok Sabha. A number of people saw the AICC session in Bombay last October as the beginning of her election campaign and they see the plenary session in Calcutta in the same light. The radical rhetoric prospered in Calcutta as never before since 1971 and surely it must be a prelude to something unless we accept the absurd proposition that the pragmatic Mrs Gandhi has suddenly become a fellow traveller.
Small ‘difficulty’
Those who predict an early election may yet turn out to be right. But as the year drew towards a close, a little “difficulty” arose – just a day before the faithfuls were to assemble in Calcutta to pay obeisance to Mrs Gandhi and proclaim Mr Rajiv Gandhi as their next leader, by-elections to Parliament showed that the Congress (I) was not in good shape in the critically important states of UP and Bihar.
It will be an exaggeration to say that the year that began so badly for the Congress (1) has ended equally dismally for it. But all the leftist rhetoric that flowed in Calcutta with the sweep of the currents in the adjoining Bay of Bengal cannot drown the little dissent of the little man in Bulandshahr in UP and Bettiah in Bihar.
As we enter the new year, Mrs Gandhi and the Congress cannot say that they have not been warned. 1984 opens sombrely for them and, therefore, for the country. There are no other inheritors in sight yet.
The Times of India, 1 January 1984 [Page 1 comment]