Regardless of the possible accuracy or otherwise of the MARG-Times of India poll published in the newspapers on June 12, coincidentally or otherwise the polling day for the second phase of the current election, one aspect of it deserves attention. This relates to answers to two inter-related questions: whether the Congress was right or wrong in offering party presidentship to Sonia Gandhi, and whether she was right or wrong in declining it.
To the first question, 61 per cent of those interviewed replied in the affirmative and 27 per cent in the negative; 12 per cent said they did not know. And to the second question, 60 per cent replied in the affirmative and 27 per cent in the negative; 13 per cent said they did not know.
On the face of it, the closeness of two of these figures (60 and 61) is rather extraordinary. For even if we assume that all those (27 per cent), who did not favour the offer of Congress presidentship to Sonia Gandhi, thought that she did the right thing in rejecting it, 33 per cent of those who favoured the offer also approved of her rejection of it. In reality, however, there is nothing particularly surprising about these figures.
They underscore a psychological aspect of Indian reality which should have been obvious to both practicing politicians and analysts. Indeed, it is surprising that it has escaped their attention altogether. For the fact is writ large on the face of Indian politics that in the deeper recesses of their psyche, a significant section of the Indian people are ‘ambivalent’ towards politics and power.
In the Hindu scheme, while Dharma Chakravartin and Raj Chakravartin have the same signs and qualities, the individual so endowed must choose one role or the other. Once this choice is made, there is no going back on it. The Dharma Chakravartin is far higher in the Hindu scale of values than the Raj Chakravartin, and the latter is duty bound to uphold Dharma.
In ancient India, Ashoka is the best known example of confusing these two roles. The emperor (Raj Chakravartin) cast himself in the role of Dharma Chakravartin in that he sought to propagate Buddhism. Or course, he did not persecute Hindus and discriminate against them. But that is not the point. The point is that he exceeded his role as an upholder of Dharma by becoming a propagator of a specific variant or branch of it.
In our times, Nehru fell for a similar confusion of roles. He sought to combine in himself the powers of the office of Prime Minister and those of an ideologue. Mahatma Gandhi had been more careful and, therefore, sensitive to Indian tradition, even if unconsciously. In the thirties, he resigned from membership of the Congress. He too did not stay within his legitimate sphere as a Mahatma in as much as he took active interest in the working of the Congress and took up the leadership of the ‘Quit India’ movement. But at least he did not accept any formal position in the Congress leadership.
The confusion of roles in Nehru’s case too – as in Stalin’s in the Soviet Union and Mao Zedong’s in China – could have led to a disaster if he had not imbibed a deep moral sense from Gandhi and awareness from the British of the limitations of power and need for restraint in the pursuit of personal ambitions as well as of larger national goals. To an extent, he shared the Hindu ambivalence towards politics and power. That was one of his saving graces.
Nehru had developed a worldview of his own as a leading participant in the freedom movement and it is only natural that after attaining independence, he should have sought to become Prime Minister and implement it to the extent he could under the given constraints. And as it happened, the Dharma Chakravartin mentor in the shape of the Mahatma also disappeared from the scene on January 30, 1948. But if Nehru was more cognizant of the Indian tradition and a wiser man, he would not have combined the offices of Prime Minister and Congress president as he did in the early fifties and subordinated the latter office to the former when he virtually nominated the little-known UN Dhebar as Congress president.
This inevitably produced two deleterious consequences. First, it led to the decline of the Congress and weakened an agency which could have exercised a restraining influence on those in office and the powerful and rapidly expanding bureaucracy. Secondly, in the very act of placing himself at the top of the pyramid and isolating himself from all his “colleagues’, Nehru exposed himself to the risk of being blown away.
He was blown away by the first storm that hit him in the shape of the Chinese attack in 1962. His isolation had denied him access to sober counsel and his power deprived him of the willingness to heed it. India was military ill-prepared for the attack and Nehru was equally ill-prepared psychologically, though there had been no dearth of warnings since 1959.
More pertinent for our present purpose, the people’s ambivalence surfaced with this first big and obvious failure of his. Nehru never recovered from the shock and died of heart attack on May 27, 1964. In his death, he was forgiven all and indeed restored to the old status. But that is another story.
Indira Gandhi’s case is, on the face of it, more complicated and, therefore, more difficult to delineate. One major complication is the popular applause she apparently received after she split the Congress in 1969 through a series of moves which spoke of a ruthlessness and disregard for norms the like of which had not been witnessed in contemporary India and should, by my reckoning, have forfeited support for her. The results of the 1971 poll would, on the face of it, suggest that, in fact, the very opposite happened.
A careful scrutiny would, however, show that this was not the case. With their radical rhetoric which appeals to one part of our view of our being in view of our disorientation under alien cultural impacts, supporters of Indira Gandhi, communists, former communists and fellow-travellers were able to drown our natural response to her undisguised and brutal search for power. But it soon surfaced, first in Gujarat in the Navnirman movement in the winter of 1973 and then in the larger movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan for restoration of morality in public life in 1974.
Indira Gandhi did not recover from the consequences of her action in 1969 and this despite the great courage, determination and the skill she demonstrated in handling the Bangladesh problem in 1971, breaking up Pakistan and ensuring the rise of a sovereign Bangladesh.
Her assassin redeemed her in the eyes of her people just as Gandhi’s had redeemed him. It is impossible to say whether like the Mahatma, Indira Gandhi too had lost the will to live. But that is not inconceivable. Every time I met her after her return to office in 1980, especially after the beginning of terrorism of Punjab in 1982, I found her uneasy and unsure of herself. In the last months of her life, she was willing to admit in so many words that none of her strategies was working with the people. The move to bring Rajiv Gandhi into politics was as much an act of desperation as of “dynastic” ambition. Sonia Gandhi should know it better than anyone else.
The validity of my proposition about the perils of power is starkly evident in the case of Rajiv Gandhi. He was the darling of the people, especially of the middle classes and the intelligentsia in 1985 and 1986, not so much because he was liberalizing the economy and catering to their needs as because he was perceived to be “Mr Clean” and a novice in politics, not given to the crooked ways of other politicians.
His clean and transparent face was, in my view, his greatest strength. But this constituency was the first and remarkably quick to desert him when VP Singh stole his “Mr Clean” cloak and it appeared via the Bofors and HDW submarine payoff scandals that he too might be no different from other politicians. He was judged out of court and convicted.
Nehru did not touch party funds and “prospered” partly on that basis. Indira Gandhi tried to centralize collections under Sanjay Gandhi’s influence and got discredited. Rajiv Gandhi should have learnt from the mother’s bitter experience. He paid the price of not doing so. And like his predecessors he too placed himself at the top of the pyramid with no one to keep him company and protect him against the evil wind when it blew, as it had to. It always does.
Over three decades ago, Myron Weiner wrote of the Indian desire to escape power as if this is a disability. From the western view-point, it is. It is even more so from the Islamic viewpoint where power justifies itself and all means in its pursuit are legitimate. It is a different story in Hinduism. The difference is best illustrated by qualifications for the ruler – control over the senses in our case and full expression to those faculties in the other – and preference for anarchy over a bad ruler in our case and theological injunction against revolt against a ruler, however tyrannical, in the other.
The issue is not who is right and who is wrong. The issue is that the heart of our civilization and people beats differently and it beats to a different music. One who ignores this reality must come to grief and the rest of us with him or her. This reality is not yet strong enough to assert itself. But it has always been strong enough to punish its disregard and violation. There is little evidence of recognition of these facts. So much the pity.
To return to Sonia Gandhi, her instinct to keep out of the deadly business of politics is sound. Her popularity rating is ephemeral, as it is in everyone’s case. It will decline in no time, the controversy over the letter to PV Narasimha Rao should suffice to show how treacherous the ground can be.
Clearly, she allowed herself to be persuaded to write the letter against her better instinct. As an expression of gratitude, it was uncalled for two weeks after Rajiv Gandhi’s cremation; legitimately there could be no place for a political statement in such a letter; it should never have been intended for publication and it should never have been published; in the proper English usage ‘his country’ was correct and ‘our country’ inelegant; as such there was no reason to panic and make the change, and certainly not for only one newspaper. This single episode should show how tricky it is for her to go against her instincts.
Sunday Mail, 16 June 1991