3. GANDHI, NEHRU & GANDHIS :An Author and Two Books -3

3.GANDHI, NEHRU & GANDHIS: 
An Author and Two Books -3
    

Gandhi- reel and real

Thirtyfive years after Gandhi died, Sir Richard Attenborough produced a motion picture on his life which was hailed . Its posters said "Gandhi's triumph changed the world for ever". The film succeeded and was awarded 8 Oscars! But did Gandhi succeed? Did he achieve anything at all in the end? Tharoor examines this question candidly.

REAL GANDHI : GRAND FAILURE

It is difficult to talk of all that Gandhi stood for. 'Gandhism'  is a convenient label,but it means nothing, or many things to many people. There was  undeniably personal purity and a sort of saintliness in the man, though it bordered on the fanatical. He experimented with Truth in private life, but made the public suffer or pay for it.His life was so transparent.

 He insisted on nonviolence but the Satyagraha he invented to promote it could not be understood by the people or enforced by him as intended. Each of his agitations against the British he either abandoned midway, or was broken up by the British brutally.His individual protest for salt was successful, but its aftermath was not pleasant. His misguided Quit-India call in 1942 led to the arrest of all leaders, brutal suppression of the freedom movement and chaos among the ranks. Before that he had asked the Congress ministries in the Provinces to resign; this was a blunder which boosted Jinnah no end. In the last decade of his life Gandhi was a complete failure, a totally disillusioned man. He was not able to provide leadership or suggest a solution to any problem. 

Nonviolence did NOT succeed against the British. They left India because its governance imposed unbearable financial burden. They also developed doubts about the loyalty of Indian troops after Subhas Bose floated the INA and it caught the imagination of Indians. Indian Navy and Air Force men mutinied! The British  developed cold feet and left India post-haste!

Nonviolence did not succeed anywhere else in the world. Martin Luther King was inspired by it in the American South and it had some  effect there, but no  effect anywhere else.

The other aspects of his programs were also incomplete or not tried at  all, or were overtaken by events. Thus, his Harijans became Dalits with Dr. Ambedkar as the ideal. They  acquired political clout, as popular democracy took roots.
His economic ideas based on simplicity, rural prosperity, village economy were rejected by his own anointed heir,Nehru without even a limited trial; he  went for the Soviet model of state planning. 
Gandhi's ideas found their echo later in intermediate technology and the slogan "small is beautiful" but the professional economic and industrial establishments have not allowed these ideas to spread through the educational systems controlled by them. Their basic insight and logic cannot be denied, and are upheld by deep thinkers, but they have not gained entry into the mainstream.

 These are examined or implied by Tharoor in his examination of Gandhi and his role, though not in the way I have said here. His verdict:

Gandhian solutions have not been found for many of the ills over which he agonized ....instead his methods have been abused and debased by far lesser men in the pursuit of petty sectarian ends.

Tharoor looks beyond the charkha to silicon chips to bring economic prosperity. This is typical 19th century thinking with its unbounded faith in technological progress and sheer hubris .
 It is also absolutely idiotic because it does not reckon how technology destroys our planet and our lives.

Tharoor seems to be totally unaware of the currents of ecological-economic thinking outside the mainstream. Did he ever hear of ideas like steady state economy , sustainable economics, economics of permanence, voluntary simplicity, etc? These have grown beyond the days of intermediate technology.
Gandhian economics has been reinvented- by non-Indians!

Tharoor concludes:

"Gandhi's "triumph" did not change the world for ever. It is,sadly, a matter of doubt whether he triumphed at all." 

It takes courage for a member of the Congress party to write openly that Gandhi did not succeed.  But more is yet to come.

JAWAHARLAL NEHRU : SOUND AND FURY

Jawaharlal was actively promoted by his father Motilal. He was promoted by Gandhi himself at great injustice to Sardar Patel and Subhas Bose, and was officially declared his political heir. Yet when he came to power and remained Prime Minister for 17 unbroken years, he did not implement a single program of Gandhi! He ditched Gandhi completely!

Nehru betrayed Gandhi.

There was some magic about Nehru. He was completely anglicised in his thinking and habits, yet was called Pandit! In a certain way,  quite vague, he seemed to exemplify the spirit of India though he did not conform to any traditional belief system. This was the mustique about Nehru.
 "Jawaharlal Nehru's political beliefs owed far more to the Russian Revolution than to Gandhi's Hindu humanism."
Tharoor states the four pillars of Nehru's legacy:

• democratic institution building
• secularism
• non-alignment
• socialist economics.

While Tharoor considers the first two as indispensable to nation building  ( with which I disagree ), he says of the other two:

-non-alignment preserved the country's self respect and enhanced its international standing without bringing any concrete benefit to the Indian people.

- socialistic economics was disastrous, condemning the Indian people to poverty and stagnation, and engendering inefficiency, red-tapism, and corruption on a scale rarely rivaled elsewhere.

This is an admirably accurate assessment of another tragic failure. In 17 years as PM, Nehru achieved very little and left great issues unresolved and created more: Kashmir, War with China, economic bankruptcy, disintegration of India into linguistic jungle (thus nullifying the integration achieved by Sardar Patel). I have always considered Nehru a mighty tin horn. I find confirmation for my conviction in what Tharoor has written. This too takes courage : to be in the Congress party  and yet say that Nehru was a failure! But more is yet to come!

DEATHS AND DYNASTY

The years of Nehru were post-Gandhian in the sense of being after the demise of Gandhi, and anti-Gandhian in the sense that they took us   away from  Gandhian ideals.The years after Nehru were Nehruvian in the sense of adherence to the four pillars mentioned above, but even more blindly. More than that, they represented  the founding of a dynasty. It was rooted in three deaths.

Lal Bahadur Shastri, chosen PM after Nehru did not have time to consolidate his position ; he had to fight a war with Pakistan and died under somewhat suspicious circumstances in Tashkent where he had gone to sign a peace treaty brokered by Soviet Russia. By this treaty, he had surrendered all the gains India made in the war!

 In the sudden  space created, Kamaraj as president of the party thrust Indira Gandhi into the PM's chair, due to his personal fascination for Nehru family. 

Indira had nothing else but her pedigree, but she had accidentally acquired an inestimable asset- the Gandhi surname, though it had nothing to do with the real Gandhi. Indira was never reckoned as somebody by the seniors in the party. The party did badly in the 1967 elections and Indira faced increasing challenges. But she outmanoeuvred her seniors,( Kamaraj too was dumped), projected herself as the champion of the poor, inventing the slogan "Garibi Hatao ".

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 Even this did not last as by mid 70s opposition to her was gaining momentum with the saintly Jayaprakash Narayan calling for 'total revolution' (whatever it meant). Indira responded with the imposition of Emergency, suspended democratic rights, imprisoned all political leaders and activists, radically amended the Constitution and imposed her will. Her younger son Sanjay took the opportunity to force his whims on the people. In the elections she called in 1977 (in a moment of weakness, no doubt fed by false reports by her coterie) she lost and a Janata coalition was stitched together with veteran Morarji Desai as the PM. But the coalition  did not last. Indira came to power again but in 1980, Sanjay Gandhi died when he flew a stunt plane recklessly and crashed it, and Indira herself was assassinated by her Sikh guards in 1984.What did Indira achieve?

Tharoor  does  say most of what I have mentioned above, and writes that Indira had acquired a suspicion of the West from her father, and a pro-Soviet attitude.But she did not have real socialist convictions, confessing to an American interviewer:

"I don't  really have a political philosophy. I can't say I believe in any ism. I wouldn't say I'm interested in socialism as socialism. To me it's just a tool ".

 Tharoor writes:

But tools are used for well-defined purposes and it was never clear that Indira Gandhi  had any, beyond the political short term....

Mrs.Gandhi was skilled at the acquisition and maintenance of power, but hopeless at the wielding of it for larger purposes.

...her thuggish younger son, Sanjay,.. ordered brutally insensitive campaigns of slum demolitions and forced sterilizations...

Most of the real victims of the Emergency were among the poorer classes of Indians....

Sanjay would have done to the country what he did to the plane [recklessly crashing it, flying it against regulations]

Mrs. Gandhi having systematically alienated,excluded or expelled any leader of standing in her own party who might have been a viable deputy (and thus a potential rival) to her, drafted the only person she could entirely trust- her..elder son Rajiv - to fill the breach.

Here again, Tharoor is bold in openly pointing out the faults of Indira Gandhi and calling Sanjay Gandhi  " thuggish".

ugly faces of the emergency: entrenching dynastic rule

TRAGEDY OF RAJIV GANDHI

Rajiv rode to power on a huge sympathy wave after Indira's assassination, but was soon caught in the controversy over the purchase of Bofors guns. Even school children were shouting 
" Galli galli mein shor hain, Rajiv Gandhi chor hain".[Hear it said in every nook / Rajiv Gandhi is a crook.]

Rajiv Gandhi was not learned but belonged to a different generation. His approach was practical, he raised hopes. Tharoor writes:

Instead of the visionless expediency that had been his mother's only credo,Rajiv offered transparent sincerity and conviction.........

In place of the tired reiteration of sterile slogans, he spoke of liberalization, of technology, of modernity, of moving India into the twenty-first century.

Rajiv surrounded himself with technologists, in place of political manipulators. But, 

Rajiv Gandhi became the victim of his own success. His actions strengthened the country, but undermined his party.

Manipulators in the party made him succumb to orthodox Muslim clerics in the infamous Shah Banu case, and Rajiv enacted a law to reverse a Supreme Court ruling to offer alimony to Muslim widows, thus "placing Muslim widows outside the purview of the country's civil codes". 

"The fresh faces quickly faded away, the party hacks returned. Rajiv Gandhi was no longer one of us."

THE NAME SELLS : OR DOES IT, ANY MORE ?

Poor Rajiv, very soon he was no longer with us, falling to the bomb of treacherous LTTE assassins. And now the power brokers in the party played the part perfectly, electing his widow as the Congress president, and thus the party candidate as the PM!  

This is how the dynasty got entrenched. Three deaths/assassinations, and the sympathy wave used to convert a family into a dynasty.Their only qualification was the name! Tharoor writes tellingly:

"Perhaps the ultimate reflection of both the extent and limitation of Rajiv Gandhi's appeal lay in the decision of his Congress Party to offer his place to his widow, Sonia. Behind the extraordinary selection of an Italian born nonpolitician lay the  implicit judgment that Rajiv Gandhi's value as a leader lay not in his qualities but in his name. From the party he led to his death, this was an unworthy epitaph "

The rise of the dynasty is a deliberately designed manoeuvre, though an unfortunate death or assassination might seem to have precipitated it. In this connection, Tharoor writes:

In a country as vast, as multilingual, .....as India, national name recognition is not easily achieved. Once attained, it is self-perpetuating; for any rival to catch up on decades of nehru-Gandhi dominance is virtually impossible. The public mind has, since the heady days of the onset of independence, identified the family with Indian nationalism. It is a perception that gives any member of the dynasty a headstart over anyone else.

Nor can we forget the negative reasons for the lack of viable alternatives to the dynasty: Nehru's failure to groom a successor, Indira's ruthless elimination of rivals, and the desiccation of the Congress under her into a complacent instrument of dynastic despotism. ...The opposition parties'collective failure has been worse.

P.V.Narasimha Rao defied the dynasty ( or kept it in good humour) and completed his full term as PM, but after him the power brokers in the party have safely banked on the dynasty. Sonia is promoting her children but for now they have not made any impact.
 BJP under Modi has checkmated the dynasty. With the revolution in communication, the whole country is able to watch and judge, no matter what the media with their own vested interests may project. 

I cannot do better than conclude this section with the words of Tharoor himself :

" the woman [Sonia Gandhi] now starring as the custodian of the legend of the dynasty knows only too well that fairy tales, like Hindu legends, don't always have a happy ending."

Or does she, indeed?