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DOGGED
LIBERAL
Ramachandra Guha at home in Bangalore with Pomo.
Photo by Sankarshan Thakur |
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‘Predictions
of India’s downfall underestimate our political class. Anticipations
of our greatness overestimate it’ |
The word that
comes to mind again and again about the man is ease. It’s the
way he dresses; it’s the way he orders his quaint study —
a high-ceilinged outhouse to a remodelled bungalow located in the lee
of central Bangalore’s concrete spiral; it’s the way he
lapses into his chair and chats. He chatters, really, and chatters finch-like;
the ease lies in what he has to say. No highfalutin, no bombasts of
wisdom, no affectation of being Ramachandra Guha, so-and-so. The ease
lies in greater measure in how and what he writes. India After Gandhi
is a work of immense depth, sweep and scholarship, but its real merit
is its lucidity of thought and telling. A lot of the book’s ease
comes from the fact of its author being unrestrained by ism and dogma,
it’s the ease that probably only resides in a liberal mind. This
is not a hectoring history, this is a charming invitation to learn.
Who would have thought to pick a Johnnie Walker quip from a Bollywood
movie and turn it into the sutra-mantra of the way our democracy works
— phipty-phipty. At 900-odd pages, India After Gandhi is a marathon,
but it races along. It’s a run everybody wanting to understand
the complex and continuing miracle called India must do.
In a quiet
way, your book is a fairly unreserved tribute to a mostly derided class
— the Indian politician.
Yes it is. Particularly
all those who laid the foundations of India, their vision, the way they
went about implementing it. Not just Gandhi and Nehru, but also Ambedkar,
Vallabhbhai Patel, Rajendra Prasad and all the rest of them. That we
have remained a democracy and flourished as one is a huge tribute to
them. Everyone thought Nehru was India, but when he died, Kamaraj proved
Nehru was not India, however great he was, because of the way he arranged
the successions. Even later, when Indira Gandhi lost in 1977, she handed
over power; the BJP did that in 2004. That is a great tradition for
the political class to keep. And don’t forget Morarji Desai’s
role in restoring the Constitution after Indira buggered it up. The
Janata Party, mostly, was a clutch of jokers, vain and fragmented; they
made a mess of things, but Morarji did restore the Constitution. Morarji
said a wonderful thing: “Democracy has been vasectomised and our
first job is to undo that.” It is a brilliant, revealing quote
— democracy had been vasectomised, not India — it shows
how much they internalised the idea of democracy.
What is
special here, what has made the Indian politician respect certain principles
we see flouted all across post-colonial democracies?
It is difficult
to say what. I think ultimately it’s the legacy of the freedom
movement, the work of the founders. The Congress itself was a party
of internal democracy. My argument in the book — it is not foolproof
because I do not have the Indira Gandhi papers — is that she withdrew
the Emergency because the West told her that she was betraying her father
by listening to her son. The remarkable thing is she never told Sanjay
this, she lifted the Emergency without telling him, perhaps the only
major decision she took without his knowing. So if Mrs Gandhi of the
Emergency could be embarrassed, you know the weight of our democratic
ethos. Even the BJP is somewhere reined in by the traditions of the
freedom movement. However venal or corrupt or authoritarian our politicians,
they get embarrassed by our collective tradition.
 |
INDIA
AFTER GANDHI Ramachandra Guha
Picador India
926 pp; Rs 695 |
The Congress
as a party of internal democracy: isn’t that a little much?
That’s Indira.
The Congress today is a family firm. The original sinner is Indira.
What about
Nehru? He groomed her.
Nehru never groomed
her.
She was
made Congress president when he was prime minister.
He succumbed to
that — probably there were sycophants wanting to please him. Frank
Moraes was a great critic of Nehru, and I quote him as having said Nehru
never wanted Indira to succeed him. And the truth is she did not succeed
him when he died. In 1964-65 she wanted to move to England. But with
Sanjay, the way he became an extra-constitutional authority, it was
clear she was killing democratic traditions. When he died, Rajiv Gandhi
was installed. Indira set the pattern for every party to follow. If
the dmk, the party of Dravidian social reform, is in the hands of Karunanidhi’s
son, it is a bit odd. The damage done by Indira was immense. Nehru could
not impose chief ministers, but Indira began doing that. Now Sonia is
able to do that. Nehru was much more powerful than Sonia in terms of
his aura, the respect he commanded. Now everything is done by Madam.
So where
do your optimisms lie, for this is a hugely optimistic book?
It isn’t
that optimistic. Towards the end, it trails off, says we’ll somehow
survive. Through the first part, there are various Western observers
who aren’t giving India a chance; they are all saying it will
go down the tube, khatam ho jaayega, chance hi nahin hai. But all those
predictions underestimated the calibre of the Indian political class
and the resilience of Indian democratic institutions. What is happening
now is that we have anticipations of greatness. That we will become
a superpower. There is an energy in civil society and our entrepreneurial
class, but to think that it will translate into India becoming a powerhouse
is to overestimate our political class and institutions. My sense is
we will only stumble along, maybe move from B-plus to A-minus or B to
B-plus, rather.
‘Kashmir will always
bleed us. We created Bangladesh, do you expect Pakistan to ever
forget that? Ever?’ |
Why do
you say that?
There are reasons.
We are tackling endemic poverty too slowly. There is a threat of right-wing
and left-wing extremism. Kashmir will always bleed us until we have
a settlement with Pakistan.
Are we
still in the making as a nation, would you say, or are we more or less
made and experimenting with what we have given ourselves?
There are several
aspects to our making. Eighty percent of India is Indian. Tamil Nadu,
Bihar, Karnataka, Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, they are all happy calling
themselves Indian and there is very good reason for that. They share
ideas, values, heritage, a common purpose. And there are connections
also. I was travelling from Patiala to Amritsar and stopped at a place
called Khanna, a grain mandi. And the first thing I see is a sign: Indian
Bank, Khanna Branch. Below it, hq: Rajaji Salai, Chennai. Wonderful,
what an achievement. The sardar from Khanna is borrowing from a bank
headquartered in Chennai. But our democracy is still in the making.
Because of the fears of balkanisation after Partition, we started out
being a federation with a unitary bias, but now the compulsions of politics
are such that we are moving towards a more truly federal system. We
still have some way to go, we are still fine-tuning.
What do
we do about our big problems: Kashmir, the Northeast and the Naxal phenomenon?
I will stop talking
as a historian and author now and speak as a political observer and
citizen. I am a liberal constitutionalist. I think in the Northeast
it is pride that holds back people like Muivah. The Northeast should
be part of India, the insurgents should make peace. Mizoram has shown
the way, I say go the Mizo way. If they become an integrated part of
India, they will find the fruits coming to them very fast. They speak
very good English, they are modern, their society is historically more
evolved because of gender equality, they will go straight up the Indian
ladder. They are being foolish by holding on to the chimera of independence.
They are denying their own people the fruits of participating and benefiting
from a larger multi-cultural country.
‘Our
Right is bigoted but our Left has been stupid and arrogant. It
has helped the bigots of the RSS’ |
What about
problems arising from ethnic discrimination and military excess?
Of course, the
security forces have committed excesses, and they are paranoid. But
the Northeast has tremendous things to gain by integrating. There are
parallels between its situation and the Naxal issue. My understanding
of it is that Naxalism is spreading mainly in adivasi areas because
the terrain is good for guerrilla war and because the adivasi is the
most shafted person in our democracy. If you compare tribals with dalits
and Muslims, you will find the latter two still have a greater political
voice. They are still disadvantaged, but not like the adivasis. So Naxalism
is spreading. Swapan Dasgupta routinely calls me a Naxalite but I am
not a Naxalite, I am totally opposed to violence, there can be no excuse
for it. But I feel that at the bottom of both problems, the Northeast
and Naxalism, there is a sense of deep discrimination and victimisation.
The future lies in both sides, the State and those feeling hurt, more
properly honouring the spirit of the Indian Constitution. Kashmir is
a much more complex issue. The Constitution cannot take account of Kashmir.
Kashmir is a genuine international dispute. One of the things that I
am pleased about in this book is that I was able to write about our
dispute with China and with Pakistan not as a jingoist. We created Bangladesh
— do you expect Pakistan to ever forget that? Ever? Kashmir is
not so easy, our legal, constitutional, moral case over it is less than
foolproof. That I have no doubt about.
That’s
a big statement to make…
No, no, it’s
true. I think it was Sheikh Abdullah who said Kashmir is a beautiful
bride being fought over by two avaricious men, or some such thing. Now
there are three. The Indian state, the Pakistani state and the jehadis.
Kashmir is a dispute between India and Pakistan, no two ways about it.
I am not saying, of course, that Pakistan has an incontrovertible case
over the Valley. It’s not a one-way story, it’s sticky.
