Ram Guha writes in the Teleegraph
On August 6, 2019, I was having coffee with a group of colleagues at the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru. We were discussing the abrogation, the previous day, of Article 370 in Kashmir.
This permitted the Union Government from taking charge of the demoralized State Police and then cracking down on the terrorists. Guha & his colleagues didn't like this because they feel Terrorists should be given every facility to kill Hindus.
They were particularly angry that Modi had hit terror camps in Pakistan after 40 CRP personnel were killed in a terror attack in February. Investigators had found a nexus between local politicians, officials, & terrorist outfits. This had to be crushed. The hope was that Panchayats (local bodies) could regain control of their own localities and thus keep out the terrorists who preyed upon them while the police turned a blind eye on orders from their political masters.
One of the younger members at the table, a computer scientist, remarked: “What we have now is not Modi 2.0, but Shah 1.0.”
He was wrong. Shah doesn't want to displace Modi. It was just that the Home Minister had to complete the work started by the Defence Minister and Prime Minister who authorised the strike upon Pak terror camps.
It may be that this prompt action helped Modi win a second term with a sizable majority. For this reason, anti-BJP intellectuals- like Guha- are still very angry about this.
It was, of course, the new home minister who had planned and piloted the downgrading of India’s only Muslim-majority state.
Which has been under President's rule for 6 years in the Nineties because of the terrorist insurgency.
Perhaps to see this as “Shah 1.0” was an exaggeration,
It was nonsense.
but now there was little question that Amit Shah was not just the second-most powerful man in government but the only minister with any real authority and independence of action apart from the prime minister himself.
He has always been Modi's right-hand man. We are not aware of any 'independent' action he has taken.
The Modi-Shah jugalbandi has had its precedents.
No. They met in 1982 when Shah joined the RSS. Modi was the 'pracharak' of the RSS branch (shaka). He advised Shah to join the Student Wing of the BJP. Shah rose in the Co-Operative movement & became a legislator. Modi made him a Minister in 2002. He turned out to be very able. But so is Modi. That is why they have stuck together.
Consider the partnership, in government, between Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel in the early years of independent India.
It was brief and ended in three years when Patel died in 1950. They weren't ideological allies. One may say 'Patel handled the integration of the Princely States well' while it was Nehru's vision which prevailed in broad terms.
While the poisonous polemics of contemporary politics represents them as rivals and adversaries, in truth they were friends, colleagues, and co-workers.
Patel was not a 'vote catcher'. Nehru was. If he broke with Congress & joined the Socialists, Congress might have lost the general election. There can be no comparison between the two. The truth is Vallabhai had been outshone by his elder brother. He was not popular with the masses. Nehru was internationally celebrated. Since adopting the Nehru Report, Congress had recognised that though the Mahatma was its mascot, Nehru was its ideologue.
Amidst the ruins of Partition, faced with the challenges of scarcity and privation, conflict and division, a united and democratic India might never have come into being had
it not followed the example of Burma and Ceylon by holding elections on the basis of universal suffrage.
Nehru and Patel not worked together.
Nehru could have replaced him quickly enough- indeed, he did do so after the fellow died.
Patel played the leading role in uniting India territorially, by bringing the princely states on board, modernising the administrative system, taming the violent extremists of the Hindu Right and a communist Left, and getting a recalcitrant Congress to support the process of Constitution-making being directed by B.R. Ambedkar.
All this would have happened anyway. V.P Menon did the heavy lifting. Patel was seen as a conservative and reassuring figure- but his days were numbered. Ambedkar dismissed his contribution to the Constitution as 'hack work'. What crushed the Commies was the Army. There was never any great danger from 'the Hindu Right' for the simple reason that Congress was the muscular arm of the Hindus.
At the same time, Nehru played the leading role in uniting India emotionally, by assuring equal rights to religious and linguistic minorities and to women,
He presided over the ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Delhi itself. He passed a law preventing refugees who had fled across the border in panic from returning to reclaim their property. Urdu lost its place. Hindi in Devanagari script became the official language.
and by energetically advocating universal adult franchise
which Congress had been advocating from the 1920s onward. Ceylon got it in 1931. India didn't because 'minorities' objected.
in the face of bitter elite opposition to it.
There was none within Congress which adopted the Nehru report (which demanded universal suffrage) in 1928. Non-Hindus didn't want it but they were shit out of luck once the Hindu party prevailed.
To be sure, Nehru and Patel had their differences, yet they worked heroically to submerge them in the larger national interest. It is also true that they had the support of remarkably able ministers like Ambedkar
Jinnah's Law Minister was Ambedkar's pal J.N Mandal who, sadly, had to run away to India. Both were token appointments. They had no merit which is why both could not get elected, let alone hold Ministerial office.
and of competent civil servants. Nonetheless, historical scholarship has authoritatively demonstrated the central, indeed defining, role their partnership played in forging a nation from its fragments. (Apart from my own India after Gandhi, readers might wish to consult Rajmohan Gandhi’s scrupulously researched biography of Vallabhbhai Patel.)
Fuck off! Congress was initially a broad church. Nehru had some technocrats- e.g. Mathai- in his Cabinet. The truth is Congress-wallahs were better at languishing in jail then running a Ministry. The one able Minister, as Wavell recognised, was Jagjivan Ram.
Nehru's own right hand man was Rafi Ahmed Kidwai. He was sympathetic to Socialists even when they attacked him but, to be truthful, he did not consider his Cabinet Colleagues to be either bright or particularly efficient. But then he himself wasn't any great shakes as an administrator.
After Patel died in December 1950, and Ambedkar resigned the following year, Nehru towered over all other figures in the cabinet, which may have been a mixed blessing.
He had been towering over everybody since 1930. Churchill said, in 1931, that he was a cunning Brahmin who was using the naive Mahatma as a cover so as to establish Brahmin domination. Nehru responded in his Autobiography (1934) that he wanted to Brahminize India which had become too 'Bania-fied' (Banias are business men. Gandhi was a Bania. Patel came from a farming caste which could also do well in business and the professions.)
The next duopoly to define Indian politics emerged only in the late 1960s, when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi appointed the former diplomat, P.N. Haksar, as her principal secretary.
She brought in a Kashmiri kitchen-cabinet (Kao as Intelligence Chief, Dhar on the Planning Commission and various Kauls as Ambassadors) because she was being boxed in by Morarji & the Syndicate. Once she had her own caste-fellows around her, she could break with the Syndicate. However, Haksar was useless so she discarded him. Later, it is said, Rasgotra (a Dogra Brahmin) was her most trusted confidante. He arranged a bizarre conference of Occultists for her (she had turned religious). She also trusted Yunus who said that Maneka & her mother had been doing black magic against her!
Haksar quickly became more powerful than any of Mrs Gandhi’s cabinet ministers.
Fuck off! It was Sanjay who became powerful. Haksar didn't get on with the Crown Prince and thus was side-lined. Siddharth Shankar Ray is credited with advising her to declare Emergency. But that was the fashion back then. The UK had one. Canada had one. But it was Indira's which really kicked ass. Incidentally, Bhutto too had a Leftie diplomat as his adviser. Sadly, his goons beat the fuck out of the poor man because of the sin of lese majeste (he left a dinner party because Bhutto couldn't be bothered to descend from his bedroom to feed his guests).
Between 1970 and 1975, he was her right-hand man and most influential adviser.
Nonsense! He was dismissed from the PMO in 1973. In 1975, a business owned by his family was raided by the Government. Everyone knew he was out of favour. The Sun now shone out of Sanju's backside.
He played a role in planning the prime minister’s finest hour — the liberation of Bangladesh — and in promoting high-quality science in such vitally important spheres as agriculture and space.
No. He was a diplomat with no knowledge of military or scientific matters. Still, he and his daughter were nice people.
On the negative side, it was also Haksar who was instrumental in designing Mrs Gandhi’s damaging economic policies of centralisation and control.
Dhar was the economist. But plenty of stupid Bengalis- e.g. Sukhomoy Chakrabarty- were prepared to preside over that shite. Bagicha Singh Minhas resigned from the Planning Commission over nationalization of the grain trade. When Indira discovered he was right, she asked him to return. She wasn't utterly stupid. However, she was a Socialist and was worried that Sanju had taken to denouncing that shit-show.
In 1975, Haksar
1973. Not being an economist, his role in the Planning Commission was purely ornamental. It should be remembered that, after Indira broke with the Syndicate, she had been kept in power by the Left & the Dravidian parties. Once she started winning big on her own, she could dispense with both.
was cast aside in favour of the prime minister’s second son. The partnership between Indira and Sanjay Gandhi was responsible for the country’s descent into authoritarianism through the suppression of civil liberties, the censorship of the media, the taming of the judiciary, making the bureaucracy and police subservient to mother and son, and the jailing of all political opponents. And unlike the partnership between Indira Gandhi and P.N. Haksar, it had no redeeming features at all.
This man is utterly crazy. He thinks a boy & his Mummy are a partnership. What's next? Will he write about the partnership between Rahul Gandhi & his puppy dog?
The next significant partnership to emerge in government was between P.V. Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh, prime minister and finance minister in the years, 1991-1996.
Rao was a wily politician. Singh wasn't. Still he was acceptable to the Left. But Ajith Singh (son of Charan) could have pushed the thing through if Congress hadn't been able to form a Ministry. One might speak of a Manmohan/Sonia partnership except there was no such thing. Manmohan was a 'Prone Minister'. He was only put in because he couldn't get elected rat-catcher anywhere in the country- i.e. unlike Rao or Pranabh, he presented no threat to the Dynasty.
Rao and Singh together helped liberate the country from the license-permit-quota raj, setting in motion three decades of steady economic growth that has since made a major dent in poverty, created a large middle class, and enhanced India’s stature in the world.
It could have happened under Chandrashekhar with Subramaniyam Swamy taking the lead. I'm kidding. Both were useless.
Next came the partnership between Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani.
Which was genuine. Advani refused to yield to RSS pressure to push Vajpayee aside & take over. The truth is Vajpayee wasn't enthused by 'rath yatra' and wanted to get rid of Modi- Advani's protege.
Through the 1980s and 1990s, they worked together to make the Bharatiya Janata Party the major national challenger to the Congress Party. When the BJP was in office between 1998 and 2004, Vajpayee served as prime minister and Advani as home minister.
Neither was very good. People said the increasingly senile Vajpayee was leaving things in the hands of Brajesh Mishra. To be fair, BJP was part of an unstable coalition. Mamta would keep joining and then quitting.
They continued the path of economic liberalisation set in motion by Rao and Singh, helped along by well-qualified cabinet colleagues such as Yashwant Sinha and Jaswant Singh.
Still, Congress had a superior stable of talent.
Meanwhile, the fact that they could rule only as part of a multi-party coalition meant that the majoritarian tendencies of the sangh parivar were not given absolutely free play.
Which is why they lost once Rahul returned to India in 2002. Sonia took the opportunity to announce that her party would build the Ram Temple once the Courts gave permission. She herself was seen as a 'pativrata' whose 'grha pravesh' ceremony was performed by an orthodox Sankaracharya. Her daughter's wedding to a Christian was performed according to Hindu rites. This meant that the kids would be Hindu in the eyes of the law.
In 2004, the BJP unexpectedly lost power.
Because Rahul had returned. As he himself said, he could have become PM in 1995 on the very day he turned 25.
For the following decade, the country was ruled by a multi-party coalition with the Congress as the dominant partner.
Because of the Rahul factor. The truth is if he had pushed Manmohan aside and led his party into the 2009 or even the 2014 election, Congress would have gained a majority. It is because he was gun-shy that in 2014 it was a case of 'Modi or nobody'.
Once more, two individuals exercised more authority than all the others: the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, and the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi.
Was it a partnership? No. Sonia knew nothing and cared for nothing save protecting the Dynastic patrimony. She was the Regent while Manmohan was a 'Prone Minister' who couldn't even choose which officials worked in the PMO.
Directed by Singh, the country’s economic progress continued to be impressive; guided by Sonia and her National Advisory Council,
which was useless
valuable attempts were made to erect a social security net for the poor.
much to Manmohan's chagrin. He tried to use the excuse of a Moody's downrating to push through further Labour & Land reform. He was cut off at the knees. One good thing he- like Buta Singh in the early Eighties- did was to try to defang foreign funded NGOs.
These gains of the partnership were unfortunately offset by a lack of clarity as to with whom the real locus of authority lay.
Because there was no fucking partnership. An ignorant Italian lady appointed a decrepit Sikh because maybe this would cause Khalistanis to hold less murderous intentions towards her progeny.
It should have of course been the prime minister; yet by nature Singh was timid and risk-averse, and allowed Sonia Gandhi far too much say in matters properly under his domain alone (such as education policy).
This is ludicrous. Manmohan's only weapon was the threat of resignation. He had zero mass appeal and zero followers. If he did resign, Congress would simply say 'the old man is senile'. He could be replaced in a heartbeat.
And now, in Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, we have the most recent of what by my count is the seventh case of a duopoly in our politics, whereby two individuals and their partnership have come to play a vital role in the affairs of India and Indians.
Vajpayee/Advani was a partnership. Modi/Shah is a partnership. All four were RSS members. This is not to say RSS dudes always get along. Shankarinh Vaghela is a case in point. Congress put him up as their candidate against Modi.
In terms of time, this is the most enduring of all the jugalbandis discussed here. Modi and Shah worked closely together in Gujarat politics between 2002 and 2014, and in national politics since 2014. In this period, they have never lost political power; indeed, they have expanded their power, first by making Gujarat a one-party state
There are many parties in Gujarat. The BJP keeps winning because it is better than any of its rivals.
and then by expanding the BJP’s footprint all over India.
If the BJP is better than the alternative- e.g. in West Bengal- then it wins.
When considered in terms of political longevity and political success, then the Modi-Shah partnership looks impressive.
Because it is impressive. Both are consummate professionals. But, it must be said, Modi's Cabinets have always seemed to work well together. Back in 2001, when he was appointed CM he insisted on picking his own team. His idea was that the CM should be like a CEO who focuses on 'last mile delivery' rather than intrigue.
Yet if one looks at how they have achieved power, and what they have done once in power, their record is much darker.
If you hate Hindus- sure.
To achieve power, they have broken rival parties by a mixture of coercion and bribery,
No. It is in the interest of the ruling party that there be a lot of rival parties to split the anti-incumbency vote. What is condemnable is tainted people switching to the ruling party in the hope that this will shield them from criminal investigation. The problem here is that most of these investigations collapse of their own accord because the cops are crap and the courts are dilatory.
intimidated the press and made it a vehicle of personal and party propaganda, tamed the judiciary,
Judges aren't wild animals. They know that if the Government ignores their orders, there is literally nothing they can do.
used draconian measures to put dissenters (including non-violent dissenters) in prison,
if cops are killed, some scapegoats must be found. But only useless people are sent to prison. If they have some caste or religious backing why not give them bail so they can split the vote in some key constitutency?
weakened Indian federalism,
There is no such thing. Nehru rejected federalism long ago.
and compromised the integrity of previously independent public institutions (and of the Election Commission of India above all).
This is a mere allegation. Mamta, just like Trump, can say 'votes were stolen. I actually won the election. Why does nobody believe me?'
After coming to power, they have favoured a few select capitalists (including two from their home state),
who are also favoured by non-BJP Chief Ministers because they generate tax revenue for the State & provide vital goods and services.
driven away foreign investors,
this was already happening.
failed to generate employment in manufacturing,
see above
politicised scientific research,
This is the canard that the BJP wants everybody to drink cow urine. Mamta told the Bengali voter that Modi would prevent them eating fish or meat. Nobody believed her. Sad.
and devastated our forests, water, air and soil,
which were always being devastated.
these measures collectively undermining the future economic prospects of the country.
Which Congress very thoroughly undermined long ago.
The damage done to our democratic fabric and the stalling of our economic rise by the Modi-Shah jugalbandi are worrisome enough.
More Hindus should be killed by terrorists. We must get rid of the BJP so as to ensure Hindus become a minority in India.
And we have in addition the continuing attacks on our traditions of social and cultural pluralism overseen and even orchestrated by them. Wherever the BJP is in power, Muslims are marginalised and humiliated.
They were slaughtered and ethnically cleansed when Nehru became PM.
They are effectively made second-class citizens, without a voice, living on the sufferance of the majority community.
Since 1947- sure. The same thing happened to non-Muslims in Pakistan etc.
As noted in an earlier column in these pages, under Modi and Shah India is closer to being a Hindu Pakistan than at any previous time in its history.
It became that in 1947.
I have been a university teacher, where I had to assign grades — A+, A, A- down to F — to students taking the courses I taught.
If Guha gives you an F, you must be on the right track. If he gives you an A+, just kill yourself.
I am also a cricket nut, accustomed to making lists of, for example, the greatest bowlers of all time, ranked 1, 2, 3 down to 10. I will here resist assigning numbered grades to the seven jugalbandis featured in this column, or ranking them in order of positive achievement.
Vajpayee/Advani & Modi/Shah could be called 'jugalbandhis'. The PM is the instrumentalist. The Home Minister is the percussionist. Maybe this says something about the ethos of the RSS. Perhaps cadre based parties are more hospitable to 'division-of-labour' based relationships. Jyoti Basu & Buddhadeb Bhattacharjeee are a case in point.
Have there been any other such jugalbandhis in Indian politics? Jinnah/Liaquat represented a division of labour and was successful for a decade. Sadly Liaquat was killed before he could fulfil his promise (or, what was more likely, fail to fulfil it). In Tamil Nadu, the Jayalalitha/Sasikala combine was spoken of in those terms but, with hindsight, we don't find Sasikala was bringing anything to the table. What about Arvind Kejriwal & Manish Sisodia are still together but we can't be sure AAP can be revived in Delhi. VK Pandian was seen as Naveen Patnaik's right hand man but, being an outsider, he could not inherit his mantle.
Yet so far as one can judge, the verdict of history will be that the first of these partnerships
didn't exist. Patel had no mass base. Either he made himself useful to Nehru or he would be marginalized. Sadly, this did involve presiding over the ethnic cleansing of Muslims & a violent crackdown on Communist insurgents.
was unquestionably the finest and most constructive, and the third and the seventh probably the most damaging and destructive.
from the anti-Hindu point of view- sure. Sadly, Hindus tend to be pro-Hindu and it is Hindus who are the majority.
No comments:
Post a Comment