Will Tharoor's UN loss be India's gain?

By Swapan Dasgupta 

For a civilisation that is yet to fully overcome the disabilities of prolonged servitude, the importance attached to international recognition is exceptional.

Rabindranath Tagore was widely regarded as an accomplished upper class dilettante in Bengal until the Nobel Prize catapulted him into a national sage. Likewise, it was Dr S. Radhakrishnan 's election to a Fellowship at All Souls in Oxford that facilitated his scholastic deification at home and his eventual move to Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Judged by these precedents, Shashi Tharoor 's curriculum vitae is, as yet, not all that awesome. A distinguished international bureaucrat who has served the United Nations all his working life and written novels and commentaries in his spare time, Tharoor has offered himself as a candidate for the post of UN Secretary-General. After months of quiet, behind-the-scenes lobbying, the UPA Government has signalled its decision to back his candidature, not least because convention deems that Kofi Annan 's successor should preferably be from Asia.

We are also informed that, in a bid to forge a national consensus, Tharoor has also succeeded in securing the backing of an extremely gullible BJP leadership. He, unfortunately, has not been able to secure the unequivocal backing of the CPI(M). The Left, for a change, appears to have asked all the right questions.

If Tharoor does indeed make it to the top UN job with India 's active backing, there is certain to be widespread jubilation in the country at yet another great Indian achievement. Regardless of the fact that he has lived overseas since the time he graduated from St Stephen 's College in 1975, Tharoor is in every respect an Indian, in the same way as Amartya Sen is. The Indian political class must not hold his non-resident status against him.

It is necessary, however, to introduce a caveat at this stage. The job that Tharoor seeks is no ordinary one. The present Secretary-General may have contributed more than his fair share to bringing the top job into some disrepute but the fact remains that the CEO of the UN is a position of exceptional importance. Along with the five permanent members of the Security Council, the UN is the sixth pillar of the global order. By listing his impressive career achievements, the Ministry of External Affairs spokesman made it sound that Tharoor was bidding for membership of the Athenaeum Club or staking his claim to be President of Harvard University.

Important as these positions are, Kofi Annan's job is a league apart. To be fair, Tharoor has avoided playing to the gallery. He has said that, if elected, he would be an Indian Secretary-General but not India's Secretary-General. In other words, it would be unrealistic of India to expect him to do its bidding from New York. Shorn off diplomatic niceties, it is a proclamation that India will be sponsoring Tharoor but not its own man.

Detachment from national origin is imperative if Tharoor is to secure wider backing for his nomination. At the same time, the issue of neutrality prompts a larger question: if the beneficiary of the Tharoor campaign is only Tharoor, should India not look to its larger diplomatic interests? If Tharoor succeeds Annan, India 's claim to be made a permanent member of the UN is certain to be shelved for an indefinite period. It is an unwritten convention that the UN Secretary General is not from a country that has a stake in the Security Council.

Does the Government want India to jettison its Security Council claims to back a person who, despite being in a UN job, had never shied away from taking positions on domestic Indian politics?

Tharoor, for example, became a secular preacher during the Ayodhya movement. Those with long memories may like to recall the role of Annan 's secretariat in badgering India after the 1998 Pokhran-II blasts. Can Tharoor seriously deny that his neutrality was not impaired by his profound antipathy to the non-Congress Government that was in place between 1998 and 2004? Did Tharoor's certitudes determine Annan 's profoundly unhelpful attitude to India in this period? Tharoor 's right to hold strong opinions on Indian politics should not be denied. However, if he was fearless enough to express them while holding a UN job, what will he do if he is elevated to the UN Secretary-General's job? If the ruling arrangement in Delhi changes in the short-term, will Tharoor 's view of India remain as rosy?

It is understandable that a section of the Congress leadership is keen to reward Tharoor for his proximity to the stalwarts of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation. Tharoor, for example, once described the now-discredited former External Affairs Minister K. Natwar Singh as an inspiration. He was also one of those who defended Sonia Gandhi during the "foreigner " controversy. All these stands call for recognition.

The question is: can this be done in a way that does not compromise India 's long-term strategic interests? As things stand, the prospect of a Tharoor victory is as compelling as Ecuador winning the FIFA World Cup. That, however, is not the point. What will be the collateral damage to India by persevering with someone's flight of whimsy?

Would it not be more prudent if the Congress Party took into account Tharoor's untenable position in a post-Annan dispensation and appointed him to the vacant post of External Affairs Minister? I get the feeling that events are moving in that direction. If nothing, it would establish the precedent that people need to be taken seriously at the age of 50.

Tharoor is a good Indian asset. Let us use him productively to benefit India. As for the Secretary-General's job, let India use its good offices to elect someone who can both win and be kindly disposed to India. As things stand, New Delhi seems hell-bent on making a fool of itself.

Free Press Journal, June, 2006

Of Tharoor and collateral damage (June 25, 2006)

By Swapan Dasgupta

For a civilisation that is yet to fully overcome the disabilities of prolonged servitude, the importance attached to international recognition can hardly be overstated. Rabindranath Tagore was widely regarded as an accomplished upper class dilettante in Bengal until the Nobel Prize transformed him into a national sage. Likewise, it was Dr S. Radhakrishnan’s election to a Fellowship at All Souls in Oxford which facilitated his scholastic deification at home and his eventual move to Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Judged by these precedents, Shashi Tharoor’s curriculum vitae is, as yet, not all that awesome. A distinguished United Nations bureaucrat who has written novels and commentaries in his spare time, Tharoor has offered himself as a candidate for the post of UN Secretary-General. His candidature has been backed by India’s UPA Government. In a bid to forge a national consensus, Tharoor has also succeeded in securing the backing of the BJP but not the unequivocal backing of the CPI(M).

If Tharoor does indeed make it to the top UN job, there is certain to be widespread jubilation in the country at yet another great Indian achievement. Regardless of the fact that he has lived abroad since he graduated from St Stephen’s College in 1975, Tharoor is in every respect an Indian, in the same way as Amartya Sen is. To hold his non-resident status against him would be an act of cussedness.

Yet, it is necessary to introduce a caveat. The job that Tharoor seeks is no ordinary one. The present Secretary-General may have contributed more than his fair share to bringing the top job into some disrepute but the fact remains that the CEO of the UN is a position of exceptional importance. Along with the five permanent members of the Security Council, the UN is the sixth pillar of the global order. By listing his impressive career achievements, the Ministry of External Affairs spokesman made it sound as if Tharoor was bidding for membership of the Athenaeum Club or staking his claim to be President of Harvard University. Important as these positions are, there was nothing to suggest that Tharoor is the right man to be Secretary-General.

To be fair, Tharoor has avoided playing to the gallery. He has said that, if elected, he would be an Indian Secretary-General but not India’s Secretary-General. In other words, it would be unrealistic of India to expect him to do its bidding from New York. Shorn off diplomatic niceties, it is a proclamation that India will be sponsoring Tharoor, but not its own man.

Detachment from national origin is imperative if Tharoor is to secure wider backing for his nomination. At the same time, the issue of neutrality prompts a larger question: if the beneficiary of the Tharoor campaign is only Tharoor, should India not look to its larger diplomatic interests? If Tharoor succeeds Kofi Annan, India’s claim to be made a permanent member of the UN is certain to be shelved for an indefinite period. Is this what the Government wants?

Those with long memories may like to recall the role of Annan’s secretariat in badgering India after the 1998 Pokhran-II blasts. Can Tharoor seriously assert that he was neutral to the non-Congress Government that was in place between 1998 and 2004? Or did Tharoor’s certitudes determine Annan’s profoundly unhelpful attitude to India in this period?

It is understandable that a section of the Congress leadership is keen to reward Tharoor for his proximity to the stalwarts of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation. The question is: can this be done in a way that does not compromise India’s long-term strategic interests?

As things stand, the prospect of a Tharoor victory is as compelling as Ecuador winning the FIFA World Cup. That, however, is not the point. What will be the collateral damage to India larger diplomatic standing? Wouldn’t it be more prudent for the Government to consider Tharoor for the post vacated by K. Natwar Singh? That way loyalty is rewarded, accountability ensured and diplomacy unimpaired.

(Published in Sunday Pioneer, June 25, 2006)

Politics is on a dead cat bounce (June 18, 2006)

By Swapan Dasgupta

The turbulence in the global equity markets has, if nothing else, helped add to our collective vocabulary. A ghoulishly evocative term used these days to describe the all-too-brief recovery before the inevitable downhill slide is “dead cat’s bounce”. The expression, as someone gleefully explained, stems from the belief that even a dead cat is certain to bounce if dumped from a sufficiently towering height.

It is a shame to confine this wonderful expression on the inexplicable roller-coaster ride of the stock markets. As I see it, the course of contemporary Indian politics is beginning to resemble a dead cat’s bounce. We have a well-meaning Prime Minister who gets all excited by equally well-meaning ideas centred on GDP growth rates, investments in infrastructure and the pricing of petroleum products. Regardless of your voting preferences, there is not much in Manmohan Singh’s platitudes we can seriously object to. Some even admire his single-mindedness in the face of distractions. The problem is that each time the good Sardar tries to focus public attention on what is called “development” issues”, in walks bear operators like Arjun Singh, Prakash Karat and A.B. Bardhan with their antediluvian proposals. The Prime Minister being too weak and unsure of himself to tell the bear pack where to get off, the government’s confidence ratings fall steeply.

A small piece of good news, like some item girl being kissed by someone we have never heard of before or Sonia Gandhi telling the nation that she is not amused by the new Saral tax form, triggers a distraction and leads to a dead cat’s bounce. Then, with an air of dreary resignation, the nation resumes its downhill trot.

It’s actually remarkable how effortlessly the UPA Government has managed to make the Great India Story look jaded. In presiding over the most Left-wing government for a very long time, the UPA is heralding the colossal mismanagement of public finances, rising interest rates, the growth of Islamist and Maoist terrorism and drift in foreign policy. From being a showcase of democracy and entrepreneurship, the Government has in just two years successfully squandered a rich inheritance. The world is still not willing to write off India but if the country persists with its present state of rudderless drift, it will only be a matter of months before the focus reverts to China—a state of affairs which will not displease the Left.

The mood wouldn’t have been so depressing had there been evidence that the UPA is a passing show and that, sooner rather than later, the firm of Singh, Singh, Karat and Bardhan will become another footnote in history. Between 1996 and 1998, India went through an equally dismal patch—we even had a Prime Minister who couldn’t look beyond the Punjabi quarters of South Delhi—but at that time there was at least the reassurance that the coming election would herald change, and change for the better. Today, there is no comforting faith in the future. One CPI(M) leader has even suggested that those Indians who want to vote with their feet, in other words emigrate, should be charged a punitive tax.

If the Government is rudderless and self-destructive, the disease has rubbed off on the opposition. Confronted with prize pickings and, to use a football analogy, almost nothing between its forward line and the other side’s goalkeeper, the former ruling combine has repeatedly ensured that it is ruled off side. Part of it owes to the fact that some members of the team seem hell bent on scoring self-goals but the more important reason is that the NDA forward line resemble a Veteran’s XI playing a charity match. Obviously, if you don’t have the wherewithal to withstand the rigours of a 90-minute game the question of tactics and strategy become notional. So dismal is the NDA’s track record that it has repeatedly failed to convert penalty shots into goals. If you exclude Narendra Modi, who appears to be the last man standing, there is not even the reassurance of a dead cat’s bounce.

(Published in Sunday Pioneer, June 18, 2006)

It's time to despair (June 16, 2006)

The World Cup and the rediscovery of Englishness

By Swapan Dasgupta

You can always rely on the Letters column of The Daily Telegraph to reflect the healthy minority view in an England that is changing too fast for comfort. “I do hope”, wrote Andrew Lewis from Warminster in Wiltshire, a part of England which, hopefully, remains frozen in time, “England reach the final (of the FIFA World Cup). Walking the dogs on Saturday afternoon was a joy—not a soul in sight.”

It wasn’t a joy to those hundreds of non-European passport-holders who landed in Heathrow airport last Saturday afternoon and who weren’t blessed with the bright pink access card to the fast track immigration desk. Never in more than three decades have I ever seen the S-shaped queue extend as far back as the very entrance to the gigantic arrivals hall of Terminal 3. The reason: too few manned counters. Like most of England, a bit too many of Her Majesty’s immigration service had taken time off to guzzle large quantities of beer and watch England narrowly beat Paraguay.

Soccer, or football as it is better known, has enthralled the drinking classes of the United Kingdom since late-Victorian times. If “going to the football” on Saturday afternoons was once an affordable leisure option for the working classes in the Midlands and the North, predicting the no-score draws in the pools became the favourite gambling option of the elderly—before the National Lottery arrived. Football pools were such a popular fix that the betting agencies got together to form a pools panel of experts which would identify notional no-score draws in case the weather, or something else, forced an unexpected local cancellation.

English league football was always extraordinarily popular but I don’t think the game was ever as much of an obsession as it has become in the past two decades. Football has not only snuffed life out of other competitive sports—cricket experienced an all-too-brief revival in the summer of 2005 after England won the Ashes unexpectedly—it has captured the soul of England. Courtesy the 20-year-old Wayne Rooney, the most popular Englishman alive today—yes, he is more celebrated than even the 31-year-old legend David Beckham—England must boast the largest number of non-medical metatarsal specialists in the world. So compelling is the national obsession with the World Cup campaign that the whole of public life is being looked at through the unlikely prism of football.

Take national outrage as the starting point. A week ago, a politically-correct head-teacher of a state-run comprehensive school “banned” students from flaunting the Cross of St George—the national flag of England, as opposed to the Union Jack which is the flag of the United Kingdom—on the ground that the flag symbolised the British National Party, an extreme, xenophobic, “White Britain” party. The backlash was swift and quite decisive. The head-teacher was universally denounced as a narrow-minded bigot, taught a few lessons in history and told to take the slow boat to China till the victorious team returned from Germany.

Today, the windows of the less salubrious parts of London are draped with the Cross of St George—I was shocked to notice a couple in a leafy by-lane of Hampstead, only to realise that they had been put there by jolly builders on a refurbishment job. To accommodate national sentiment, the flag is even being flown in Downing Street—though, in deference to protocol, there is also a Union Jack. It’s a far cry from 1966 when, the only visible manifestation of support for England was the Union Jack. This time there is not even the pretence that the masses of Scotland are with the people of England. In a remarkably imaginative editorial “On balance, God probably is English”, The Daily Telegraph put a charitable spin on this departure from good neighbourliness: “Had Tottenham Hotspur played CA River Plate at the height of the Falklands (war), we suspect that a fair number of Arsenal fans would have been cheering the Portenos; but that wouldn’t have meant that they wanted to lose the war.”

Maybe not, but for the land which only a hundred years ago believed that to be born English is to win the first prize in the lottery of life, it’s been a steep journey downhill. It’s being called a “benign patriotism”, considering the good behaviour of the crazies who are camping in Germany indefinitely—so different from the London mob which cheered the victory at Mafeking and torched Italian shops in 1940. To me, an outsider, it looks more like a case of commercially-led patriotism where the flaunting of identity is coupled with confusion over who or what to hate.

The local branch of Sainsbury’s supermarket is selling England jerseys and every conceivable Coach and Horses is advertising a giant screen and happy hour rates for all the lager louts who couldn’t make it to Germany. And McDonald’s, that epitome of un-Englishness, is advertising a larger-than-usual burger which the non-salad eaters can happily devour with their pints while they swear at the TV screen. I didn’t have the insolence to ask the Ritz if they are laying out a special World Cup high-tea, not after being told that the Indian summer will not lead to any relaxation of the dress code. At least there was the reassurance that there are institutions that stand gloriously above Beckham and Posh Spice.

“The rediscovery of Englishness”, claimed high-Tory columnist Charles Moore optimistically, “is beginning…” I wish it was true but the evidence of a revved-up Albion emerging from pickled renderings of “Jerusalem” just isn’t there. Resurgence demands pride and a garnishing of hate. There is no evidence of either. There is an Archie Bunker-type Englishman who is apparently driving round the streets of Hamburg playing the “Dam Busters March” on his ghetto blaster. This pathetic improvisation of John Cleese’s farcical don’t-forget-the-war act in Fawlty Towers has been greeted by bemused incomprehension. Today’s German’s are about as familiar with music from British war movies as they are with Horst Wessel lied. “Don’t let’s be (too) beastly to the Germans”, advised the writer Simon Heffer, even as he defended those English fans who taunted the hosts with Nazi salutes: “The Nazi salute is a way of humorously expressing tribal feelings about a people who were, in living memory, behaving rather badly.” It’s a novel argument but begs the immediate question: why are English fans the badly-behaved of today?

Keen to be the perfect hosts, the Germans have apparently been told to avoid releasing their lovely Alsation dogs on the yobs and not get provoked when a demented fool shouts “Sieg Heil”. So far they have been models of restraint. But the real reason why English fans haven’t been set upon is not because the travellers are less obnoxious but because in no other country is football the driving force of nationalism. I wouldn’t like to be in England the evening it is knocked out of the World Cup.

In most countries, waving the flag in football matches is bit of old-fashioned fun. In England, it’s not a case of nationalism hijacking a sport, it is sport being appropriated by a patriotism that has lost all other resonance. England has an attractive football side. Its fans love the game quite genuinely. Many more are knowledgeable about football in England than they are about cricket in India. Yet, every popular sport must bear the burden of a claque. But imagine if footballer’s wives became social celebrities and the chants of beer-soaked individuals became national songs?

It’s time to despair about England.

(Published in The Telegraph, Calcutta, June 16, 2006)

Spin doctor's manual (June 11, 2006)

By Swapan Dasgupta

I have not heard of any book entitled “The Spin Doctor’s Manual” penned by some of the redoubtable backroom political strategists in the democratic world. In all probability, such a book is yet to be written. There are, as most of its practitioners will tell you, no prescriptive norms in politics. Ritualised responses inevitably yield diminishing returns.

It is ironic that despite this understanding of what constitutes good politics, Indian spin-doctoring remains mired in the predictable. Look back to the NDA regime. Every now and then the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Government hit air pockets and encountered political turbulence. There was the spectacular defeat in four Assembly elections in 1998, the scandal of the Tehelka tapes, the 2002 Budget fiasco and, of course, the period attacks on the Prime Minister by either the RSS or one of its constituent organisations.

The responses to these crises invariably followed a pattern. First, events would overwhelm the government. Second, there would be a spate of feeble denials followed by the mandatory search for a fall guy. Third, there would be a torrent of adverse publicity in the media. Finally, the Prime Minister and his office would wake up to the devastation and formulate the most predictable of all predictable responses. The “plantation sector” of the media would be summoned and reports would gradually emanate about how enough is enough and the Prime Minister would now show who is boss. Some of us may recall that after a particularly damaging crisis for the NDA, one leading magazine projected the new-found “assertive” Vajpayee as Shivaji on horseback.

No supine flatterer has yet painted Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as the new Maharaja Ranjit Singh. However, in the past few days, reports have appeared suggesting that a determined Prime Minister has patted Petroleum Minister Murli Deora on the back and told him that tough decisions, once taken, cannot be reversed. Others have put out that an exasperated and “assertive” Manmohan has now deemed that it will be reforms, reforms and more reforms. The “assertive Vajpayee” spin has been repackaged into the “assertive Manmohan” spin.

Actually, no amount of spin can distract from the mounting woes of the Prime Minister. When he was catapulted to the top job by Sonia Gandhi’s “inner voice”, Manmohan had only two things going for him: personal integrity and a modern outlook. These, coupled with the natural propensity of the electorate to give everyone a fair chance, ensured he had a two year honeymoon.

Whether the honeymoon ended the day Arjun Singh declared that his Human Resource Development minister was no longer under the overall control of the Prime Minister, or the day the Congress Party felt it could no longer afford to back government decisions, is a matter for historians to consider. For the people of India, what matters is that the end of the honeymoon was immediately followed by the precipitate deterioration in the quality of governance. It is bad enough that it took the government more than three months to put into effect an overdue price rise in petroleum product. What is worse is that the terms of the increase couldn’t be negotiated with any finality.

The Congress Party’s unhappiness with the price hike and Sonia Gandhi’s displeasure with the new Saral form may be inconsequential and purely for the record. However, coupled with the unending whispers of a dramatic deterioration of relations between 10 Janpath and 3 Race Course Road, they suggest that Manmohan’s Government may be at the slog overs stage of his innings. Rashtrapati Bhavan’s reported intransigence on the cynical Office of Profit Bill, which stands to benefit fat cat Leftists, may constitute the denouement.

The Government is fast running out of steam. In the tug-of-war between populism and reform, populism has prevailed with the full backing of the Italian Lady Bountiful. The non-productive Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme is fast bankrupting the country. Reforms, if not bad news, have been deemed to be politically unrewarding. With the Opposition in disarray, the Congress is exploring ways to jettison both the baby and the bathwater of anti-incumbency.

(Published in Sunday Pioneer, June 11, 2006)

Pramod's sordid legacy (June 6, 2006)

By Swapan Dasgupta

If what took place in Delhi’s 7 Safdarjung Road last Thursday night had happened a week later, the Bharatiya Janata Party leadership would have found no hospitable corner of India to hide their faces. According to the choreographed script, Rahul Mahajan was to travel to Assam on June 3 to immerse his father’s ashes in the Brahmaputra. On his return, he would have announced his decision to perpetuate Pramod Mahajan’s legacy and formally join the BJP. A day or two later, he would have been appointed a vice-president of the party’s youth wing. Rahul would have been honoured for his greatest asset—being his father’s son.

By hosting a small rave party before his initiation was completed, Rahul blew his chances. However, the mistimed celebrations provided the BJP a small face-saver. At least Sushma Swaraj could claim that the death of Bibek Moitra and the hospitalisation of Rahul was a “family tragedy” that had nothing to do with politics and Atal Bihari Vajpayee could loftily blame it on “bad company” and youthful indiscretion.

The disclaimers are unlikely to wash. The latest misfortune of the Mahajan family has destroyed the posthumous halo conferred on Pramod and brought into the open the decadent underbelly of an organisation that once claimed to be the repository of ethical politics. The sordid tale of reckless indulgence is not merely an indictment of a lifestyle centred on easy, unearned money. It is also an indictment of an entire leadership that chose to be either willing participants or mute spectators to a grotesque perversion of public life.

There is no question that Pramod had many things going for him. Intelligent, articulate, witty, innovative and, above all, pragmatic, he was among the brightest sparks in the BJP. He fitted into a leadership role almost effortlessly. Unfortunately, all these attributes blended with a ruthless disregard for ethical niceties.

Pramod first undertook fund-raising for the party because, as he once explained, “someone had to do the job.” But money devoured him and became almost an end in itself. He institutionalised a regime of quid pro quo with leading donors on the pragmatic plea that “if you sleep with someone at night, you can’t treat him as a whore in the morning.” The colourful imagery wasn’t a Pramod original; he was echoing a prominent Mumbai industrialist who was generous in his contributions to the BJP.

The second distortion was triggered by what he called “cadre building”. It involved an elaborate network of private subsidies to individuals who were either fiercely loyal to him personally or were deemed useful in the long. In blunt terms, he converted a section of the BJP and even functionaries of fraternal organisations into paid personal retainers. The individual sums involved weren’t necessarily staggering—a little help with household expenses here and help with securing an agency there. These were old Congress techniques and Pramod grafted them on to the BJP. This process naturally meant that the party treasury became detached from a private war chest controlled by Pramod.

It is not that Pramod’s parallel economy was unknown to the BJP leadership. Indeed, many of them gleefully plugged themselves into the network. Pramod had an uncanny of identifying human weaknesses and turning these into political opportunities. He was ruthless and unsparing in his attitude towards those who he identified as obstacles in the path of his political advance. Even the top leadership didn’t want to get on his wrong side. He ran what at least two senior BJP leaders have described to me as a “mafia” operation.

Pramod ran a system which was prefaced on money. Everything, he believed, had a price and everything could be “managed”. Once an astute political mind, he ended up reposing all faith in Mammon. Even elections, he believed, could be won by the necessary deployment of resources—a misreading that cost the NDA the 2004 election and contributed to the party’s dismal showing in Assam in April this year.

Money overwhelmed Pramod. It warped his vision and it distorted his lifestyle. An atmosphere of unwholesome recklessness permeated into the heart of the system he created. It may or may not have triggered his own murder but it has certainly ensured that his son’s political career is still-born.

Last December, Pramod was anointed Lakshman by the BJP’s most towering leader. Six months later, the entire party stands dishonoured by his epic legacy. What went wrong is well known. The BJP needs to ask why the wrongs were knowingly condoned.

(Published in DNA, Mumbai, June 6, 2006)

Admit follies, get redemption (June 4, 2006)

By Swapan Dasgupta

A thousand years ago, the Arab traveller Al-Biruni noted presciently that Hindus lacked a sense of history. He was, of course, referring to the Hindu disdain for chronology, documentation and antiquity. Yet, he could just as well have been referring to a common Hindu failure to separate history from either eulogy or demonology—a failure that is at the root of many contemporary controversies.

As a self-confessed upholder of the Hindu inheritance, the BJP is particularly prone to the national inability to cope with the past. Since that terrible tragedy in Mumbai, a distraught party leadership aided by a cynical media, went completely overboard in projecting the late Pramod Mahajan as a political Superman. By a resounding voice vote, the former general secretary was crowned the best king the BJP never had.

That Pramod was a dynamic functionary, adept at networking and improvisation was never in doubt. Every political party needs someone like him. Yet, it is a commentary on the intellectual bankruptcy that has afflicted the party that qualities of expediency, sometimes verging on skulduggery, were elevated into godly virtue. There were a lot of things about Mahajan and his political style that were morally and ethically suspect—and these were known to the party and RSS leadership. In deifying everything about the man, the party leadership wilfully put a seal of approval on everything Mahajan epitomised.

So blinded was the leadership that it even chose to inject dynastic inheritance into the party’s organisation. It is hardly a state secret that Rahul Mahajan would have been anointed a vice president of the party’s youth wing sometime in June as a reward for being his father’s son—a process that would also have legitimised the inevitable induction of some of his father’s more suspect associates into positions of influence. It is also whispered that the Rahul Mahajan precedent was to be cited to foist other sons and daughters into leadership positions.

The deification of Mahajan was not an act of innocent simple-mindedness. It was symptomatic of a larger rot that is destroying the BJP. The lifestyle deficiencies of Rahul that led to a former residence of Atal Bihari Vajpayee being turned into the venue of a very unwholesome gathering last Thursday night was not exactly unknown to those who mattered. Yet, these awkward issues were conveniently brushed under the carpet. Was it a simple case of honouring Mahajan by accommodating Rahul? Or were there other considerations?

Some of these questions cannot be answered conclusively but the public mind has been poisoned. The saturation TV coverage of the unnatural death of Bibek Moitra and alleged eyewitness accounts of how a Rs 500 note was used to snort some lethal white powder, the night before Mahajan’s ashes were to be ceremonially immersed in the Brahmaputra, don’t amount to an indictment of one spoilt brat. They amount to a vote of no-confidence in an entire body of individuals who had wilfully brushed uncomfortable questions aside for reasons that can best be described as collateral.

What we have witnessed in the BJP in recent times is the institutionalisation of duplicity. It is this distortion that has led to the party leadership refusing to read the lessons from the party’s debacle in the four Assembly elections, putting astrology before common sense and hoping that a natural process of anti-incumbency will see the BJP back in power in Delhi before too long. In his speech to the national executive, the party president stressed the importance of inner-party democracy. But how can you have a healthy democracy if every sceptical note is accompanied by charges of disloyalty and every hint of media criticism leads to the shooting of the messenger?

An organisation can only redeem itself if it acknowledges that it is in need of redemption. It has taken the sordid Rahul Mahajan controversy to bring out the extent of the rot. But surely things won’t get better if the BJP deludes itself into believing that coke is just the name of a soft drink.

(Published in Sunday Pioneer, June 4, 2006)

Ruthless merit (June 2, 2006)

A glimpse of the hazy contours of a brave, new India

By Swapan Dasgupta

There is an English disease, peculiar to a particular class, of using language to mask feelings rather than express them. Indians are different. Our political class is naturally prone to hyperbolic disorders. The past few weeks have, however, been an aberration. We have witnessed the novel spectacle of Indian politicos falling back on diplomatic understatement and even reticence to avoid the ignominy of incomprehension.

When Human Resource Development minister Arjun Singh played out the factional war in the Congress by peremptorily adding 27 per cent to the existing quotas in central universities and specialist institutes, the initial reaction of the affected classes was one of disgust and despondency. Yet, the opposition was uncharacteristically mealy-mouthed and cautious, so unlike the outrage that greeted another Thakur’s equally cynical attempt to redraw the political mosaic in 1990.

The official discourse has been distressingly predictable. Social justice, everyone agreed, is a good idea but shouldn’t some thought also be given to merit, particularly now that India’s economy is far more globalised than in 1990? Shouldn’t the announcement of new reservations have been preceded by consultations with all political parties? And isn’t the time ripe for a “creamy layer” exclusion clause?

For lack of application and originality, take the BJP as a case in point. As the premier opposition party it had a natural obligation to respond to the UPA Government’s initiative. Yet throughout the ill-fated Bharat Suraksha Yatra when leaders proffered their opinions on a variety of subjects that are not even remotely linked to national security and terrorism, neither L.K. Advani nor Rajnath Singh said a word on the mounting controversy over reservations. Indeed, it was not until last week—nearly six weeks after the HRD Minister made his move—that the top leadership of the BJP met to formulate a coherent response. The party was paralysed by the fear that any response which revealed its inner disquiet would alienate the substantial OBC support it had built up over the years. Its leaders fell back on inanities about social justice and social consensus. Language became the instrument of obfuscation.

It was the spontaneous revolt of medical students, first in Delhi and subsequently across the country that changed the rules of engagement. Unlike the anti-Mandal protestors in 1990 who enjoyed the surreptitious backing of both the Congress and the BJP, today’s agitators were not blessed with political tutoring. Apart from cricketer-turned-parliamentarian Navjot Singh Sidhu, who is not exactly a political heavyweight, no politician of consequence came forward to embrace the Youth for Equality. At best the agitation that finally compelled the Supreme Court to intervene was complemented by the angry resignation of two members of the Knowledge Commission, a largely decorative body dominated by friends of the present regime.

The political innocence of today’s protesters was very revealing. Whereas the conventional wisdom in the national parties that depend on cross-caste appeal was that nothing must be done to trigger a backlash of the beneficiaries of the new reservations, the protestors were not bound by electoral calculations. Indeed, most of those who participated in the street protests, hunger strikes and public meetings probably nurtured a healthy disdain for the prevailing political culture of India. In a country where most legislators don’t even know how to handle a personal computer, the anti-reservationists took the aid of SMS, email and blogsites to link disparate groups across the country. With finite resources, modern communication methods became the instruments of forging solidarities and creating new pressure groups and political communities across India.

In time to come, historians will look back on the protests of April and May 2006 as the first modernist upsurge against a decrepit political consensus. The nature of the demands put forward by the Youth for Equality point to a heartening freshness, particularly when contrasted with the tired rhetoric of India’s elected representatives. The demand for equality of opportunities was once the signature tune of progressives throughout the world. Unfortunately, the discovery of affirmative action by the Sixties’ sociologists had relegated this republican aspiration to the dustbins of political activism. The youth revolt has resurrected this forgotten ideal. It is a plank that now awaits political adoption.

Second, whereas Hindu social reformers of the 19th century and nationalist stalwarts of the 20th century had made eradication of caste identity a symbol of an emerging modern India, the practitioners of electoral democracy have banked on caste-based mobilisation. By once again positing an aggregative Indian identity, the protestors have implicitly questioned one of the central assumptions governing political mobilisation. Viewed in totality, the anti-reservations stir has been one of the most cosmopolitan movements witnessed in recent times. It has been defined by a vision of India as a modern, dynamic capitalism. There is none of the angst-ridden, anti-imperialist and counter-culture piffle which characterised the student movements of the Sixties. This was a movement which symbolised the determination of a section of India to face the world on terms of equality, minus controls and crutches. This was a movement of a vanguard, not a class. No wonder there was a striking mismatch between their aspirations and the mindset of a government hell-bent on creating a nation on doles and crutches.

Finally, this was a movement which successfully broke through the hierarchies and inhibitions of gender. The sight of highly motivated young boys and girls joining hands for a common objective went contrary to a stereotype surrounding women’s participation in public life. This movement demonstrated that a separatist agenda prefaced on shrill feminism is not imperative in bridging the gender divide. In the emerging India, women have as much of a vested interest as men in ensuring a level playing field for all.

A movement which breaks the mould of existing politics is bound to draw flak. However, the political class has been uncharacteristically restrained in their criticism. This is partly because there is a tacit recognition that a 49 per cent reservation could have a long-term debilitating effect on the competitiveness of India’s knowledge economy. At the same time, there is a belief that the anti-reservations stir is ephemeral, elitist and selfish. CPI national secretary D.Raja’s charge that it was an “upper caste stageshow” reflecting “the greed of the new generation in an unequal society” will find an echo in populist circles.

That a movement based on the principles of ruthless meritocracy is going to be confined to a few economically vibrant enclaves is obvious. Even assuming most of the participants were nominally upper caste Hindus, it was no more an upper caste movement than the early nationalist movement was a Brahmin conspiracy. The self-image of the movement was markedly anti-caste rather than upper caste. This may explain why its reach was limited to the centres of academic excellence and the citadels of the new economy.


As an electoral force the anti-reservations stir is unlikely to make an immediate impact, except perhaps contributing to the decimation of the Congress. Yet, the movement has a larger significance. This is the first movement conceived and conducted by a generation that has come into its own after the process of economic liberalisation began in 1991. This explains its sharp rupture with past student movements. Given India’s demographic profile, political parties will be signing their own warrants of obsolescence if they don’t internalise the emerging trends. In the anti-reservations stir we have glimpsed the hazy contours of a brave, new India.

(Published in The Telegraph, Calcutta, June 2, 2006)

Why give Aamir Modi's pedestal? (May 28, 2006)

By Swapan Dasgupta

Since the 1990s, celebrities and activists associated with the Narmada Bachao Andolan have converted self-righteous abusiveness into a fine art. Last week, to take a random but not atypical example, the voice of writer-NBA activist Arundhati Roy was heard across the airwaves telling indulgent Americans that “There is no real democracy in India”. The grim reality of mass murders of the poor and the inspiring insurrection of the Maoists who are gaining control of district after district are not widely known because the “Indian mainstream (is) so servile” and beguiled by neo-liberal fantasies.

To be fair, Aamir Khan should not be equated with the indignant Booker Prize winner. Roy has an admirable way with words and has a definite political agenda. Aamir, on the other hand, is neither a Javed Akhtar nor is he as conceptually endowed as Roy. He is an attractive Bollywood star who has decided that it pays to combine a disarming smile with a loose public agenda. Yet, it is important to remember that Aamir cannot be equated with either a Shabana Azmi or Shatrughan Sinha—articulate representatives of the Left and Right. A man who endorses Coca Cola and simultaneously sups with Medha Patkar, a Luddite if there was one, is either remarkably versatile or just plain confused.

Maybe it is unfair to be so dismissive. What seems to drive Aamir is a profound hatred of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. As someone influenced by his environment, he is merely mirroring a fashionable demonology—so fashionable that it led to the much-despised Bush Administration denying Modi a visa to visit the US. For the fashionably bigoted—and they are particularly preponderant in the “slavish” Indian media—the programmes of the Gujarat Government like bringing water to the parched citizens of Kutch and widening the roads of congested Vadodara, reek of fascism. I have even heard a demented secularist likening the urban renewal programme of Vadodara to Hitler’s construction of the Autobahn!

When it comes to Modi, anything goes. Modi may be the Gujarati icon and the man the Indian Right awaits, but you can’t be a Modi admirer and be thin-skinned at the same time. That he defied treacherous wisdom and won Gujarat in 2002 was bad enough. The fashionable hatred for Modi has grown exponentially with his success in exposing the hollowness of the NBA campaign.

There was a time when an I-love-Modi pronouncement was an invitation for a fatwa of social ostracism. Today, the circle of Modi baiters is shrinking rapidly, and soon it will be confined to professional ambulance chasers, English TV anchors and friends of jihadis. It was revealing that when good sense compelled the Prime Minister to disregard the partisan advice of Saifuddin Soz on the rehabilitation issue, Medha Patkar’s counter-offensive was to question Modi’s secular credentials. Devoid of a worthwhile political plank, Modi’s detractors have fallen back on the resurrection of Muslim angst.

Maybe Aamir’s posturings on the “victims” of Sardar Sarovar dam and the displaced of Vadodara aren’t so evolved. In any case, they have absolutely nothing to do with Fanaa, a run-of-the-mill Bollywood film with the usual spiel about a terrorist with a golden heart. Amit Thakkar, the alleged mastermind of the unofficial ban on Fanaa in Gujarat, has every right to be outraged by Aamir’s views but to call for an apology is absolutely preposterous. Aamir’s right to be ignorant and offensive is sacrosanct, as is Thakkar’s right to not buy a ticket for Fanaa. But a “ban”, which helped Aamir gloss over a trade dispute with multiplex owners, puts the BJP in Gujarat on par with the narrow-minded regimes in Nagaland, Punjab and Goa that have banned The Da Vinci Code.

It certainly does no good to the image of the Gujarat Chief Minister. Predictably, he is being blamed for the puerile misadventures of the BJP’s youth wing. By putting Aamir on par with the Chief Minister, you are actually knocking Modi off his pedestal.

(Published in Sunday Pioneer, May 28, 2006)

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Left, Right, Left, Right, to seventh heaven (May 27, 2006)

Economic pragmatism, cultural correction and lots of help from the opposition. That's how the CPI(M) does it again and again in West Bengal.

By Swapan Dasgupta

Winning an election, or so the conventional wisdom in India goes, is easier than securing re-election and resisting the inevitable tide of anti-incumbency. It is to the credit of the CPI(M)-led Left Front in West Bengal that they have proved otherwise—not once, not twice, but on six different occasions. On May 11, the Left Front coasted to victory for the seventh time, decimating all its opponents and finally putting to rest all the elaborate theories of “scientific” rigging. In the annals of competitive, multi-party democracy, the Comrades in West Bengal have set a political record that will be difficult to surpass.

And yet, it is undeniable that Left leaders woke on the morning of May 11 with a slight trepidation. It is not that the final outcome was in any doubt. No one, not even the most incorrigible of anti-Left optimists, seriously believed that there would be a silent, democratic upheaval. At the same time, what the redoubtable K.J. Rao described as the “freest of all free elections” in West Bengal raised some larger questions.

First, assuming that all previous elections in the state had been marred by varying degrees of adulteration, were the exit polls projections accurate? Since forecasts were based on a benchmark—in most cases the 2001 Assembly poll results—would the past distortions have a bearing on present projections? Statisticians argued that it should but no one was certain of the magnitude of the scientific rigging in the past. Barun Sengupta, the venerable editor of Bartaman, for example, put the quantum of adulteration at a 33 per cent average. Others, including the CPI(M) leadership, believed it was statistically insignificant.

Second, this was a poll conducted under strict and intrusive Election Commission supervision. A scrutiny of electoral rolls led to some 24 lakh “bogus” voters being excluded from the rolls and the inclusion of an equal number of new voters. In short, there was something like a 48 lakh turnover which, it was argued, had the potential of creating upsets in marginal constituencies.

Third, contrary to motivated Left fears that the presence of central para-military forces would frighten off voters, particularly in the villages, Bengalis braved the May sun and turned up in amazingly large numbers to vote. The average turnout touched 83 per cent, up from 78 per cent in 2004 and 75 per cent in 2001. Again, contrary to suggestions that people resented the EC’s over-bearing arrangements, there was widespread endorsement of the measures to prevent intimidation of voters in the queues, impersonation and booth capturing. The recurrent comment of voters was how happy they were to have “cast my own vote myself”—a tacit indictment of past elections. Consequently, the question uppermost in the minds of all political parties was: would such a spectacularly high and genuine turnout upset the psephological applecart? Would West Bengal witness a silent vote for change?

In hindsight, most of these concerns turned out to be completely unfounded. The Left juggernaut was unstoppable. As predicted by the opinion and exit polls, the Left Front won a seventh term in office with an increased majority, reversing the marginal decline witnessed in 1996 and 2001. Throughout the state, there was an increase in the Left Front’s popular vote. The higher turnout proved completely advantageous to the incumbent.

The results for a divided opposition were so ungratifying that the leader of the Trinamool Congress legislature party may not qualify to be recognised as the Leader of Opposition. From 61 seats in 2001, the Trinamool came down to 29 and lost seats in its strongholds of North and South 24 Parganas and Kolkata. The Congress too was badly mauled and the party failed to consolidate the gains made in in 2004 in Malda, Murshidabad and North and South Dinajpur districts. In Malda, the void left by the death of Congress stalwarts Ghani Khan Choudhury was filled by the Left.

West Bengal did witness a silent vote for change but the beneficiary of that vote was the Left Front, particularly the CPI(M). It is the paradox of the Left being able to encapsulate both continuity and change that warrants explanation. After enjoying 29 uninterrupted years of power, there was a natural anti-incumbency. How the Left managed to internalise this anti-incumbency in its own favour is the fascinating story of the mood change brought about by Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya—a man who is being lauded as the Deng Xiaobing of Indian Communism.

For a party that believes in the dictatorship of the Politburo, the CPI(M) is understandably squeamish about according pre-eminence to Bhattacharya’s role in transforming the mindset of governance. “Buddhadeb is merely continuing a process that began under Jyoti Basu” is a familiar refrain of many CPI(M) old-timers.

To a limited extent this is true. In the final years of his rule, Basu recognised that the dismantling of the license-permit-quota raj had made it untenable for the Left to blame the economic decline of West Bengal on the “step-motherly” attitude of the Centre. As states like Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Gujarat braced themselves to take full advantage of the new supply-side economics, West Bengal too felt the need to change its image and business environment. The surge in agricultural productivity witnessed after the land reforms of the late-1970s proved inadequate to offset the industrial decline of the state. West Bengal became the rust belt of the east and Rajiv Gandhi’s carping aside about Kolkata being a “dying city” was an unpleasant home truth that Bengalis couldn’t accept graciously. The situation was so pathetic that in 1987, the Left Front’s campaign in Kolkata focussed on two so-called achievements: the construction of a sports stadium in Salt Lake and the building of a cinema hall in the heart of the city! And 1987 was the year of the Left’s most spectacular victory: 251 out of 294 seats.

For the Left, the problem was two-fold. First, the culture of militant trade unionism, including gherao, which arose in the mid-1960s led to a massive flight of capital and proved a big deterrent to any new investment. Yet, since the empowerment of organised labour was so central to the CPI(M)’s political mission, it was difficult to persuade organisations like CITU that wider social responsibilities demanded a curb on militancy.

Second, the CPI(M) leadership was dismissive of what they saw as the trappings of modernisation. Top CPI(M) leaders like the late Promode Dasgupta and Benoy Choudhury were upright individuals who led very austere lives. They nurtured a deep antipathy to the glitzy, bright lights of capitalism which, in their view, encouraged iniquity and decadence. They neither understood nor appreciated the dynamics of modern capitalism. To them, industrialisation meant massive Soviet-style steel plants financed by the public sector.

Dasgupta, the main who firmed up the organisational walls of the CPI(M) was, for example, totally focussed on what his priorities were. In a revealing interview in 1978 to a now-defunct magazine from Calcutta, he spelt out his approach: “In bourgeois democracies the common man has no political role once he has cast his vote in the election. We are determined to give him a continuing role in rural development… If, even with the limited power at our disposal, we can accomplish certain things in the villages, we should be able to bring about a mass awakening among the rural people.”

What Dasgupta left unstated was that empowerment became synonymous with the stranglehold of the party over all institutions, including those linked to civil society. The CPI(M) has made it impossible for people to survive in the countryside without coming to an understanding with the party. The Opposition has either been forced underground or exists on the sufferance of the CPI(M) Local Committee. The CPI(M) doesn’t need to rig the polls; it operates in a opposition-free void in at least 150 of the 294 seats.

For the veterans of the CPI(M)—inspired to a very large degree by the mythology around China and Vietnam—this high-handedness is synonymous with the mobilisation of the peasantry. But peasant activism injects associated problems. As India has progressed from deprivation to surplus, the CPI(M) has chosen to don the mantle of permanent outlanders in the modern world.

It is conceivable that Basu realised that the old ways wouldn’t do but he lacked either the political commitment or the clout to force a change in the party’s way of thinking. Till the late-1990s, until the emergence of urban protest under Mamata forced a review, the CPI(M) was content to believe that their stranglehold over rural West Bengal would see them through the future.

Basu’s grudging retirement amid great fanfare triggered change. The new generation which came to the fore with Bhattacharya had not all cut their teeth in the food movement of the mid-1960s or the land grab movement during the days of the first two United Front governments. Their apprenticeship in the Communist movement coincided with the U-turn in China under Deng and the collapse of the Soviet Union. As such, they were not fired solely by the romanticism associated with the early years of the CPI(M)’s growth in West Bengal. Having tasted power uninterruptedly since 1977, they were not overwhelmed by the oppositional mindset of an earlier generation.

Yet, the process of change necessitated leadership and direction. With the advent of Bhattacharya, the Left Front began focussing on industrial and urban regeneration. For the first time after decades of neglect, there were investments to upgrade the urban infrastructure. The much-needed flyovers relieved the traffic congestion of Kolkata and the city that was known for unending power cuts suddenly lost all use for inverters and generators. Kolkata witnessed a retail and housing boom as new suburbs blessed with good civic ameneties were added to the city’s boundaries. What Chandrababu Naidu did for Hyderabad, Bhattacharya has done for Kolkata. He has not only resuscitated a dying city, he has put it back on the map of urban India. After some four decades, Kolkata has become liveable again.

The physical changes to the city were only the beginning. Bhattacharya has systematically begun the process of reversing each and every one of the outlandish changes introduced by the CPI(M) under Basu.

The rectification programme has been particularly marked in education. In the early-1980s, the Left Front removed the teaching of English as a compulsory subject in primary schools. At one stroke this measure negated the historical advantages of middle class Bengalis in the all-India employment market. Proficiency in the mother tongue was always desirable but Bangla alone could not secure jobs in a wider environment. And there were few jobs to be had within West Bengal.

Second, the Left Front under Basu had launched a vicious assault on all centres of excellence. In the name of equity, the state witnessed a spectacular levelling down programme. The worst affected were institutes such as Presidency College. Pathological control freaks, the CPI(M) began an exercise in social engineering that led to good teachers being banished to the remote interiors and mediocre teachers from the mufassil being despatched to teach the best students in the best institutes. The whole thing was a complete fiasco and contributed to an unprecedented brain drain from West Bengal. Those who could voted with their feet and simply quit the state.

Just prior to the election, Bhattacharya restored the teaching of English at the primary level and conferred autonomy on some of the better colleges in the state. It was done without too much fanfare and without too much debate. But the message went home—Bhattacharya was different and meant business.

There was a third change too. Bhattacharya tried to steer the CPI(M) away from its abrasive relationship with the upper echelons of Bengali society—remember Ashok Mitra’s infamous comment that a Communist was no bhadralok. By actively courting the intelligentsia and sports celebrities on the strength of his civility and erudition, he has projected himself as the great bhadralok consensus. This is bound to yield very rich dividends from the vast Bengali diaspora. The last leader who had attempted this was Dr B.C. Roy, chief minister from 1948 to 1963. Jyoti Basu was too abrasive and self-absorbed to worry about the non-voting classes.

Bhattacharya is fast acquiring a cult status in the state. Backed enthusiastically by a media that used to be spat upon by an earlier generation of Marxists, he has secured for the Left Front the valuable incremental vote that made the difference between a convincing win and a landslide. He has aroused dizzying expectation from a state that once knew the good life but later fell on bad times. He is perceived not as a Communist but as a moderniser—the man who can leapfrog West Bengal into the 21st century by attracting capitalist investment.

Curiously, these popular expectations have run foul of a section of the CPI(M) which is still committed to an archaic class struggle—witness CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat’s observation, immediately after the election, that “West Bengal and Kerala do not determine our national policies.”. Bhattacharya routinely pays lip service to socialism but has proclaimed his intention to work within the parameters of capitalism. In practical terms this involves three changes in the thinking of the CPI(M).

First, Bhattacharya has tacitly acknowledged the importance of profit in driving investments. Entrepreneurs, he knows, will invest in the state if they are assured of an environment conducive to healthy returns. Apart from infrastructure, this necessarily involves curbing labour militancy. In short, to succeed Bhattacharya must be able to persuade his CITU colleagues that they should temper their militancy. Second, the Chief Minister is aware that he can no longer bank on public sector investments for either industry or infrastructure. He needs both investment from both the Indonesian Salem group and the indigenous Tata Motors. In time, if Kolkata Airport is to be upgraded, he will need massive private sector participation. In short, Bhattacharya will need to counter almost everything that the CPI(M) Politburo in Delhi stands for.

The imperatives of West Bengal threaten to challenge the Politburo’s cocooned Marxism. By climbing on to the bandwagon of capitalist growth, Bhattacharya has captured the mood of restlessness in West Bengal. However, by simultaneously suggesting that the historic role of the CPI(M) is to manage capitalism efficiently and ethically, he has also bombarded the party headquarters. For a party that treats its voluminous party resolutions as gospel, Bhattacharya is guilty of revisionism, a heinous crime in the Communist lexicon. He can either fall in line with the Karats and Yechuris and retreat to the bunker or, alternatively, he can force Delhi to recognise the validity of his approach. Both processes will entail prolonged and abstruse ideological debate—a distraction the comrades love. In Kolkata, the so-called knowledgeable circles are already talking of the “Buddhists” in the party burrowing into the collected works of Karl Marx to show why the denigration of capitalism before the onset of socialism is an unfortunate Leninist distortion.

Parliamentary democracy entails two parallel but potentially conflicting responsibilities—to the electorate and to the party. Today, Bhattacharya and a section of the CPI(M) find themselves at the ideological crossroads. They have to choose between their obligation to the state and their commitment to an ideology that has been internationally discarded. It is only in Bengal that this non-issue can become a Hobson’s choice.

(Published in Tehelka, May 27, 2006)

Minority as moral majority (May 21, 2006)

By Swapan Dasgupta

In his compelling critique of majoritarianism and the impending “clash of civilisations”, Amartya Sen has argued that each individual embraces a multiplicity of identities and not merely a religious one. In short, we are all, in some way or other, a minority.

Sen’s argument has been enthusiastically endorsed by India’s politically correct community. The mere invocation of the term “minority” is enough to make them mushy and infuriatingly sanctimonious. Minority rights, we are repeatedly told, must be preserved at all costs, even if it involves making hideous compromises with the principles of equity and modernity. Last week, we had a grotesque assertion of minorityism when Information and Broadcasting Minister P.R. Das Munshi chose to obliterate the crucial distinction between accuser and judge. A clutch of people, said to be the custodians of Roman Catholicism in India, were called upon to judge the universal suitability of the celluloid version of The Da Vinci Code. It does not matter that the collective wisdom of the group was limited to issuing a faith warning. What is significant is that the Government deemed it necessary to consult and respect “minority” sentiments.

I am not going to address the issue of whether or not the Minister would have displayed similar interest had the offence been caused to people who call themselves Hindus. A privileged status for minorities has become the Great Indian Consensus. There is no outrage when a minister in the Uttar Pradesh Government sets a handsome reward for the murder of some Danish cartoonist. Nor do we turn collectively incandescent when Pope Benedict XVI presumes to lecture us on domestic legislation. When it comes to minority interests, democracy and sovereignty are deemed to be negotiable.

It has taken India’s most recent Nobel Prize winner to point out that identity should not be circumscribed by religion only. It must, he insists, be secularised. Minority rights in terms of gender, sexual preferences, aesthetics, food and dress preferences and quirky flights of whimsy must be institutionally accommodated if we are rise above mobocracy.

This is why it is odd that the widespread protests by medical and other students in professional courses against Arjun Singh’s infamous quotas hasn’t propelled politicians into defending minority rights. Let’s be quite clear, the affected students and those likely to be affected are in a woeful minority. They are the best and brightest of our youth, those who can hold their own in any internationally competitive environment. They have precious little need for either affirmative action or grace marks. They are India’s undisputed crème de la crème.

For this precise reason those who marched on the streets of Delhi on Saturday are in a miniscule minority. In theory, that should lead to a clamour among politicians to be photographed with them. Yet, for the past seven days, not one politician of consequence from any of the mainstream parties has dared to be associated with this minority movement. Manmohan Singh had breakfast on Friday with a bearded friend of the Taliban, Das Munshi hobnobbed with the Catholic clergy on Thursday and Comrade Sitaram Yechuri, after spiritedly giving the bear cartel on Dalal Street a generous leg up, rubbished all flirtations with knowledge at a Sahmat meeting on Friday. No one, not even BJP leaders who are privately in sympathy with everything the students stand for, dared to either show solidarity or at least lend them a sympathetic ear. Remember that only two MPs, and none from the Lok Sabha, mustered the courage to oppose the infamous 104th Amendment Bill.

I don’t believe this strategic abstention is occasioned by the alleged upper cabecause the students are allegedly upper caste composition of the protestors. To equate merit with genetics is grotesque and an assertion worthy of race supremacists. The real reason is a little more complex.

At the very heart of the protests against the new quotas is a frighteningly modern demand. The students are asserting their right to be treated first and foremost as Indians—overriding all class, caste and creed. That’s a majoritarian argument no respecting minority-ist will ever countenance.

(Published in Sunday Pioneer, May 21, 2006)

Not out of the box (May 19, 2006)

The Buddhist-Marxist confrontation may well turn ugly

By Swapan Dasgupta

That the Left Front was heading for its seventh consecutive win in West Bengal was never in any doubt. The focus of the 2006 election, held under the Election Commission’s exemplary supervision, centred on the margin of victory. First, the turnout and the outcome was expected to establish the quantum of “scientific rigging” that was claimed to have been widely prevalent in past elections. Second, and more important, the results would determine the political viability of Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s bid to chart a new course for the state. If the LF performed worse than 2001, it would mean a thumbs-down for Bhattacharjee’s out-of-the-box thinking. Conversely, an improved result, particularly in the urban clusters where the Left has been slipping steadily since 1991, would be tantamount to a popular endorsement of the so-called Buddhist line.

By improving its popular vote by 2.7 per cent and increasing its seat tally by 36 in a 294 member Assembly, the Chief Minister has, for the moment, silenced sceptical colleagues who feared that flirtations with capitalism would meet the same fate as the Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s India Shining campaign. Disaggregated data from The Hindu-CSDS exit poll indicate that swing to the LF was as much as 11.3 per cent in the 18-25 age group and 14.2 per cent among those with a college education. Among the salariat, the swing to the LF was 17.7 per cent in the urban areas and 17.5 per cent in the rural areas. With the traditional LF vote more or less holding—the only exception was a 9.6 per cent dip in support among agricultural workers—Bhattacharjee has succeeded in forging a spectacular Bengali consensus around his policies. Those with a stake in the future of West Bengal have endorsed him enthusiastically.

Had Bhattacharjee been the leader of a normal ‘bourgeois’ party, this resounding electoral endorsement would have constituted the last word on the subject. Apart from sniper attacks from a clutch of disgruntled party men, few in the BJP, for example, have the gumption to question the radical reformism of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Modi, like Bhattacharjee, can win votes.

Unfortunately for Bhattacharjee, the CPI(M) is an abnormal party. It is a party-of-the-book and reposes primacy in Marxist theology as the way forward. For the CPI(M), winning elections is not the last word. Taking its cue from V.I. Lenin’s early-20th century prescriptions for Czarist Russia, it sees elections and parliamentary democracy as merely a means to the end—in the CPI(M)’s case a People’s Democratic Revolution. Consequently, the regeneration of West Bengal, for which the LF secured a mandate, is subordinated to a far larger, and somewhat fantasmagoric, objective.

The ability of Bhattacharjee to reconcile his reformism with the self-image of the CPI(M) is not an academic issue. In a revealing interview to Ananda Bazar Patrika last Tuesday, the Chief Minister made some pronouncements which, judged by the beliefs of the CPI(M), amount to heresy.

First, he stated bluntly that “we are not in a pre-revolutionary situation. Capitalism is unlikely to collapse now”. It is not necessary to be a rocket scientist to acknowledge the obvious. However, common sense is often at odds with the belief of old-style Communist parties that is inherently fragile and in a state of permanent crisis. Many Marxists, of course, have been unendingly predicting the “final crisis” since 1914.

In its political resolution adopted at the 18th Party Congress in 2004, the CPI(M) spoke about the “crisis in the world capitalist system and … the contradictions of world capitalism today”, adding that “Programmes of liberalisation and structural adjustment are a response to the present crisis of capitalism”. To the party ideologues, any apparent capitalist boom is “unsustainable” and the system is being artificially propped up the “increase in military expenditure” in the United States.

Second, stemming from his understanding that capitalism holds a long lease, Bhattacharjee argued that “we are surrounded on all sides by capitalism. You cannot practice socialism by insulating yourself from this environment. This was the biggest error committed by the Soviet Union.” Once again, what Bhattacharjee is saying is not unique, but those familiar with the history of the Soviet Union will realise that he is also alluding to a debate that gave ideological cover to Stalin in his triumphant battle against the Left opposition. At that time, the Trotskyists had rightly warned that “socialism in one country” would lead to hideous distortions. However, their solution—unending revolutionary turmoil throughout the world—was both ridiculous and adventurist. By echoing the absurdity of enclave socialism—as unreal as Mahatma Gandhi’s faith in the self-sufficient village economy—Bhattacharjee is tacitly casting doubts on the claims of both China and Vietnam to be regarded as socialist.

Finally, when asked whether his dream of a “new society” meant communism, Bhattacharjee was remarkably honest: “The old models won’t work. The economy can’t be bound in a political framework. We used to think that socialism can be reached through nationalisation (state sector). The Soviet experience proved us wrong and China has learnt the lesson. Here there are so many different ownership patterns—the state sector coexists with the joint sector, the cooperative sector, the private sector and even the foreign sector. Socialism is being examined in new ways. In Vietnam, they are allowing party members to turn businessmen!”

Bhattacharjee’s suggestion that the economy be spared the travails of dogmatic Marxism is fascinating and undercuts—in a welcome sort of way—the very basis of Communist politics. In lauding China’s rapid growth through multiple channels of investment, he is obviously suggesting that Communists need not be inimical to the big bourgeoisie, foreign capital and, for that matter, entrepreneurial comrades. At the same time, he is also indicating that instead of being all-pervasive, the state should confine its role to playing facilitator and creating the right investment-friendly environment. Even Margaret Thatcher wouldn’t have objected to Bhattacharjee’s formulation—unlike Marxists she too abhorred inefficient state monopolies.

The CPI(M), unfortunately, thinks differently. It attributes the problems of unemployment, regional disparities and corruption in “socialist” China to “rapid growth and engagement with the global capitalist system.” What Bhattacharjee construes as China’s dynamism is perceived as the cause of its perversion by the CPI(M). And, as far as insulating the economy from politics, the CPI(M) Programme (updated in 2000) spelt out the obligation “to free the economic, political and social life of our people from the disastrous influence of imperialism and domination by the multinational companies and various agencies of international monopoly capital.” (Yawn.)

“Who reads manifestos?” the late Devi Lal used to ask. In most political parties, manifestos and resolutions are at best read by those who draft them. The CPI(M), tragically, takes its own pamphleteering too seriously—as naturally befits the chosen revolutionary ‘vanguard’. This is why Bhattacharjee may find that his innovative and inspired proposals to extricate West Bengal from its Left-made disaster may be obstructed by Communists waving the 18th Congress resolution, flaunting passages from Lenin “himself” and hurling charges of revisionism and reformism. The Buddhist-Marxist confrontation may well turn ugly.

As he enters a new term with soaring popular expectations, Bhattacharjee has two choices before him—either to press on regardless of what AKG Bhavan in Delhi thinks, or work towards a radically new party policy. The second option is cumbersome, daunting and is about as likely to happen as the RSS abandoning Akhand Bharat formally. It makes more sense for the Chief Minister to just get on with job and let Prakash Karat stew in his own certitudes.

(Published in The Telegraph, Calcutta, May 19, 2006)

Sen's crisis of identity (May 15, 2006)

Book Review by Swapan Dasgupta

Identity And Violence: The Illusion of Destiny by Amartya Sen (Allen Lane, London, 2006) 215 pages. Rs 295

If, as the stand-up comic used to say, all Chinese look the same, it surely follows that billions of people must think and react the same. An absurd proposition, you may say, as absurd as the question we often get asked during travels overseas: “Do you speak Indian?”

Yet, for thousands of years, the most intelligent minds have devoted themselves to the daunting project of reducing the behavioural patterns of communities and nations to convenient shorthand. It began with intrepid travellers like Al-Beruni suggesting—with some prescience—that Hindus have no sense of history. In the age of Empire, it evolved into ethnography as adventurers and civil servants tried to stereotype unfamiliar peoples into the good, the bad and the ugly. Thus was born the image of the noble savage, the criminal tribe, the sinister Chinaman and the wily Brahmin.

In the absence of familiarity with too many individuals, the tendency to generalise was compelling. “Every native of Hindustan, I verily believe”, proclaimed Lord Cornwallis, the second Governor-General of the East India Company’s possessions in India, “is corrupt.” A hundred years later, Lord Curzon triggered a fierce controversy by telling the Calcutta University convocation that “truth took a high place in the moral codes of the West before it had been similarly honoured in the East, where craftiness and diplomatic wile have always been held in much repute.”

In terms of profundity, these insights into what constitutes the national character and identity are about as revealing as the Hungarian George Mikes’ belief that the English prefer hot water bottles to sex or Bill Bryson’s suggestion that the best way to start an argument in an English pub is to ask for directions.

Amartya Sen is repelled by the suggestion that the very complex issue of both personal and collective identity can, through a process of “extraordinary descriptive crudeness and historical innocence”, be seriously distorted. To him, there is nothing more offensive than the “solitarist” approach—the suggestion that identity is one-dimensional. “In our normal lives, we see ourselves as members of a variety of groups—we belong to all of them… Our shared humanity gets savagely challenged when the manifold divisions in the world are unified into one allegedly dominant system of classification—in terms of religion, or community, or culture, or nation, or civilisation. The uniquely partitioned world is much more divisive than the universe of plural and diverse categories that shape the world in which we live.”

Translated into English and in the context of liberal academia’s post-9/11 disorientation, Sen is suggesting that terms like Islamic terrorism and “clash of civilisations” be declared haram and banished to the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal.

Sen’s anguish is understandable. When mad men get it into their heads to assault civilisation, aesthetes tend to fall back on decency. In 1941, as Hitler was trying to bomb England into submission, George Orwell penned a memorable essay on identity and patriotism. In “England your England”, he argued that “We are a nation of flower-lovers, but also a nation of stamp-collectors, pigeon-fanciers, amateur carpenters, coupon-snippers, darts-players, crossword-puzzle fans. All the culture that is most truly native centres round things which even when they are communal are not official…”

Just as Sen probably found George W. Bush’s over-bearing cowboy patriotism abhorrent, Orwell was perhaps put off by the loquacious bulldog patriotism of Winston Churchill, not to mention the sanctimonious Stalinism of Leftist intellectuals. He posited a more variegated Englishness than what the trumpeters of King and Country allowed for. In a similar vein, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp—a film Churchill wanted to ban—tried to gently suggest that all Germans aren’t evil Nazis.

There will be few takers for the suggestion that Osama bin Laden is the personification of the entire Muslim ummah. For all the Islamophobia that has allegedly crept into the West after 9/11 and 7/7, ordinary Muslims haven’t experienced a vicious wave of retribution. On the contrary, “moderate” Muslims have been presented with more avenues for self-improvement than is strictly warranted by their strategic clout. In a frenzied bid to ensure that Samuel Huntingdon’s “clash of civilisations” doesn’t end up as a self-fulfilling prophecy, Muslims are being told by the likes of Sen that any Islamic identity can’t be exclusive and has to be tempered by other overlapping identities.

The prospect of millions of Muslims suddenly realising that they have an equal identity as amateur gardeners, philatelists and culinary advisers to Bangladeshi restaurants in Britain is attractive. However, it is about as relevant as the suggestion that Hitler should have been advised there was greater percentage in embracing Mahatma Gandhi on the common plank of vegetarianism.

The important thing is not that people have different identities and different facets to their personality. What Sen’s eminently readable monograph skirts is why and under what circumstances one identity subsumes the rest. It is crass, we all know, to look at the world in black and white. But what do we do when millions decide that the religious community is all important? Educating them that preceding generations of co-religionists were devoted to mathematics and gardening is unlikely to help matters.

And talking of math, how does Sen claim that Akbar completed “his large project of legally codifying minority rights, including religious freedom for all”? “Minority rights” for 90 per cent of the population!

(Published in Businessworld, May 15, 2006)

Against Left, for Left Front (May 14, 2006)

By Swapan Dasgupta

Among the more intriguing theories that were proffered in Kolkata to explain the Left Front’s conclusive seventh-term victory last Thursday, one struck me as quite prescient. “It is actually a victory of Chicago”, argued a venerable Bengali notable who has been rooting enthusiastically for Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya for the past four years. The Chicago he spoke about was not some obscure allusion to Al Capone or even the Tammany Hall tradition perfected by former Mayor Daley. In intellectual circles, Chicago has long been the shorthand for the aggressive, free-market economics personified by Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman—thinkers who, at various times, have influenced leaders as diverse as Britain’s Margaret Thatcher and Chile’s General Pinochet.

As yet, there is no compelling evidence to suggest that the Comrades in Alimuddin Street have intellectually reconciled themselves to the superiority of market forces over the state. Nor is there any reason to conclude that CPI(M) is on the verge of admitting that liberal capitalism is a more wholesome and civilised system than the brutal inefficiencies of Stalinist regimentation. Yet, there is a window of opportunity that arises from Bhattacharya’s admission a few months ago that he had to work within the parameters of a capitalist economy.

At his victory press conference in the party office, Bhattacharya allayed the fears of the faithful by proclaiming his belief in the superiority and inevitability of socialism. Fortunately, it was an exercise in abstraction and akin to the assertion that in the long run we are dead and destined to go to a heavenly paradise. As long as the CPI(M) is satisfied proclaiming the virtues of their utopia, India has no reason to either worry or object. Preoccupation with the after-life has, after all, been central to most religious thought.

For the moment, the issue before the Left Front is: what needs to be done here and now? By accepting the parameters of capitalism, Bhattacharya has done what India’s self-proclaimed Stalinists don’t usually do—admit that socialism doesn’t happen by securing political power. European socialists had discarded Soviet-style socialism from their agenda some 25 years ago when it became obvious that economics was beyond the ken of party-run bureaucracies. Today, the West Bengal Chief Minister has cautiously bowed to reality. It doesn’t matter whether or not he accepts that the virtues of the market economy is regards it as a kaliyuga inevitability; what matters is that he understands its logic and plays by its rules.

The incremental vote the Left Front secured this election was on account of Bhattacharya’s commitment to take West Bengal out of the orbit of disruption and decay. At a time when Mamata Banerjee donned the garb of the ultra-Left, Bhattacharya emerged as a voice of sanity, respectability and, above all, hope. The magnitude of the Left Front’s victory in the freest and fairest election ever witnessed in the state was on account of the new direction promised by the Chief Minister. And that new direction is not what is stated in some minimum programme agreed by all the constituents of the Left Front, but something more daring. West Bengal voted to get back to serious capitalism.

Had the people of the state been exposed only to the buffoonery of the party bosses like Biman Basu and the archaic rhetoric of leaders who mirror the sloganeering of V.S. Achyutanandan in Kerala, Comrades Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechuri would not have been strutting about Delhi so imperiously. “I do not understand what you mean by the reforms of the West Bengal government”, an irritated Karat told the media last Thursday. Ironically, two days earlier, Siddhartha Shankar Ray asked on TV: is the CPI(M) faithful to Marxism? He could well have been insisting that all Muslims practise jihad.

What’s in a name? That’s the message of Ratan Tata greeting a Red victory in Bengal with an announcement of a Rs 1,000 crore investment in manufacturing. All over India there are squirming Reds who can’t get over the paradox of the Bengal verdict: a vote against the Left, for the Left Front.

(Published in Sunday Pioneer, May 14, 2006)

Pramod and the BJP (May 7, 2006)

By Swapan Dasgupta

Secrets, and the confidentiality surrounding “off the record” conversations, can only endure for a lifetime. Last Wednesday afternoon, Pramod Mahajan passed into history leaving behind a distraught BJP which had always recognised his abilities but had only just about come to acknowledge his potential. He died just as he was making the transition from the first division to the super league. Pramod’s untimely death, as Atal Bihari Vajpayee put it so evocatively, was akin to sunset at noon.

The last lengthy conversation I had with Pramod was in early-January this year. We were guests at a small dinner hosted by the US Ambassador for Massachusetts Senator John Kerry. Having exchanged some tittle-tattle about political goings-on, I confessed to Pramod that I was a little uneasy with the BJP’s strident and shrill opposition to the proposed Indo-US nuclear agreement.

“You are not alone”, he told me with characteristic candour, “I am a little surprised too.” “Have you stated your views to the party?” I asked innocently. Pramod laughed derisively. “In our party”, he confessed, “few decisions are taken after consultations. One of the leaders makes a public statement and more often than not that ends up becoming policy. Most of us just go along.”

What Pramod told me that evening was no great revelation. Despite the quarterly meetings of the National Executive and monthly meetings of the national office-bearers, the process of collective decision-making has been seriously impaired in the BJP. Rampant individualism has coexisted with dedicated team work.

Pramod epitomised this contradiction. Entrusted with responsibility for managing the 2004 general election campaign, Pramod set about the task with methodical diligence. A great one for using technology to collate data and manage the information overload, he established a campaign office which, in terms of appearance and equipment, matched that of any presidential aspirant in the US.

There were, however, some key differences. First, the campaign centre was located, not in the BJP headquarters in Asoka Road, but in portakabins perched on the back lawns of his Safdarjung Road residence. Second, the campaign was conceptualised, planned and executed by a group of people whose relationship to the party was incidental. These included quack pollsters and lowly copywriters employed on a contract basis. Third, almost all those who had been involved in the BJP election campaigns of the past were bypassed and kept out of the loop. Nominally there was an election committee but it never met. The 2004 campaign ended up being a Pramod-run campaign rather than a BJP-run campaign. The series of disasters—from the Vision Document that became a Vajpayee photo album to the puerile SMS and phone calls—happened because those running the campaign were living in a make-believe world of their own without recourse to any feedback. It was such a fantasy world that hours before the counting, laminated charts containing projections of the conclusive NDA win were distributed to senior BJP leaders. They are priceless collector’s items.

To be fair, Pramod was large-hearted enough to own up to all the responsibility for the defeat. Lesser beings would have tried to pass the buck. But more important, the defeats in May 2004 and the Maharashtra Assembly election held three months later proved a very humbling experience for Pramod. He realised that his boundless energy and resourcefulness would have earned greater dividends had they been harnessed to the party. In short, the future lay in creating Team BJP rather than banking on Team Pramod.

Pramod was a quick learner and digested the lessons of the 2004 debacles without demur. Unfortunately, others were not so alert to the larger lessons of the defeat. Since June 2004—right from the day Vajpayee called reporters to Manali and inexplicably delivered a tirade against Narendra Modi—the BJP has been suffering from explosions of private agendas.

At a trivial level, there was the spectacle of Smriti Irani threatening to go on fast unless Modi was removed as Chief Minister of Gujarat, Madan Lal Khurana courting expulsion by flying off the handle and Shatrughan Sinha staying away from the Bihar election campaign because the party wasn’t willing to project him as its chief ministerial candidate. These were, unfortunately, more than individual misdemeanours. They flowed from the complete breakdown of decorous conduct right at the very top of the BJP hierarchy.

The “crisis” in the BJP, about which so much has been written in the wake of Pramod’s tragic murder, is not something that has arisen out of the inability of the “second generation” leaders to work harmoniously together. To my understanding, this has never been a serious problem. While there are individuals with different ambitions and divergent styles, these have not affected the integrity and coherence of Team BJP.

Pramod, who was prone to flippancy, articulated the problem inimitably. A man who liked the sound of his own initials, he didn’t mind being called PM. One afternoon, last year, someone jokingly referred to him Mr PM. “Don’t say that”, he retorted with a smirk, “I’m not yet 70!”

It was a cutting aside but it also drove home a problem that the BJP has been confronting, in an embarrassed fashion, since the 2004 defeat—the dogged resistance to superannuation. The “crisis” of leadership the BJP is said to be experiencing—and the prophets of doom have multiplied since Pramod’s death—actually boils down to the reluctance of the old guard to hand over responsibility to younger leaders. More to the point, the old guard wants to be relevant and at the centre of all decision-making. The result is that the party is confronted with contradictory pulls and pressures and suffers a problem of incoherence.

The manner in which Advani bludgeoned the party into hosting the ill-fated Bharat Suraksha Yatra is a case in point. In search of an issue that would bring him into the limelight and salvage his ideological credentials—battered after his controversial trip to Pakistan in July last year—Advani seized on the Varanasi bombings to tap Hindu disquiet. In terms of timing it was all wrong. First, there was no evidence that Hindu anger against the UPA Government’s “appeasement” of minorities had started boiling over. Second, it was announced at a time when radical Muslim opinion was firming up against the Congress for its policy of friendship with the US. Instead of waiting for this anger to fructify and actually encouraging the disarray, the BJP chose to reveal its cards prematurely. Finally, another yatra was perceived as a Pavlovian response to the BJP’s internal disarray.

The misgivings over the Bharat Suraksha Yatra were widespread within the party. You have just to see Pramod’s uncharacteristic discomfiture replying to Karan Thapar’s pointed questions to realise it. It was also no state secret that Party president Rajnath Singh had to be taken to his leg of the yatra kicking and screaming. And during the yatra, there was no central theme which was projected. The question is: why was the yatra undertaken despite these objections?

The answers are bewildering and a commentary on the BJP’s inner problems. First, since Advani had announced the yatra, after a perfunctory conversation with Rajnath, everyone was too polite to raise doubts. Second, there was no meeting of the BJP office bearers to discuss the political rationale behind the yatra. From its inception to its premature conclusion the yatra was centred on unilateralism. Even now, no one is willing to ask what political dividends the long journeys yielded for the party? Were the human energy expended and the money spent commensurate with the returns? Yet these questions haven’t been asked and nor are they going to be asked at the next National Executive meeting in Ludhiana.

The yatra is not the first occasion that important political decisions have been taken on individual flights of whimsy. The repeated boycotts of Parliament last year was thrust down the throats of a deeply reluctant parliamentary party—the uncharitable suggestion is that it was done at the behest of astrologers to trigger a crisis for the government. Likewise, Advani’s praise of Jinnah wasn’t preceded by any consultation within the party. It too was a misplaced act of unilateralism.

Pramod’s death at this juncture is a grave loss for the party. With his death the BJP has lost the services of a formidable organiser, an energetic mobiliser of resources and one of its best orators. Yet, there are people who can step into the void, even if no one is able to combine all three roles. Pramod will be missed but the BJP will not be crippled by his absence. Indeed, it would be wrong to suggest that Pramod’s absence will deepen the BJP’s crisis.

The truth is more complex. Pramod was helpless in the face of recent developments in the BJP. Like most others, he was just biding his time, waiting for the evolutionary process to run its course. Like other leaders with a future in front of them, he knew that a party like the BJP could not be run like the Congress—as a proprietary concern. Sooner or later the system of collective decision-making would prevail. It is a tragedy that Pramod will not be there to revel in the return to basics. He would have thrived as the captain of a team, not a cluster of talented individuals each doing his own thing.

(Published in Sunday Pioneer, May 7, 2006)

Man in a hurry (May 4, 2006)

Mahajan followed the mantra of a brash age

By Swapan Dasgupta

For the fledgling Bharatiya Janata Party, the last day of 1984 was hardly an occasion for celebration. As the results of the general election poured in, the anticipated victory for the Congress turned into an avalanche. Rajiv Gandhi not only bettered Jawaharlal Nehru’s 1957 performance but left the BJP decimated and devastated. All the party stalwarts—from Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Rajmata Vijaya Raje Scindia to Sikander Bakht—were roundly defeated and the party just about saved face by notching up two fluke victories in Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh. On hearing the results, K.R. Malkani, then editor of Organiser, rang L.K. Advani with a terse message: “It’s time to shut shop.”

For the BJP, dissolution was not a realistic alternative. To the committed, the BJP was more than a party dedicated to Gandhian socialism and the true legacy of Jaya Prakash Narayan. Behind the ideological gobbledegook that followed the departure from the ramshackle Janata Party in 1980 over the “dual membership” issue, the faithful perceived the BJP as both a mission and a movement. It would need something truly catastrophic—the saffron equivalent of the collapse of the Berlin Wall—for the party to undertake voluntary retirement.

Vajpayee, who was then BJP president, was no great ideologue. In a somewhat despondent interview to India Today immediately after the results, he reposed his faith in the creeping anti-incumbency that would invariably follow the dizzying expectations from the new Gandhi. Yet, by way of a footnote, he added that the BJP needn’t be disheartened. There were capable, young leaders who would assure the future of the party. Vajpayee identified two of them: Arun Jaitley, an up-and-coming Delhi lawyer who had graduated from student politics, and Pramod Mahajan, one of the candidates from Bombay who had impressed everyone with his oratory and organising skills.

Some 21 years later, Vajpayee, now the Bheeshmapitamaha of the BJP, must be chuckling over his ability to almost anticipate the future—he failed to factor in the post-2002 Narendra Modi. Jaitley, apart from evolving into one of India’s most successful lawyers, is regarded by many as the most acceptable face of the Indian Right—upright, modern and devoid of those angularities associated with ideological parties. A natural coalition-builder, he is the patrician face of the BJP. And then there is Mahajan—the man anointed by Vajpayee as Lakshman—now battling for life in a Mumbai hospital.

The son of a humble Brahmin school-teacher in Maharashtra, Mahajan was a man never quite at ease with the languid ways of the parivar. He was always in a hurry. In early-2004, after L.K. Advani abruptly announced his decision to undertake his Bharat Uday Yatra, in pursuance of the India Shining campaign, it was left to Mahajan to do all the bandobast. A vehicle, with all the necessary embellishments, had to be made ready in less than a week. The evening before the souped-up Swaraj Mazda was to be despatched to Kanyakumari, in time for the inauguration, Mahajan arrived at the workshop. He didn’t like what he saw and demanded a complete overhaul. The hapless contractor pleaded for more time. “Nothing doing”, snapped Mahajan, “It must be completed by the morning.” Then, turning to a party functionary, he barked: “They say Rome wasn’t built in a day. I say Rome was built in a day.”

Mahajan exuded the frontier spirit of India’s market capitalism. He epitomised the spirit of Mumbai, the city that moulded him and which he made his karmabhoomi. To him, politics was more akin to a one-day cricket match—lots of entertainment, oodles of improvisation and a broad but flexible strategy. It was the mantra of a brash age, impatient to make up for the wasted years of socialism—and Mahajan was its personification. “There are just too many problems”, he once told a closed-door chintan meeting of the parivar, “whose solutions haven’t been addressed by ideology.”

Mahajan was ruthlessly impatient of long-winded deliberations that went on interminably without yielding an outcome. The niceties of political decision-making weren’t his cup of tea. Put in charge of the BJP’s general election campaign in 2004—an election whose outcome was thought to be a foregone conclusion—Mahajan bypassed all the established party structures. Operating from a row of well-equipped portakabins in the back lawns of his Safdarjung Road residence, he left the campaign to a few of his hand-picked managers. With money available by the bucketful, Pramod’s boys conjured up a fun campaign—lots of stars and starlets, SMS messages and recorded telephone calls with Vajpayee’s voice. As an exercise in event management, it caught the public eye.

Tragically, it lacked one essential component—content. In being preoccupied with the form, Pramod’s boys lost sight of the message. So, for that matter, did Mahajan. He convinced himself that a resurgent India would translate its aspirational lifestyle into a vote for the BJP. He forgot that most Indians don’t like seeing their politicians giving interviews while running on a treadmill. Mahajan wasn’t a hypocrite but as another of BJP’s many “political Hindus”, he didn’t gauge the ingrained importance of double standards in the Hindu way of thinking.

All in all it proved a very costly mistake and seriously undermined Mahajan’s reputation of being a permanent winner. The resulting backlash in the party also eroded a key plank of the Mahajan philosophy—the importance of pragmatism and expediency over ideology. When Advani fell victim to his own indiscretions over Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Mahajan’s claim to be primus inter pares in the second generation was brushed aside.

Yet, the irony is that Mahajan was no political innocent. Journalists on the BJP beat will testify that when it came to objective, dispassionate assessments, Mahajan was unsurpassable. In many ways, he both understood and anticipated the paradigm shift brought about by the market economy. Unfortunately, he failed to convey this political understanding with sufficient gravitas. A natural flippancy—remember the tasteless aside equating Sonia Gandhi with Monica Lewinsky—and some unwholesome associations brought him into needless disrepute. Mahajan was often his own worst enemy.

Mahajan has often been compared to S.K. Patil and Rajni Patel—both formidable fund-raisers for the Congress in a different era. The comparison holds only partially—in terms of an ability to earn the confidence of the nation’s moneybags. But there was a crucial difference. Fund-collectors were almost always backroom operators; they rarely aspired to the very top of the political hierarchy.

Mahajan always believed that in any democratic, inner-party election not involving either Vajpayee or Advani, he would prevail easily. Over the years, he collected an enormous number of IOUs at the grassroots. From ensuring a livelihood to humble party workers to giving a little bit extra to potentially winning candidates in elections, Mahajan created an elaborate network for both himself and the party. He knew how to earn fierce loyalty. On the negative side, he was intolerant of those who identified with others of the second generation. Mahajan had loyal friends but he also created fierce enemies. Uma Bharti is just one who spoke out.

That he was resourceful was well accepted. Outside BJP circles, few were aware of the extent to which he had put his resourcefulness to optimum advantage. If he and the doctors are able to fight off the damage caused by the three bullets, Mahajan’s pre-eminence in a future BJP is almost assured. The media attention and the outpouring of concern witnessed at the Hinduja Hospital have convinced the RSS to brass that maybe they did him a grave injustice. They were in a mood to make amends.

It was too late. For Mahajan it was always now or never.

(Published in The Telegraph, Calcutta, May 4, 2006)