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)
.
Sunday, May 28, 2006
Saturday, May 27, 2006
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)
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)
Sunday, May 21, 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)
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)
Friday, May 19, 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)
Monday, May 15, 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)
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)
Sunday, May 14, 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)
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)
Sunday, May 07, 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)
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)
Thursday, May 04, 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)
Monday, April 24, 2006
Asia's other Maoist threat (April 24, 2006)
By Swapan Dasgupta
JASHPURNAGAR, INDIA--For two hot summer months, observant police in this tiny, remote town in the north of the country spotted a trickle of young boys from neighboring states disappearing into the surrounding forest. In almost every case, they reemerged a few months later, clutching a wad of banknotes, amounting to a fortune in local terms.
These youngsters--police estimate at least 250 passed through the area last May and June--were the latest recruits to a Maoist rebel movement that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently branded the biggest threat to India’s internal security. “There can be no political compromise with terror,” he told an April 14 meeting convened to discuss the crisis, after a string of audacious attacks by the insurgents in several states.
But the prime minister’s rhetoric is undercut by his government’s actions. Namely, Mr. Singh and his Congress Party have a track record of trying to cut covert deals with the Maoists. The sops allowed the rebels time to rearm and regroup, contributing to the recent upsurge in violence.
The sheer numbers give cause to worry. According to the Delhi-based Institute of Conflict Studies, 247 people--including 83 insurgents--have died in Maoist-inspired violence in the first quarter of this year. That includes a March 13 hijacking of a train in the northern state of Jharkhand and a March 24 jail break, when Maoists freed one of their top leaders from jail in the state of Orissa. That followed yet another audacious jail break last November, when 500 armed Maoists stormed a prison in the state of Bihar, freeing top rebel leaders and murdering political opponents incarcerated there.
Left-wing extremism is nothing new in South Asia. The Indian state of West Bengal endured a Maoist insurgency from 1967 to 1972. Sri Lanka experienced similar insurrections in 1971 and 1988. In all these cases, the governments declared war and used counter-insurgency strategies that included arresting all rebel leaders and actively recruiting agents to turn in their former comrades.
But in India, the threat has been approached with a softer touch--and is now bordering on a severe uprising. India’s Ministry of Home Affairs estimates that there are now nearly 9,300 hard-core Maoist cadres, well-armed and trained in how to use explosives, active in 165 districts in 14 of the country’s states. To put this into perspective, that spans an area where 17% of India’s population lives. The Maoists, once romantically portrayed by their sympathizers as well-intentioned Robin Hoods, motivated by local poverty and oppressive landlords, are finally being recognized as a serious threat to the Indian state. With neighboring Nepal gripped by an insurgency that has seen Maoists rebels create “liberated zones” of parallel administrations covering last swathes of the mountainous kingdom, the fear is that their Indian counterparts are seeking to follow suit. That could, in the worst case scenario, create a “red corridor” running from the Himalayas to the Indian Ocean.
Hence the belated alarm bells in New Delhi. But Mr. Singh’s administration is paying a price for its own short-sightedness. When the Congress Party-led government came to power in May 2004, it tried to enlist the Maoists for political purposes, rather than tackle the insurgency head-on. The government cynically calculated that Maoists the held the balance of power in nearly 10% of parliamentary constituencies--not because they enjoy popular support, but because they are powerful enough to intimidate the voters in those areas.
Naively, policy makers believed they could use the Maoists to undermine the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, which controls five of the seven states in which the insurgents are strongest. The Home Minister in New Delhi repeatedly turned down requests from BJP-controlled states for firm military action against the rebels. For instance, a request from the BJP-controlled state of Chhatisgarh for airborne operations against the insurgents was rejected on the ground that the Maoists were “our boys” who deserved to be sweet-talked, rather than outgunned. In Andhra Pradesh, the Congress regional government even negotiated a 10-month ceasefire with the Maoists.
Not surprisingly, the Maoists took advantage of these mixed signals and dithering in New Delhi to regroup and rearm. In September 2004, they united their various splinter groups under the umbrella body of the Communist Party of India (Maoist). In Andhra Pradesh alone, they raised an estimated 500-600 million rupees ($11-13 million) during the 10-month ceasefire, from June 2004 to April 2005. The local police estimated the Maoists recruited 300-500 additional guerrillas during this period. Official complicity in allowing the rebels to regroup was graphically demonstrated in February 2005, when the regional government ordered Andhra Pradesh police to call off an anti-insurgency operation, allowing a top Maoist leader called Ramakrishna to escape. When the militants finished refinancing their cause, they simply declared the ceasefire over, blaming alleged police killings of their supporters.
It’s good that the Singh administration finally seems to have woken up to the threat. The first priority should be to give India’s states the tools they have long been demanding to tackle the insurgency. That means funds to modernize their police forces, buy helicopters to send rapid deployment forces into otherwise inaccessible areas, and the resources to establish elaborate intelligence networks.
Even more importantly, Mr. Singh needs to build on his recent remarks to a special meeting of chief ministers from all Indian states. In that meeting, he vowed to “wipe out” the Maoist threat, calling for more effective policing as part of an aggressive new strategy to tackle the violence.
Encouragingly, some states have already taken a tough stance. In West Bengal, the state’s Communist-led government advocates using the same, warlike counter insurgency tactics that worked in the 1980s. (At a recent election rally, the Communist chief minister of West Bengal, Buddhadeva Bhattacharya, warned the Maoists that the state police would “finish them off.”) The BJP has shown it is not soft on terrorists either, with a controversial program of resettling villagers in guarded camps in the remote Bastar region, so depriving local Maoists of sustenance and support.
Nepal’s experience demonstrates that any half-hearted and inept handling of the Maoist threat can prove counter-productive. In India, the stakes are even higher. Quietly but systematically, the Maoists are targeting India’s claim to be the latest global economic success story. Domestic industries, particularly the mining sector, are already being hard hit by the taxes the Maoists impose in the areas they control. Although only one foreign investor has been targeted so far--the destruction of a Coca Cola bottling plant in Andhra Pradesh in 2001--the Maoist leadership has been ominously warning multinationals to stay away.
“Give us five years,” one Maoist leader recently predicted, “We will make sure you spend sleepless nights.”
Mr. Dasgupta is a Delhi-based columnist and former managing editor of India Today.
(Published in Wall Street Journal, April 24, 2006)
JASHPURNAGAR, INDIA--For two hot summer months, observant police in this tiny, remote town in the north of the country spotted a trickle of young boys from neighboring states disappearing into the surrounding forest. In almost every case, they reemerged a few months later, clutching a wad of banknotes, amounting to a fortune in local terms.
These youngsters--police estimate at least 250 passed through the area last May and June--were the latest recruits to a Maoist rebel movement that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently branded the biggest threat to India’s internal security. “There can be no political compromise with terror,” he told an April 14 meeting convened to discuss the crisis, after a string of audacious attacks by the insurgents in several states.
But the prime minister’s rhetoric is undercut by his government’s actions. Namely, Mr. Singh and his Congress Party have a track record of trying to cut covert deals with the Maoists. The sops allowed the rebels time to rearm and regroup, contributing to the recent upsurge in violence.
The sheer numbers give cause to worry. According to the Delhi-based Institute of Conflict Studies, 247 people--including 83 insurgents--have died in Maoist-inspired violence in the first quarter of this year. That includes a March 13 hijacking of a train in the northern state of Jharkhand and a March 24 jail break, when Maoists freed one of their top leaders from jail in the state of Orissa. That followed yet another audacious jail break last November, when 500 armed Maoists stormed a prison in the state of Bihar, freeing top rebel leaders and murdering political opponents incarcerated there.
Left-wing extremism is nothing new in South Asia. The Indian state of West Bengal endured a Maoist insurgency from 1967 to 1972. Sri Lanka experienced similar insurrections in 1971 and 1988. In all these cases, the governments declared war and used counter-insurgency strategies that included arresting all rebel leaders and actively recruiting agents to turn in their former comrades.
But in India, the threat has been approached with a softer touch--and is now bordering on a severe uprising. India’s Ministry of Home Affairs estimates that there are now nearly 9,300 hard-core Maoist cadres, well-armed and trained in how to use explosives, active in 165 districts in 14 of the country’s states. To put this into perspective, that spans an area where 17% of India’s population lives. The Maoists, once romantically portrayed by their sympathizers as well-intentioned Robin Hoods, motivated by local poverty and oppressive landlords, are finally being recognized as a serious threat to the Indian state. With neighboring Nepal gripped by an insurgency that has seen Maoists rebels create “liberated zones” of parallel administrations covering last swathes of the mountainous kingdom, the fear is that their Indian counterparts are seeking to follow suit. That could, in the worst case scenario, create a “red corridor” running from the Himalayas to the Indian Ocean.
Hence the belated alarm bells in New Delhi. But Mr. Singh’s administration is paying a price for its own short-sightedness. When the Congress Party-led government came to power in May 2004, it tried to enlist the Maoists for political purposes, rather than tackle the insurgency head-on. The government cynically calculated that Maoists the held the balance of power in nearly 10% of parliamentary constituencies--not because they enjoy popular support, but because they are powerful enough to intimidate the voters in those areas.
Naively, policy makers believed they could use the Maoists to undermine the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, which controls five of the seven states in which the insurgents are strongest. The Home Minister in New Delhi repeatedly turned down requests from BJP-controlled states for firm military action against the rebels. For instance, a request from the BJP-controlled state of Chhatisgarh for airborne operations against the insurgents was rejected on the ground that the Maoists were “our boys” who deserved to be sweet-talked, rather than outgunned. In Andhra Pradesh, the Congress regional government even negotiated a 10-month ceasefire with the Maoists.
Not surprisingly, the Maoists took advantage of these mixed signals and dithering in New Delhi to regroup and rearm. In September 2004, they united their various splinter groups under the umbrella body of the Communist Party of India (Maoist). In Andhra Pradesh alone, they raised an estimated 500-600 million rupees ($11-13 million) during the 10-month ceasefire, from June 2004 to April 2005. The local police estimated the Maoists recruited 300-500 additional guerrillas during this period. Official complicity in allowing the rebels to regroup was graphically demonstrated in February 2005, when the regional government ordered Andhra Pradesh police to call off an anti-insurgency operation, allowing a top Maoist leader called Ramakrishna to escape. When the militants finished refinancing their cause, they simply declared the ceasefire over, blaming alleged police killings of their supporters.
It’s good that the Singh administration finally seems to have woken up to the threat. The first priority should be to give India’s states the tools they have long been demanding to tackle the insurgency. That means funds to modernize their police forces, buy helicopters to send rapid deployment forces into otherwise inaccessible areas, and the resources to establish elaborate intelligence networks.
Even more importantly, Mr. Singh needs to build on his recent remarks to a special meeting of chief ministers from all Indian states. In that meeting, he vowed to “wipe out” the Maoist threat, calling for more effective policing as part of an aggressive new strategy to tackle the violence.
Encouragingly, some states have already taken a tough stance. In West Bengal, the state’s Communist-led government advocates using the same, warlike counter insurgency tactics that worked in the 1980s. (At a recent election rally, the Communist chief minister of West Bengal, Buddhadeva Bhattacharya, warned the Maoists that the state police would “finish them off.”) The BJP has shown it is not soft on terrorists either, with a controversial program of resettling villagers in guarded camps in the remote Bastar region, so depriving local Maoists of sustenance and support.
Nepal’s experience demonstrates that any half-hearted and inept handling of the Maoist threat can prove counter-productive. In India, the stakes are even higher. Quietly but systematically, the Maoists are targeting India’s claim to be the latest global economic success story. Domestic industries, particularly the mining sector, are already being hard hit by the taxes the Maoists impose in the areas they control. Although only one foreign investor has been targeted so far--the destruction of a Coca Cola bottling plant in Andhra Pradesh in 2001--the Maoist leadership has been ominously warning multinationals to stay away.
“Give us five years,” one Maoist leader recently predicted, “We will make sure you spend sleepless nights.”
Mr. Dasgupta is a Delhi-based columnist and former managing editor of India Today.
(Published in Wall Street Journal, April 24, 2006)
Friday, April 21, 2006
Byword for disruption (April 21, 2006)
History is just not on the Communists' side
By Swapan Dasgupta
This is the strangest Assembly election ever experienced in West Bengal. The Election Commission guidelines have drained this festival of democracy of colour and the usual carnival atmosphere. The evocative graffiti which used to be the most cost-effective medium of political communications have disappeared—outlawed by the application of a little-known law dating back to the time the Congress was last in control of Writer’s Buildings. Gone are the buntings, the huge cut-outs of competing symbols and even posters are scarce. If it wasn’t for the modest processions through the back streets, the odd padayatra by candidates and the occasional public meetings, you wouldn’t have guessed that West Bengal is in the throes of an election. The cacophony of street politics has been replaced by relatively sober duels in the print and electronic media. At the same time, voter turnout is unimpaired.
Maybe the restrictions were overdue. For the past 100 years the stereotype of the fractious, argumentative and over-politicised Bengali has been etched into the national consciousness. Whereas Bengalis debunked Rudyard Kipling’s banderlog caricature as colonialist disdain of enlightenment, the rest of India often equated loquaciousness with dementia. From the “revolutionary terrorism” during the Raj and Naxalite adventurism in the 1970s to the unending spate of bandhs since 1966, Bengal has become a byword for disruption. The Communist movement must hog most of the credit for protesting too much but, to be fair, the Congress and its offshoots haven’t lagged behind entirely. Being dysfunctional has become the Bengali consensus.
The state has paid an unacceptably high price for passing off perversity as common sense. A hundred years ago, Calcutta was the most happening place in India. It was the second city of the largest empire since Roman times. It was the hub of education, cosmopolitan culture, trade and a fledgling industry. It was the citadel of gracious living—a phenomenon by no means confined to the white man. Above all, it was the epitome of modern India.
In just a century Kolkata has not only lost its pre-eminence within India, it has been relegated to the status of a provincial backwater. In just three generations, a truncated Bengal has squandered away its profound historical advantages and lost out to Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Today, it lags behind resurgent India in everything except crowds in cricket matches, lost mandays and voter turnout. West Bengal is a state that has been crippled by the politics it professes.
When the history of West Bengal’s decline in the 20th century is written, it is certain to place the Communist movement in the dock. Communism in Bengal has always been more than just a formidable election-winning machinery; it is a mindset centred on self-destruction, envy and a reckless disregard of all the laws of economics. Behind the veneer of bhadralok civility, Bengal’s middle-class Communist leadership has snuffed life out of a people’s creative enterprise.
It has happened not because Communists are inherently evil. Many of the Left leaders are deeply compassionate individuals with a genuine commitment to improve the lives of the poor. They also have high ethical standards—a reason why the index of corruption in West Bengal has not reached the dizzying heights of, say, Delhi and southern India.
The root of the problem is the Communist obsession with control. Starting from the personal lives of their cadres, the CPI(M) aspired to control everything—the distribution of land, cropping patterns, the selection of teachers, and the appointments, transfers and postings of government employees. Even areas which traditionally came under the purview of civil society, like the composition of voluntary associations, and, occasionally, business decisions were sought to be brought under the umbrella of party control.
In its 29-year rule, the Left Front boasts of having empowered those who were previously on the margins of society. At one level this may be true but a strange corollary of this empowerment of the “toiling masses” is its emotional subordination to the party. Thus, when the party makes it a prestige issue to ensure 85 to 90 per cent polling in districts such as West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia—areas where the CPI(M) majority is weighed rather than counted—the faithful fall in line and do their bit for the Local Committee. If empowerment, however, also involves the freedom of individual choice and the right to be contrarian, the CPI(M) will have none of it. The element of control may be loose in urban and suburban West Bengal but in the villages, communities have become frighteningly regimented and dependant on the party for both survival and growth. The space for individual initiative has shrunk.
This is not a situation which can endure indefinitely, and certainly not with the spread of literacy and market economics. On the surface, the CPI(M) strongholds appear completely impregnable. According to the opinion and exit polls, the Left Front is set to replicate its earlier victories on May 11—and that too without falling back on emotional motivation. Despite the stringent measures the EC has taken to prevent electoral malpractices, the opposition parties are just not in a position to take advantage of the wholesome environment. Going by the opposition’s own estimates, Left Front candidates will have a walkover in nearly 184 of the state’s 294 Assembly constituencies. In three decades, the Left Front has crafted a system of one-party dominance.
Yet, ironically, it is this spectacular exercise of intrusive politics that carries the seeds of popular liberation. To many, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya is like a breath of fresh air. In the course of five years, he has begun the process of dismantling Jyoti Basu’s crippling legacy. Almost every single tenet of CPI(M) orthodoxy, from the espousal of militant trade unionism to the disavowal of English, has been turned on its head. Bhattacharya talks the language of Manmohan Singh in economics and shares Narendra Modi’s impatience with lax national security. He almost seems like a scientist in a flat-earth society.
That the Chief Minister has transcended the CPI(M) orthodoxy is undeniable. The question is: why has the CPI(M) given him the license for heresy? The answer may lie in the party’s own recognition that it is impossible to keep West Bengal as a protected enclave much longer. The winds of change sweeping across India are whipping up fierce expectations, particularly a desire to catch up with the developed world. The CPI(M) may be only too aware that it can neither put a lid on dreams of a better life nor micro-manage communities with disposable incomes. In short, unless the party changes its tune and adapts to a market environment, it risks eventual obsolescence. Ironically, this is also a problem that the RSS faces.
Bhattacharya has anticipated the process and not left it to the opposition to exploit a creeping anti-incumbency. In good Communist tradition, he has assumed the mantle of the reformer and painted Mamata Banerjee as a hysterical populist who has internalised the very cussedness the CPI(M) leadership is anxious to discard. What makes this election unique is that we are seeing the CPI(M) for the first time hesitantly admitting that it has been 29 years of miscalculations and wasted opportunities.
Some three decades after China embraced the market and Communists in Western Europe discovered Euro-communism, Bhattacharya is trying to make the CPI(M) come to terms with the charms of liberal capitalism. If he succeeds, it will be good for Bengal. For the CPI(M), however, the future is less rosy. History is not just on its side.
(Published in The Telegraph, Calcutta, April 21, 2006)
By Swapan Dasgupta
This is the strangest Assembly election ever experienced in West Bengal. The Election Commission guidelines have drained this festival of democracy of colour and the usual carnival atmosphere. The evocative graffiti which used to be the most cost-effective medium of political communications have disappeared—outlawed by the application of a little-known law dating back to the time the Congress was last in control of Writer’s Buildings. Gone are the buntings, the huge cut-outs of competing symbols and even posters are scarce. If it wasn’t for the modest processions through the back streets, the odd padayatra by candidates and the occasional public meetings, you wouldn’t have guessed that West Bengal is in the throes of an election. The cacophony of street politics has been replaced by relatively sober duels in the print and electronic media. At the same time, voter turnout is unimpaired.
Maybe the restrictions were overdue. For the past 100 years the stereotype of the fractious, argumentative and over-politicised Bengali has been etched into the national consciousness. Whereas Bengalis debunked Rudyard Kipling’s banderlog caricature as colonialist disdain of enlightenment, the rest of India often equated loquaciousness with dementia. From the “revolutionary terrorism” during the Raj and Naxalite adventurism in the 1970s to the unending spate of bandhs since 1966, Bengal has become a byword for disruption. The Communist movement must hog most of the credit for protesting too much but, to be fair, the Congress and its offshoots haven’t lagged behind entirely. Being dysfunctional has become the Bengali consensus.
The state has paid an unacceptably high price for passing off perversity as common sense. A hundred years ago, Calcutta was the most happening place in India. It was the second city of the largest empire since Roman times. It was the hub of education, cosmopolitan culture, trade and a fledgling industry. It was the citadel of gracious living—a phenomenon by no means confined to the white man. Above all, it was the epitome of modern India.
In just a century Kolkata has not only lost its pre-eminence within India, it has been relegated to the status of a provincial backwater. In just three generations, a truncated Bengal has squandered away its profound historical advantages and lost out to Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Today, it lags behind resurgent India in everything except crowds in cricket matches, lost mandays and voter turnout. West Bengal is a state that has been crippled by the politics it professes.
When the history of West Bengal’s decline in the 20th century is written, it is certain to place the Communist movement in the dock. Communism in Bengal has always been more than just a formidable election-winning machinery; it is a mindset centred on self-destruction, envy and a reckless disregard of all the laws of economics. Behind the veneer of bhadralok civility, Bengal’s middle-class Communist leadership has snuffed life out of a people’s creative enterprise.
It has happened not because Communists are inherently evil. Many of the Left leaders are deeply compassionate individuals with a genuine commitment to improve the lives of the poor. They also have high ethical standards—a reason why the index of corruption in West Bengal has not reached the dizzying heights of, say, Delhi and southern India.
The root of the problem is the Communist obsession with control. Starting from the personal lives of their cadres, the CPI(M) aspired to control everything—the distribution of land, cropping patterns, the selection of teachers, and the appointments, transfers and postings of government employees. Even areas which traditionally came under the purview of civil society, like the composition of voluntary associations, and, occasionally, business decisions were sought to be brought under the umbrella of party control.
In its 29-year rule, the Left Front boasts of having empowered those who were previously on the margins of society. At one level this may be true but a strange corollary of this empowerment of the “toiling masses” is its emotional subordination to the party. Thus, when the party makes it a prestige issue to ensure 85 to 90 per cent polling in districts such as West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia—areas where the CPI(M) majority is weighed rather than counted—the faithful fall in line and do their bit for the Local Committee. If empowerment, however, also involves the freedom of individual choice and the right to be contrarian, the CPI(M) will have none of it. The element of control may be loose in urban and suburban West Bengal but in the villages, communities have become frighteningly regimented and dependant on the party for both survival and growth. The space for individual initiative has shrunk.
This is not a situation which can endure indefinitely, and certainly not with the spread of literacy and market economics. On the surface, the CPI(M) strongholds appear completely impregnable. According to the opinion and exit polls, the Left Front is set to replicate its earlier victories on May 11—and that too without falling back on emotional motivation. Despite the stringent measures the EC has taken to prevent electoral malpractices, the opposition parties are just not in a position to take advantage of the wholesome environment. Going by the opposition’s own estimates, Left Front candidates will have a walkover in nearly 184 of the state’s 294 Assembly constituencies. In three decades, the Left Front has crafted a system of one-party dominance.
Yet, ironically, it is this spectacular exercise of intrusive politics that carries the seeds of popular liberation. To many, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya is like a breath of fresh air. In the course of five years, he has begun the process of dismantling Jyoti Basu’s crippling legacy. Almost every single tenet of CPI(M) orthodoxy, from the espousal of militant trade unionism to the disavowal of English, has been turned on its head. Bhattacharya talks the language of Manmohan Singh in economics and shares Narendra Modi’s impatience with lax national security. He almost seems like a scientist in a flat-earth society.
That the Chief Minister has transcended the CPI(M) orthodoxy is undeniable. The question is: why has the CPI(M) given him the license for heresy? The answer may lie in the party’s own recognition that it is impossible to keep West Bengal as a protected enclave much longer. The winds of change sweeping across India are whipping up fierce expectations, particularly a desire to catch up with the developed world. The CPI(M) may be only too aware that it can neither put a lid on dreams of a better life nor micro-manage communities with disposable incomes. In short, unless the party changes its tune and adapts to a market environment, it risks eventual obsolescence. Ironically, this is also a problem that the RSS faces.
Bhattacharya has anticipated the process and not left it to the opposition to exploit a creeping anti-incumbency. In good Communist tradition, he has assumed the mantle of the reformer and painted Mamata Banerjee as a hysterical populist who has internalised the very cussedness the CPI(M) leadership is anxious to discard. What makes this election unique is that we are seeing the CPI(M) for the first time hesitantly admitting that it has been 29 years of miscalculations and wasted opportunities.
Some three decades after China embraced the market and Communists in Western Europe discovered Euro-communism, Bhattacharya is trying to make the CPI(M) come to terms with the charms of liberal capitalism. If he succeeds, it will be good for Bengal. For the CPI(M), however, the future is less rosy. History is not just on its side.
(Published in The Telegraph, Calcutta, April 21, 2006)
Friday, April 07, 2006
The politics of sacrifice (April 7, 2006)
Why Sonia Gandhi can get away from her grandstanding
By Swapan Dasgupta
The office-of-profit controversy which originated in a family spat involving the Gandhis and the Bachchans took an unexpected turn with Sonia Gandhi resigning from both the Lok Sabha and the National Advisory Council. To the more impressionable, this act of “sacrifice” was politically astute and would ultimately prove beneficial to both Sonia and the Congress. To the cynical, Sonia’s resignation was a desperate attempt to turn adversity into advantage. It will, they say, at best be a seven-day wonder.
Since the arguments on both sides of the sacrificial divide have been played ad nauseam in the media, it would be needlessly self-indulgent to replay them in this column. In any case, as Mao Zedong is reported to have said about the French Revolution, it is still too early to assess the impact of the Congress President’s well-scripted melodrama. We must await the judgment of history to unfold in due course.
The soap opera surrounding the real meaning of the abstruse Article 102 (1) (a) of the Indian Constitution has, however, quite unwittingly, thrown up a quirky philosophical issue. Can the political institutions and culture of independent India be assessed on its own terms? Alternatively, isn’t it more relevant to view the political conventions of contemporary India in terms of a seamless continuity from the Raj?
The questions arise because the origins of this hoary disqualification clause don’t lie in the Constituent Assembly proceedings. Indeed, the founding fathers hardly spent any time deliberating this bar to parliamentary membership. They merely grafted—and, quite rightly—a tradition that had evolved over the centuries in Britain to the Indian statutes. In doing so, the likes of Jawaharlal Nehru and B.R. Ambedkar tacitly accepted the terms of British constitutional history in India.
Till the late-1970s the acknowledgment of this heritage was quite explicit with the Union Public Service Commission offering an optional paper on British Constitutional History for its competitive examinations. It was only after India was bitten by the radical, post-colonial bug that the myth of political exceptionalism was internalised—leading to profound distortions in public life. Some of the ignorance witnessed during the media deliberations of a proposed amendment to the law—the demand, for example, by some puerile Leftists that the purview of “profit” be extended to private enterprise and the professions—stems from the trendy disdain for anything predating 1947.
Yet, it is impossible to assess the fuss over what constitutes an office of profit without reference to the long tussle between Crown and Parliament in Britain. Going by Erskine May’s Parliamentary Practice, the desire to keep Crown-appointed public servants out of Parliament arose prior to the English Civil War as part of the “continuous effort to gain recognition for the Privileges of the House.” It was also linked to the ability of MPs to be physically present in the House of Commons for a reasonable duration and led to the disqualification of judges and Church of England clergy. After the Restoration, the terms of battle changed to preventing the King from subverting the independence of Parliament with selective disbursement of sinecures and pensions. Since the government of the day was appointed by Royal Prerogative, it was in the interests of the Crown and the Government to secure parliamentary support through both persuasion and inducement.
Although the Succession to the Crown Act, 1705, created the statutory parameters for upholding the independence of Parliament from the executive, the problem persisted till the reign of George IV. Even as late as 1770, Edmund Burke could invoke the fear of a Court-inspired conspiracy to undermine parliamentary democracy: “The power of the Crown, almost dead and rotten as Prerogative, has grown up anew, with much more strength, and far less odium, under the name of Influence.”
The laws governing disqualification for holding any office of profit both “under” and “from” the Crown had to undergo further modifications after 1740. As “mob” pressure, the development of the party system and the principle of popular government progressively whittled down the Royal Prerogative, it became impossible to maintain a rigid separation between the executive and the legislature. Whereas the House of Commons had earlier been virtually united in its opposition to the unchecked role of the Crown, the Treasury benches increasingly came to be drawn from the Commons itself. This naturally meant that certain offices of profit from the Crown had to be exempt from the disqualification laws.
In 1957, all the different laws on the subject were brought together and simplified in the House of Commons Disqualification Act. The Act specified by name all those offices whose holders were not entitled to sit in the Commons. The Act, however, empowered Parliament to declare, if necessary, that a particular disqualification be disregarded.
Since all Indian legislation on the subject is drawn from Westminster, it is important to understand that the office-of-profit disqualification was aimed primarily at preventing the subversion of legislators by the executive. Since it is the job of Parliament to scrutinise the executive, all those non-ministers who are beholden to the state for exceptional perks and privileges—these could include lavish conveyance facilities, secretarial staff and first class travel arrangements—can be said to have been compromised. Although the party system and the ubiquitous three-line whip rule out complete independence of mind, the office-of-profit disqualification is aimed at preventing indiscriminate distribution of lollipops to MPs at government expense.
It hardly bears reiteration that this is precisely what an over-generous regime of exemptions would do. The parliamentarians of the 18th century were particularly agitated by “secret” pensions paid by the Crown to select colleagues. In an India where there is a ceiling on the number of MPs who can be appointed ministers, membership of the so-called development boards and autonomous corporations—some even carry “Cabinet status” for determining the size of privileges—is precisely the type of backdoor corrupt practice that Article 102 (1) (a) sought to prevent.
Finally, by restricting the offices of profit a MP can hold, the law sought to uphold the principle of accountability to Parliament. A Ministership is an office of profit under the state but it is exempt from the disqualification clause because the holder of the office is ultimately answerable to Parliament. The National Advisory Council had a seminal role in the UPA Government’s policies and priorities. It was funded totally by the government through the Prime Minister’s Office and its chairperson enjoyed the service conditions of a Cabinet minister.
The Government erred in not including the NAC from the exempted list. Yet, it was more than a technical oversight. In allowing Sonia to formally influence the Government and at the same time not being answerable to Parliament for that advice, the Cabinet was guilty of bypassing and undermining Parliament itself. There would have been nothing irregular in Sonia being the head of the Government-funded NAC if she had been sworn in as a minister and performed her role as a member of the executive, with full accountability to Parliament. Instead, she wanted the best of both world—the privileges that come with being a member of the Cabinet and the pretence that she had let her “inner voice” dictate her sacrifice of the highest political office.
Sonia’s was just the type of duplicity and unwholesome politics that conservatives like Burke and reformers like John Wilkes fought against. These champions of democracy could mount a credible attack on the attempts to corrupt Parliament because no one could point an accusing finger at them. Sonia can get away with her grandstanding because the Government, the loyal opposition and the real opposition want to blend feigned morality with special perks and extraordinary privileges.
(Published in The Telegraph, April 7, 2006)
By Swapan Dasgupta
The office-of-profit controversy which originated in a family spat involving the Gandhis and the Bachchans took an unexpected turn with Sonia Gandhi resigning from both the Lok Sabha and the National Advisory Council. To the more impressionable, this act of “sacrifice” was politically astute and would ultimately prove beneficial to both Sonia and the Congress. To the cynical, Sonia’s resignation was a desperate attempt to turn adversity into advantage. It will, they say, at best be a seven-day wonder.
Since the arguments on both sides of the sacrificial divide have been played ad nauseam in the media, it would be needlessly self-indulgent to replay them in this column. In any case, as Mao Zedong is reported to have said about the French Revolution, it is still too early to assess the impact of the Congress President’s well-scripted melodrama. We must await the judgment of history to unfold in due course.
The soap opera surrounding the real meaning of the abstruse Article 102 (1) (a) of the Indian Constitution has, however, quite unwittingly, thrown up a quirky philosophical issue. Can the political institutions and culture of independent India be assessed on its own terms? Alternatively, isn’t it more relevant to view the political conventions of contemporary India in terms of a seamless continuity from the Raj?
The questions arise because the origins of this hoary disqualification clause don’t lie in the Constituent Assembly proceedings. Indeed, the founding fathers hardly spent any time deliberating this bar to parliamentary membership. They merely grafted—and, quite rightly—a tradition that had evolved over the centuries in Britain to the Indian statutes. In doing so, the likes of Jawaharlal Nehru and B.R. Ambedkar tacitly accepted the terms of British constitutional history in India.
Till the late-1970s the acknowledgment of this heritage was quite explicit with the Union Public Service Commission offering an optional paper on British Constitutional History for its competitive examinations. It was only after India was bitten by the radical, post-colonial bug that the myth of political exceptionalism was internalised—leading to profound distortions in public life. Some of the ignorance witnessed during the media deliberations of a proposed amendment to the law—the demand, for example, by some puerile Leftists that the purview of “profit” be extended to private enterprise and the professions—stems from the trendy disdain for anything predating 1947.
Yet, it is impossible to assess the fuss over what constitutes an office of profit without reference to the long tussle between Crown and Parliament in Britain. Going by Erskine May’s Parliamentary Practice, the desire to keep Crown-appointed public servants out of Parliament arose prior to the English Civil War as part of the “continuous effort to gain recognition for the Privileges of the House.” It was also linked to the ability of MPs to be physically present in the House of Commons for a reasonable duration and led to the disqualification of judges and Church of England clergy. After the Restoration, the terms of battle changed to preventing the King from subverting the independence of Parliament with selective disbursement of sinecures and pensions. Since the government of the day was appointed by Royal Prerogative, it was in the interests of the Crown and the Government to secure parliamentary support through both persuasion and inducement.
Although the Succession to the Crown Act, 1705, created the statutory parameters for upholding the independence of Parliament from the executive, the problem persisted till the reign of George IV. Even as late as 1770, Edmund Burke could invoke the fear of a Court-inspired conspiracy to undermine parliamentary democracy: “The power of the Crown, almost dead and rotten as Prerogative, has grown up anew, with much more strength, and far less odium, under the name of Influence.”
The laws governing disqualification for holding any office of profit both “under” and “from” the Crown had to undergo further modifications after 1740. As “mob” pressure, the development of the party system and the principle of popular government progressively whittled down the Royal Prerogative, it became impossible to maintain a rigid separation between the executive and the legislature. Whereas the House of Commons had earlier been virtually united in its opposition to the unchecked role of the Crown, the Treasury benches increasingly came to be drawn from the Commons itself. This naturally meant that certain offices of profit from the Crown had to be exempt from the disqualification laws.
In 1957, all the different laws on the subject were brought together and simplified in the House of Commons Disqualification Act. The Act specified by name all those offices whose holders were not entitled to sit in the Commons. The Act, however, empowered Parliament to declare, if necessary, that a particular disqualification be disregarded.
Since all Indian legislation on the subject is drawn from Westminster, it is important to understand that the office-of-profit disqualification was aimed primarily at preventing the subversion of legislators by the executive. Since it is the job of Parliament to scrutinise the executive, all those non-ministers who are beholden to the state for exceptional perks and privileges—these could include lavish conveyance facilities, secretarial staff and first class travel arrangements—can be said to have been compromised. Although the party system and the ubiquitous three-line whip rule out complete independence of mind, the office-of-profit disqualification is aimed at preventing indiscriminate distribution of lollipops to MPs at government expense.
It hardly bears reiteration that this is precisely what an over-generous regime of exemptions would do. The parliamentarians of the 18th century were particularly agitated by “secret” pensions paid by the Crown to select colleagues. In an India where there is a ceiling on the number of MPs who can be appointed ministers, membership of the so-called development boards and autonomous corporations—some even carry “Cabinet status” for determining the size of privileges—is precisely the type of backdoor corrupt practice that Article 102 (1) (a) sought to prevent.
Finally, by restricting the offices of profit a MP can hold, the law sought to uphold the principle of accountability to Parliament. A Ministership is an office of profit under the state but it is exempt from the disqualification clause because the holder of the office is ultimately answerable to Parliament. The National Advisory Council had a seminal role in the UPA Government’s policies and priorities. It was funded totally by the government through the Prime Minister’s Office and its chairperson enjoyed the service conditions of a Cabinet minister.
The Government erred in not including the NAC from the exempted list. Yet, it was more than a technical oversight. In allowing Sonia to formally influence the Government and at the same time not being answerable to Parliament for that advice, the Cabinet was guilty of bypassing and undermining Parliament itself. There would have been nothing irregular in Sonia being the head of the Government-funded NAC if she had been sworn in as a minister and performed her role as a member of the executive, with full accountability to Parliament. Instead, she wanted the best of both world—the privileges that come with being a member of the Cabinet and the pretence that she had let her “inner voice” dictate her sacrifice of the highest political office.
Sonia’s was just the type of duplicity and unwholesome politics that conservatives like Burke and reformers like John Wilkes fought against. These champions of democracy could mount a credible attack on the attempts to corrupt Parliament because no one could point an accusing finger at them. Sonia can get away with her grandstanding because the Government, the loyal opposition and the real opposition want to blend feigned morality with special perks and extraordinary privileges.
(Published in The Telegraph, April 7, 2006)
Friday, March 24, 2006
Price of honour (March 24, 2006)
The suffix MP has been on sale for the past fifty years
By Swapan Dasgupta
The life of David Lloyd George, the amiable rogue who rose to be Prime Minister of Britain, if we are to believe the impish wisdom of his admirer A.J.P. Taylor, was an unending quest for the hyphen—that formidable icon of British snobbery. Born to a Welsh family with the surname George, this great Liberal statesman who steered Britain into victory in the Great War of 1914-18, insisted on being addressed as Mr Lloyd George. In 1945, after he was made an Earl, Lloyd George slipped in the hyphen and breathed his last as Earl Lloyd-George. It meant, as Taylor put it with characteristic bluntness, that “after 80 years of struggling to be Lloyd George, he was in fact entitled to do so.”
For the past fortnight, the ghost of Lloyd George has hovered over the palace and wine bars of Westminster thanks to the aspirations of other successful men with perceived social disabilities. A storm has erupted in Britain following revelations that of the dozen benefactors who had together “loaned” the Labour Party nearly £14 million, four had subsequently been nominated for membership of the House of Lords. These included one Dr Chai Patel who runs a successful healthcare business, and Sir Gulam Noon, whose contribution to Britain’s curry revolution is seminal. Patel’s nomination was objected to by the independent body that vets nominations to the House of Lords while Sir Gulam has withdrawn his candidature after the controversy erupted.
The whole matter has now been referred to Scotland Yard following allegations that a senior Labour peer close to Prime Minister Tony Blair was running a “cash for peerage” racket. More important, this operation is alleged to have run foul of something called the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act of 1925. The Act, which few people knew was in the statute books, makes it illegal to either accept or offer gifts or “other valuable consideration” for procuring “the grant of a dignity or title of honour.”
The only victim of the 1925 Act was one J. Maundy Gregory, the son of a clergyman and owner of the Ambassador Club. Gregory was arrested and convicted in 1933 on the charge of soliciting £10,000 from E.W. Billyard-Leake for the procurement of a knighthood. Billyard-Leake, a retired naval officer with a DSO, was too well connected to need the assistance of a tout and promptly reported the matter to the police. Gregory pleaded guilty, was sentenced to a term of imprisonment in Wormwood Scrubs and was never heard of again.
The British establishment is good at keeping secrets and not snitching on each other. Consequently, the impression conveyed to the public was that Gregory was just a freelance, street-smart rascal who overplayed his hand and got his well-deserved comeuppance. The reality was grimmer. There was consternation in the gentleman’s clubs that “desperation and financial stringency” would prompt Gregory to be needlessly over-communicative. An operation was mounted by some Tory grandees to cut a deal with the disgraced tout before his trial. According to an account by Lord Davidson, chairman of the Conservative Party from 1926 to 1930, “someone” whispered into Gregory’s ear that “he couldn’t avoid a term of imprisonment, but that if he kept silent we would bring pressure to bear on the authorities to let him live in France after his sentence had been served.” Upon release, Gregory was whisked away to France, settled in a house and paid a quarterly pension until his death.
At a time when the dangers from Bolshevism were real, the British establishment just couldn’t afford “Gregory’s peers” being outed. Their consternation must have equalled the alarm of “Skullion’s scholars” in Tom Sharpe’s satirical farce Porterhouse Blue. The response was equally ridiculous, but effective. Just as Skullion the College Porter was made Master to keep the traditions and privileges of Porterhouse intact, one Sir Julien Cahn was elevated to a baronetcy in 1934 for paying £30,000 to Gregory as hush money.
In his diary, Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald recorded his conversation with Tory leader Stanley Baldwin: “He said that Maundy Gregory… would stir up such a filthy sewer as would poison public life; …that all parties were involved; …that people like Winston Churchill, Austen Chamberlain, Birkenhead were involved; that Gregory had been used by Lloyd George and Bonar Law; that the subscription lists for the rebuilding of St George’s Chapel, Windsor, were involved… The dunghill had to be cleared away without delay and £30,000 was required to do it. So I had to give the honour.” MacDonald resisted for six months and then did what had to be done for King and country.
As someone who was a product of the Labour movement, MacDonald’s squeamishness was understandable. However his predecessors were not pricked by pangs of conscience in misusing their political prerogative—even if it meant coming into conflict with Buckingham Palace. Lloyd George was the most shameless offender. In his four years as prime minister, Lloyd George rewarded the world of finance and industry with 26 peerages, 130 baronetcies and 481 knighthoods. This was in addition to the 50 newspaper proprietors and editors who were similarly honoured.
Lloyd George’s brazenness was grounded in earthy common sense. A few years after he ceased to be prime minister, he defended the “cash for honours” to a Conservative fund-raiser: “You and I know perfectly well it is a far cleaner method of filling the Party chest than the methods used in the United States or the Socialist Party… Here a man gives £40,000 to the Party and gets a baronetcy. If he comes to the Leader of the Party and says I subscribe largely to Party funds, you must do this or that, we can tell him to go to the devil.”
The point is significant: unless there is a completely harmless lure for political contributions, you are likely to be confronted with moneybags wanting to influence policy with donations. Lloyd George thought he had evolved the most pragmatic over-the-counter system of political funding—he wasn’t too choosy about who paid as long as they paid—but it was one which offended both old money and high morality.
Baldwin, the personification of stodgy Conservatism, for example, thought Lloyd George to be “a real corrupter of public life” and one who had “no moral sense at all”. On his part, after his bitter experiences with Lloyd George’s dubious recommendations, King George V is said to have remarked that if he were among the new rich, the last thing he would do would be to run after a peerage. “It was not”, wrote his biographer Kenneth Rose, that the King had lost faith in a hierarchical society; but that 25 years as the supposed Fountain of Honour had left him disillusioned by the wiles and extortion practised in his name.”
Ultimately, Lloyd George’s excesses forced the appointment of the Dunedin Commission and a law against the sale of honours. Yet, 80 years later, the problems associated with reciprocity in political funding persists. “I have lots of views on the important issues that affect our society” claimed Chai Patel who, alas, will not get a chance to adorn the red upholstered benches of the Lords. It’s a claim that is constantly echoed by those queuing before the party offices before a Rajya Sabha election, the proverbial suitcase discreetly visible. In Britain, you can buy a prefix if you are clever and socially adept. In India, the suffix MP has been on sale for over 50 years. It must be a colonial hangover.
(Published in The Telegraph, Calcutta, March 24, 2006)
By Swapan Dasgupta
The life of David Lloyd George, the amiable rogue who rose to be Prime Minister of Britain, if we are to believe the impish wisdom of his admirer A.J.P. Taylor, was an unending quest for the hyphen—that formidable icon of British snobbery. Born to a Welsh family with the surname George, this great Liberal statesman who steered Britain into victory in the Great War of 1914-18, insisted on being addressed as Mr Lloyd George. In 1945, after he was made an Earl, Lloyd George slipped in the hyphen and breathed his last as Earl Lloyd-George. It meant, as Taylor put it with characteristic bluntness, that “after 80 years of struggling to be Lloyd George, he was in fact entitled to do so.”
For the past fortnight, the ghost of Lloyd George has hovered over the palace and wine bars of Westminster thanks to the aspirations of other successful men with perceived social disabilities. A storm has erupted in Britain following revelations that of the dozen benefactors who had together “loaned” the Labour Party nearly £14 million, four had subsequently been nominated for membership of the House of Lords. These included one Dr Chai Patel who runs a successful healthcare business, and Sir Gulam Noon, whose contribution to Britain’s curry revolution is seminal. Patel’s nomination was objected to by the independent body that vets nominations to the House of Lords while Sir Gulam has withdrawn his candidature after the controversy erupted.
The whole matter has now been referred to Scotland Yard following allegations that a senior Labour peer close to Prime Minister Tony Blair was running a “cash for peerage” racket. More important, this operation is alleged to have run foul of something called the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act of 1925. The Act, which few people knew was in the statute books, makes it illegal to either accept or offer gifts or “other valuable consideration” for procuring “the grant of a dignity or title of honour.”
The only victim of the 1925 Act was one J. Maundy Gregory, the son of a clergyman and owner of the Ambassador Club. Gregory was arrested and convicted in 1933 on the charge of soliciting £10,000 from E.W. Billyard-Leake for the procurement of a knighthood. Billyard-Leake, a retired naval officer with a DSO, was too well connected to need the assistance of a tout and promptly reported the matter to the police. Gregory pleaded guilty, was sentenced to a term of imprisonment in Wormwood Scrubs and was never heard of again.
The British establishment is good at keeping secrets and not snitching on each other. Consequently, the impression conveyed to the public was that Gregory was just a freelance, street-smart rascal who overplayed his hand and got his well-deserved comeuppance. The reality was grimmer. There was consternation in the gentleman’s clubs that “desperation and financial stringency” would prompt Gregory to be needlessly over-communicative. An operation was mounted by some Tory grandees to cut a deal with the disgraced tout before his trial. According to an account by Lord Davidson, chairman of the Conservative Party from 1926 to 1930, “someone” whispered into Gregory’s ear that “he couldn’t avoid a term of imprisonment, but that if he kept silent we would bring pressure to bear on the authorities to let him live in France after his sentence had been served.” Upon release, Gregory was whisked away to France, settled in a house and paid a quarterly pension until his death.
At a time when the dangers from Bolshevism were real, the British establishment just couldn’t afford “Gregory’s peers” being outed. Their consternation must have equalled the alarm of “Skullion’s scholars” in Tom Sharpe’s satirical farce Porterhouse Blue. The response was equally ridiculous, but effective. Just as Skullion the College Porter was made Master to keep the traditions and privileges of Porterhouse intact, one Sir Julien Cahn was elevated to a baronetcy in 1934 for paying £30,000 to Gregory as hush money.
In his diary, Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald recorded his conversation with Tory leader Stanley Baldwin: “He said that Maundy Gregory… would stir up such a filthy sewer as would poison public life; …that all parties were involved; …that people like Winston Churchill, Austen Chamberlain, Birkenhead were involved; that Gregory had been used by Lloyd George and Bonar Law; that the subscription lists for the rebuilding of St George’s Chapel, Windsor, were involved… The dunghill had to be cleared away without delay and £30,000 was required to do it. So I had to give the honour.” MacDonald resisted for six months and then did what had to be done for King and country.
As someone who was a product of the Labour movement, MacDonald’s squeamishness was understandable. However his predecessors were not pricked by pangs of conscience in misusing their political prerogative—even if it meant coming into conflict with Buckingham Palace. Lloyd George was the most shameless offender. In his four years as prime minister, Lloyd George rewarded the world of finance and industry with 26 peerages, 130 baronetcies and 481 knighthoods. This was in addition to the 50 newspaper proprietors and editors who were similarly honoured.
Lloyd George’s brazenness was grounded in earthy common sense. A few years after he ceased to be prime minister, he defended the “cash for honours” to a Conservative fund-raiser: “You and I know perfectly well it is a far cleaner method of filling the Party chest than the methods used in the United States or the Socialist Party… Here a man gives £40,000 to the Party and gets a baronetcy. If he comes to the Leader of the Party and says I subscribe largely to Party funds, you must do this or that, we can tell him to go to the devil.”
The point is significant: unless there is a completely harmless lure for political contributions, you are likely to be confronted with moneybags wanting to influence policy with donations. Lloyd George thought he had evolved the most pragmatic over-the-counter system of political funding—he wasn’t too choosy about who paid as long as they paid—but it was one which offended both old money and high morality.
Baldwin, the personification of stodgy Conservatism, for example, thought Lloyd George to be “a real corrupter of public life” and one who had “no moral sense at all”. On his part, after his bitter experiences with Lloyd George’s dubious recommendations, King George V is said to have remarked that if he were among the new rich, the last thing he would do would be to run after a peerage. “It was not”, wrote his biographer Kenneth Rose, that the King had lost faith in a hierarchical society; but that 25 years as the supposed Fountain of Honour had left him disillusioned by the wiles and extortion practised in his name.”
Ultimately, Lloyd George’s excesses forced the appointment of the Dunedin Commission and a law against the sale of honours. Yet, 80 years later, the problems associated with reciprocity in political funding persists. “I have lots of views on the important issues that affect our society” claimed Chai Patel who, alas, will not get a chance to adorn the red upholstered benches of the Lords. It’s a claim that is constantly echoed by those queuing before the party offices before a Rajya Sabha election, the proverbial suitcase discreetly visible. In Britain, you can buy a prefix if you are clever and socially adept. In India, the suffix MP has been on sale for over 50 years. It must be a colonial hangover.
(Published in The Telegraph, Calcutta, March 24, 2006)
Friday, March 10, 2006
New logic for new India (March 10, 2006)
There was no condescension in Bush's offer of friendship
By Swapan Dasgupta
Even after he fell from grace and spent his last years in disgrace, there was one country where President Richard Nixon was always welcome. For all its other angularities, China never forgot its indebtedness to the man who in 1971 began the process of extricating the Middle Kingdom from its post-Communist isolation.
It is still too early to say whether or not President George W. Bush will enjoy such a lofty status in India during his retirement years. Yet, when future historians chart the course of Indian foreign policy in this century, they will have to acknowledge President Bush’s unique contribution to overturning the entrenched assumptions of the Cold War. It is not merely that the controversial US President made a special effort to reach out to India. He was the first world leader of consequence who understood the enormous importance of democratic India in the 21st century world order.
In the natural course, the Indo-US understanding on nuclear energy would not have happened. Both countries had too many non-negotiable and conflicting positions. The March 2 separation agreement, which must now await the Congress’ ratification to be institutionalised and internationally acceptable, would not have happened if President Bush hadn’t taken the political decision to accommodate Indian sensitivities. The US President went out of his way to create a special place for India in the five-member nuclear high table.
Thanks to the Congress Party’s peculiar dependence on the Communists and the Muslim vote, this particular facet of the US President’s two-day visit to India has neither been adequately publicised nor appreciated. A nervous Manmohan Singh Government lacks the necessary self-confidence to flaunt India’s global coming of age as a political and diplomatic success. When it comes to the US, there is just too much historical baggage that the Congress Party has to carry. But why blame the Congress alone? The BJP, which should have shared the credit for a process that culminated in the July 18 and March 2 agreements, has been excessively circumspect—although it has raised a few important points for the Government to clarify. Consequently, it has been left to the media and corporate India to celebrate a historic step forward.
India, it would seem, is still mentally unprepared to cope with its new global status. Jawaharlal Nehru and the other eminent Nehruvians such as V.K. Krishna Menon may have been passionately interested in international affairs. Unfortunately, that interest was tempered by what can be best described as a monumental chip on the shoulder. Nehru, who was culturally steeped in Anglo-Saxon mores, was over-anxious to show that his heart went out to all the colonised peoples. Likewise, Menon never got out of the propagandist role he assumed as head of the India League in Britain. In attempting to be a “quality” in world affairs—Menon’s description—India ended up as a preachy, sanctimonious bore. Except with the Mountbattens and the liberal set in Hampstead, the British and American establishments tended to be more at ease with Field Marshal Ayub Khan and Sir John Kotelawala than with earnest Indians who shopped in London but pretended that Moscow was paradise. Despite her fierce espousal of national interests, Indira Gandhi carried this arrogant pretence to macabre heights.
It is not merely the leadership that indulged in this inverted snobbery. Feigned indignation directed at the West became a national philosophy and led to disastrous policy choices. Every failure stemming from sloth and incompetence was laid at the door of the colonial legacy. Excellence and entrepreneurship was shunned and mediocrity was celebrated in the name of self-sufficiency and Third Worldism. The economists and historians were, predictably, the worst culprits. “It has been well said”, wrote Jagadish Bhagwati, one of the early refugees from India’s socialist conformism, “that any elementary mistake in economics can be turned into a profound truth by ingenuously making the right assumptions to deduce what you want… India suffered the tyranny of anticipated consequences from the wrong premise.”
The problem hasn’t ceased with the onset of market economics and the acquisition of nuclear weapons. Some years ago, Sir V.S. Naipaul faced unwarranted hostility from the champions of political correctness by questioning the relevance of categories like decolonisation five decades after the Union Jack was finally lowered. Not that this blunt home truth has forced a re-examination of intellectual assumptions. Last month, the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, a body created by the Nehruvians to shower state patronage on its chosen artistes, held a seminar to link Indian literature to other Third World experiences. At a time when Indian writers are seeking western markets for the Indian idiom and experience, the sheer absurdity of attempting contrived links with oppressed voices in Egypt and Sierra Leone was too apparent.
Like the elusive New World Information Order whose virtues are still proclaimed by the relics of an earlier era, “official” India hasn’t fully come to terms with the brash, self-confident India of this century. The energy and entrepreneurial dynamism of India which Bush detected quite early on has yet to sink into many critical areas of decision-making.
It is this incomprehension of the New India that is behind the paranoia over interacting with the wider world. The rediscovery of market-oriented economics and deregulation is only 15 years old but even within this brief period India has experienced one scare after another. The hesitant introduction of rule-based international trade under the aegis of the WTO was met by the fear of the takeover of the Indian economy by multinationals. Cable television triggered fears that the hapless villager in Azamgarh would be exposed to Baywatch and fall prey to an insidious cultural imperialism.
On almost every count these fears have turned out to be misplaced. Indian ingenuity and cultural comfort with itself have led to India dictating the rules of the market. Cricket is a case in point. When socialism prevailed in India, it was the English and the Australians who controlled the game. Today, no major cricketing decision can be taken without factoring Indian interests. In the 1970s, Yorkshireman Fred Trueman taunted Indian cricket as a matter of routine. He never toured India with any MCC side. Today, Geoff Boycott, the other Yorkshire cricketing legend, has to sing for his supper on Indian TV. His accent is regarded by Indians as quaint, just as Peter Sellers’ Indian act drew sniggers in Britain 30 years ago.
The lessons of the past decade are too significant to be brushed aside by insular Comrades and uninformed cultural chauvinists. Whenever an economically liberated India has confronted the world, it has always succeeded in turning the balance of power in its own favour. There was not a hint of condescension in President Bush’s offer of friendship and neither did he undertake the finger-wagging drill of a big brother—unlike in Pakistan. He wasn’t showering India with aid and freebees. He was imploring India to assume its rightful role in global capitalism and enrich itself. His offer lay in facilitating the removal of a irritants created by an earlier generation. Never mind all the lofty talk of democracy—which, like the Americans, Indians take for granted—Bush was speaking the language of a Texan out to cut a mutually beneficial deal.
Nehru, like the protestors who revelled in hateful anger, wouldn’t have comprehended Bush’s logic. That’s because he hated business, entrepreneurship and profit. He epitomised India’s Dark Ages. The country has moved on. And the young generation, unlike the Midnight’s Children, don’t even need to look back in anger at the 50 wasted years. They have nothing to lose but their subordination; they have a world to win.
(Published in The Telegraph, Calcutta, March 10, 2006)
By Swapan Dasgupta
Even after he fell from grace and spent his last years in disgrace, there was one country where President Richard Nixon was always welcome. For all its other angularities, China never forgot its indebtedness to the man who in 1971 began the process of extricating the Middle Kingdom from its post-Communist isolation.
It is still too early to say whether or not President George W. Bush will enjoy such a lofty status in India during his retirement years. Yet, when future historians chart the course of Indian foreign policy in this century, they will have to acknowledge President Bush’s unique contribution to overturning the entrenched assumptions of the Cold War. It is not merely that the controversial US President made a special effort to reach out to India. He was the first world leader of consequence who understood the enormous importance of democratic India in the 21st century world order.
In the natural course, the Indo-US understanding on nuclear energy would not have happened. Both countries had too many non-negotiable and conflicting positions. The March 2 separation agreement, which must now await the Congress’ ratification to be institutionalised and internationally acceptable, would not have happened if President Bush hadn’t taken the political decision to accommodate Indian sensitivities. The US President went out of his way to create a special place for India in the five-member nuclear high table.
Thanks to the Congress Party’s peculiar dependence on the Communists and the Muslim vote, this particular facet of the US President’s two-day visit to India has neither been adequately publicised nor appreciated. A nervous Manmohan Singh Government lacks the necessary self-confidence to flaunt India’s global coming of age as a political and diplomatic success. When it comes to the US, there is just too much historical baggage that the Congress Party has to carry. But why blame the Congress alone? The BJP, which should have shared the credit for a process that culminated in the July 18 and March 2 agreements, has been excessively circumspect—although it has raised a few important points for the Government to clarify. Consequently, it has been left to the media and corporate India to celebrate a historic step forward.
India, it would seem, is still mentally unprepared to cope with its new global status. Jawaharlal Nehru and the other eminent Nehruvians such as V.K. Krishna Menon may have been passionately interested in international affairs. Unfortunately, that interest was tempered by what can be best described as a monumental chip on the shoulder. Nehru, who was culturally steeped in Anglo-Saxon mores, was over-anxious to show that his heart went out to all the colonised peoples. Likewise, Menon never got out of the propagandist role he assumed as head of the India League in Britain. In attempting to be a “quality” in world affairs—Menon’s description—India ended up as a preachy, sanctimonious bore. Except with the Mountbattens and the liberal set in Hampstead, the British and American establishments tended to be more at ease with Field Marshal Ayub Khan and Sir John Kotelawala than with earnest Indians who shopped in London but pretended that Moscow was paradise. Despite her fierce espousal of national interests, Indira Gandhi carried this arrogant pretence to macabre heights.
It is not merely the leadership that indulged in this inverted snobbery. Feigned indignation directed at the West became a national philosophy and led to disastrous policy choices. Every failure stemming from sloth and incompetence was laid at the door of the colonial legacy. Excellence and entrepreneurship was shunned and mediocrity was celebrated in the name of self-sufficiency and Third Worldism. The economists and historians were, predictably, the worst culprits. “It has been well said”, wrote Jagadish Bhagwati, one of the early refugees from India’s socialist conformism, “that any elementary mistake in economics can be turned into a profound truth by ingenuously making the right assumptions to deduce what you want… India suffered the tyranny of anticipated consequences from the wrong premise.”
The problem hasn’t ceased with the onset of market economics and the acquisition of nuclear weapons. Some years ago, Sir V.S. Naipaul faced unwarranted hostility from the champions of political correctness by questioning the relevance of categories like decolonisation five decades after the Union Jack was finally lowered. Not that this blunt home truth has forced a re-examination of intellectual assumptions. Last month, the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, a body created by the Nehruvians to shower state patronage on its chosen artistes, held a seminar to link Indian literature to other Third World experiences. At a time when Indian writers are seeking western markets for the Indian idiom and experience, the sheer absurdity of attempting contrived links with oppressed voices in Egypt and Sierra Leone was too apparent.
Like the elusive New World Information Order whose virtues are still proclaimed by the relics of an earlier era, “official” India hasn’t fully come to terms with the brash, self-confident India of this century. The energy and entrepreneurial dynamism of India which Bush detected quite early on has yet to sink into many critical areas of decision-making.
It is this incomprehension of the New India that is behind the paranoia over interacting with the wider world. The rediscovery of market-oriented economics and deregulation is only 15 years old but even within this brief period India has experienced one scare after another. The hesitant introduction of rule-based international trade under the aegis of the WTO was met by the fear of the takeover of the Indian economy by multinationals. Cable television triggered fears that the hapless villager in Azamgarh would be exposed to Baywatch and fall prey to an insidious cultural imperialism.
On almost every count these fears have turned out to be misplaced. Indian ingenuity and cultural comfort with itself have led to India dictating the rules of the market. Cricket is a case in point. When socialism prevailed in India, it was the English and the Australians who controlled the game. Today, no major cricketing decision can be taken without factoring Indian interests. In the 1970s, Yorkshireman Fred Trueman taunted Indian cricket as a matter of routine. He never toured India with any MCC side. Today, Geoff Boycott, the other Yorkshire cricketing legend, has to sing for his supper on Indian TV. His accent is regarded by Indians as quaint, just as Peter Sellers’ Indian act drew sniggers in Britain 30 years ago.
The lessons of the past decade are too significant to be brushed aside by insular Comrades and uninformed cultural chauvinists. Whenever an economically liberated India has confronted the world, it has always succeeded in turning the balance of power in its own favour. There was not a hint of condescension in President Bush’s offer of friendship and neither did he undertake the finger-wagging drill of a big brother—unlike in Pakistan. He wasn’t showering India with aid and freebees. He was imploring India to assume its rightful role in global capitalism and enrich itself. His offer lay in facilitating the removal of a irritants created by an earlier generation. Never mind all the lofty talk of democracy—which, like the Americans, Indians take for granted—Bush was speaking the language of a Texan out to cut a mutually beneficial deal.
Nehru, like the protestors who revelled in hateful anger, wouldn’t have comprehended Bush’s logic. That’s because he hated business, entrepreneurship and profit. He epitomised India’s Dark Ages. The country has moved on. And the young generation, unlike the Midnight’s Children, don’t even need to look back in anger at the 50 wasted years. They have nothing to lose but their subordination; they have a world to win.
(Published in The Telegraph, Calcutta, March 10, 2006)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
