To discuss current political developments in terms of a conflict between Mahatma Gandhi and Mr Nehru will be to simplify and even distort issues. The two leaders saw themselves not as antagonists but comrades-in-arms in the common struggle for national independence, communal harmony and social justice. Gandhiji in fact named Mr Nehru as his heir. And while it is widely recognised that their economic and social philosophies were quite different, no one, not even Mr Jayaprakash Narayan, has for years cared to recall that the Mahatma did not have much use either for modern states or organised parties. As such it cannot be said in fairness that the disintegration of the Congress and the consequent absence of a party capable of lending a measure of shape and purpose to the political system are in any way the result of either the Gandhian thought or of a Gandhian movement. In fact, it is essentially the result of the Indian social reality impinging on the political system.
The Mahatma was not an archetypal Hindu, as Mr Nirad Chaudhari would have us believe. He was in some ways a modern man. For instance, punctuality and cleanliness were an obsession with him. But if, to quote Mr Chaudhuri again, “for centuries the political creed of the Indian peasant and the Indian worker has consisted of one single article: never to trust the professions, the motives and the doings of their rulers,” he shared it without much reservation. He not only preferred anarchy to British rule and said so again and again but also felt alienated from the top leaders of the Congress soon after independence at least partly because he wanted them to live so humbly as not to create a gulf between themselves as the country’s new rulers and the common people. This theme has haunted India ever since to the detriment of the Indian State, because it has raised expectations which those in office cannot possibly fulfil. And he wanted the Congress to convert itself into a voluntary service organisation in disregard of the fact that this would create a political vacuum which would be impossible to fill.
Distrusted
Just as Gandhiji was not an archetypal Hindu, Mr Nehru was not the last viceroy, as Mr Malcolm Muggeridge once called him, half in jest. He was quite Indian, indeed Hindu, in many of his responses. His concept of non-alignment and peaceful co-existence were, for example, rooted in Hindu culture and personality. But in his concern for history, his passion for a strong Indian State capable of withstanding the forces of aggression from without and of disruption from within and his awareness of the need for viable institutions which could sustain the Indian State, he was not a typical Indian. Perhaps like Mr Adenauer in post-war West Germany, he even distrusted his people. This is speculation. But it is no speculation to say that he was attracted to Westernised Indians and that he was appalled by what he regarded as the boorish ways and the lack of taste, culture (in the Moghal court or Western sense) and awareness of the modern world of most of his Congress colleagues.
The Mahatma would have looked uncomfortable in the office of Prime Minister; Mr Nehru held it with such aplomb as if he was born to it. While the Mahatma would not have disbanded the bureaucracy and the armed forces if he had had his way, he would almost certainly have greatly reduced their strength and possibly emasculated them in an effort to abolish the gap between them and the people. Mr Nehru often criticised the bureaucracy and would have loved to see it function more efficiently and honestly in the service of the people. But he did not reduce its powers and privileges and it expanded vastly under him. And how much he cared for the dignity of certain offices like that of the President, the Chief Justice and the Speaker.
Something like a tacit alliance took place under him between the expanding and powerful bureaucracy and the Congress party. Mr Nehru, the idealist, might not have liked it. But as a practical politician, he acquiesced in it and thereby made it possible for the Congress to stay in power for 30 long years and for the country to enjoy a fairly high degree of political stability and of civil liberties, the like of which no other developing country has enjoyed in the whole of the third world.
Again, it will not be too speculative to say that Gandhiji would have sought to dismantle the higher education system with its elitist bias and to push the pace of changeover from English as the medium of instruction and administration to Hindi and other Indian languages. As for Mr Nehru, it is a matter of record that he not only ensured the survival of elite institutions like public schools and Christian missionary run English-medium schools and colleges, but also established the highly elitist institutes of technology on the model of similar institutions in the West.
Competed
All in all, even if it is not quite accurate to speak of two rival models of organising the country’s polity, two very different political worlds have existed side by side in India. They have inevitably competed with each other and penetrated each other. The language of one of these worlds has been the one borrowed from the West – the language of constitutionalism and of socio-economic changes – and Mr Nehru was its principal spokesman so long as he lived. The other more traditional world of Indian politics has not been equally articulate and it has not had an outstanding spokesman. Gandhi died too soon after independence to have played that role. But all those who have spoken for it – Acharya Vinoba Bhave, Mr Jayaprakash Narayan, Mr Morarji Desai and Mr Charan Singh – have claimed to have derived their ideas and inspiration from the Mahatma.
It can, of course, be argued that many of the self-proclaimed Gandhians have distorted his teachings. But that is only another way of saying that they have not been able to rise above social reality and personal weakness. It cannot mean that they have not been influenced by him.
In a democracy based on adult franchise, Mr Nehru clearly would not have had a chance if traditional India was capable of speaking through one leader or party and if it had an equally outstanding leader or if even Mr Nehru’s own role in the freedom struggle and his populism had not given him mass appeal which no one else, not even Sardar Patel, could match after Gandhiji’s assassination. But for all his charisma and popularity he had to have his battalions. The intelligentsia, educated through the medium of the English language, served that role, and not just Congressmen. The whole of this intelligentsia was not with him; it never is with anyone. But as a class (it can be called a class) and on the whole, it preferred him to anyone else and he was able to neutralise most of even those who were not with him. Witness the change in the attitude of the communists in the mid ‘fifties and the ambivalence towards him of the socialists leading to the split between Mr Jayaprakash Narayan and Dr Rammanohar Lohia.
By its very nature, Mr Nehru’s army was dispersed and it had only a supreme commander in him, no general staff. Neither the Union Cabinet nor the Congress Working Committee filled that role. Both derived their strength and prestige from him. It was not an army of ascetics; its members looked after themselves quite well. But it served the nation reasonably well. It had ambitions for the country – self-reliance and respect, eventually, power abroad. It had certain ideals – greater social justice and respect for the human individual. And it was to some extent able to rise above social divisions – communal, caste, regional and linguistic.
Mould
It would be ridiculous to say that this army operated in a hostile environment or even that it was totally alienated from the society it sought to serve. But it was as much the product of Western education and ideals as of the larger social and cultural environment in which it grew up. It sought to mould the society in its image. That was the central purpose of the Nehru model, his almost daily denunciation of communalism, casteism and superstition and his passionate advocacy of science, technology and, above all, what he called the scientific temper.
As a democrat, he could not ignore the social reality. He had to make terms with it and he did. The character of representation in Parliament and State legislatures gradually changed in favour of more traditional elites when he was still around. By 1957 state governments had visibly become more conservative than the Centre in their attitude towards socio-economic problems, especially the problem of land reforms. But he did not surrender to the Indian social reality. Since his death it has gradually been coming more and more into its own. The triumph of the Janata party in March 1977 is an expression of this fact regardless of the adventitious factors – the forcible family planning drive under Mr Sanjay Gandhi, for example – that might have helped to bring it about.
As local and regional elites arose as a result of the changeover from English to Indian languages as the medium of higher education, the spread of mass education, the increasing prosperity of the middle and upper peasantry and the rise of the regional bourgeoisie as distinct from the all-India one, one-party and one-leader dominance had to give way to coalitional politics based on caste and region. This is exactly what the Janata party represents. Surely such a coalition cannot fight either communalism or casteism or regionalism. The irony of it is that the new arrangement that is proposed in the name of political realignment can be even more loose and therefore ineffective from the point of view of integrative politics of nation building.
(To be concluded)
The Times of India, 5 April 1979