During her reply to the motion of no-confidence in the Lok Sabha last Thursday, the Prime Minister said that the only objective of the opposition appeared to be: “Let I us throw Indira Gandhi out of power.” Apparently, she meant what she said. But she was mistaken. This was a hangover of the past. Today, no opposition party or leader thinks that she can be thrown out of power in the foreseeable future. In that sense the opposition is reconciled to her as never before.
Distrustful
The opposition has not suddenly grown fond of Mrs Gandhi. It has not come to regard her as a good person and an effective Prime Minister. On the contrary, it remains distrustful of her. But it has lost the hope that it can present an alternative to her party, as it could in 1977, and defeat her at the polls.
This is an important change in the psychology of the opposition as a whole. The result is that the opposition is dispirited as seldom before. Witness the contrast in its behaviour over the LN Mishra affair in 1974 and over the Antulay affair currently. In 1974, it was self-confident and aggressive. The objective then was to discredit Mrs Gandhi herself. This time it has by and large limited its attack to Mr Antulay. And unlike last time, it has not sought to paralyse the two houses of Parliament day after day.
Mrs Gandhi has apparently been bruised by the relentless criticism from 1969 to 1979. In this period, especially between March 1977 and January 1980, only a small number of individuals truly stood by her. Her critics blame her own personality for it. But even if one concludes for the sake of argument that there is some merit in this view, it does not detract from the earlier proposition that it is only natural that the decade-long campaign of criticism and vilification should have left a scar on her mind.
But a great leader must by definition be capable of putting the past behind him or her and of responding to the situation as it is and is likely to be. In the present case, Mrs Gandhi should be able to take her pre-eminence for granted, recognise that she is no longer obliged to act as essentially a party leader in order to safeguard her own position, and function as the national leader utterly sure of her position.
It is not particularly difficult to trace the developments which account for this basic change in Mrs Gandhi‘s fortune. Four dates are important for her recovery after the disastrous defeat in March 1977 – the visit to Belchi (a small village in Bihar which had been the scene of ghastly atrocities on the Harijans) on August 14, 1977; October 2, 1977, when she addressed a truly mammoth gathering in Agra; October 3, 1977, when the Janata government arrested her on flimsy charges, and the elections to state vidhan sabhas in Maharashtra, Andhra and certain other states within weeks of the second split in the Congress in early 1978. These events demonstrated that despite all that had happened during the emergency, she remained a popular, perhaps the most popular, leader of the Indian people. But it was the unending squabbles in the ramshackle Janata party and government that made her triumphant come-back certain.
By the summer of 1978, when Mr Morarji Desai sacked Mr Charan Singh and Mr Raj Narain from his cabinet, the party’s break-up had become a foregone conclusion. It still took Mr Raj Narain and his allies, especially Mr Madhu Limaye, a whole year to bring down the Morarji Desai government and destroy the Janata Party. But the process could not have been reversed. The incompatibilities among the Janata leaders and constituents were too great and sharp for the experiment to have succeeded.
It is not so much Mrs Gandhi’s own popularity as the collapse of the experiment in uniting various opposition parties that accounts for her new status in the country’s public life. Mrs Gandhi appeared invulnerable when she swept the polls in 1971 and when she secured the liberation of Bangladesh in December 1971. But the hope that opposition leaders could come together to provide an alternative to her and her party was not yet dead. That hope was finally dashed by the failure of the Janata experiment. That is what has made her truly invulnerable.
Pathetic
Today, most opposition leaders look pathetic and feel utterly despondent. They show it on their faces and in their talk. For a while, Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee displayed confidence in his and his party’s future. He is still the most popular opposition leader in the country and the BJP with its RSS connection is among the better organised parties. But he, too, appears to have slumped. His strange stance on the issue of US arms for Pakistan may be partly responsible for this loss of élan. But while Mrs Gandhi’s tough stand on this question accords better with popular feelings than Mr Vajpayee’s, this issue does not yet grip the Indian people. The crux of the matter is that BJP cannot hope to win an election in a single state at the moment.
But so complete a victory as Mrs Gandhi’s also creates problems. That is the law of life. In this case, two problems deserve attention. First, the near-collapse of opposition parties and their morale has created a situation in which Congress (I) leaders in the states, away from Mrs Gandhi’s gaze and direct supervision, have come to believe that they can do whatever they like without having to pay the price in terms of loss of office. Two chief ministers – Mr Chenna Reddy in Andhra and Mr Jagannath Pahadia in Rajasthan – have attracted her displeasure and lost office. But this obviously has not had much impact in other states.
Secondly, the distance between Mrs Gandhi and her cabinet and party colleagues has grown so big that few among the latter dare speak freely and frankly in her presence. Rather than tender advice, they wait for an indication from her and trim their views accordingly. This not only places an unbearable burden on her but also completes the process of her isolation from her colleagues.
In the pre-1967 period, when the Congress enjoyed a similar dominance in the country, the opposition parties were not so demoralised as they are today. Factional fights within the organisation in the states also helped compel those in office to observe certain norms. The general standard of public morality, too, was much higher. Today, Mrs Gandhi frowns on factionalism in the Congress (I). But even if she was to take a more lenient view of it, as she has in fact been forced to do in the case of some states, it does not serve the purpose of putting a check on the appetite of those in power. Intra-party struggles have become unprincipled and, more often than not, chief ministers are able to buy off dissidents on the strength of the powers of patronage they enjoy. Even Mr Pahadia, possibly the most incompetent chief minister in independent India, could have kept a majority of the Congress (I) legislators on his side if Mrs Gandhi had not forced him to resign.
Mrs Gandhi’s detractors argue that the solution is to work once again for a united and strong opposition. But how? No one has produced an answer to this question so far. To me, it appears to be a forlorn hope at least for the time being. Indeed, I am opposed to this approach. In my view, it is better that opposition parties function independently so that one or two of them may go ahead on their own steam. The Jana Sangh would almost certainly have been much stronger if it had not merged itself into the Janata conglomerate.
The alternative view, that we can depend on Mrs Gandhi to stem the rot in the ruling party, may also turn out to be misplaced. But in the given circumstances, it appears to be more realistic. Mrs Gandhi has the capacity to act since her supremacy in the ruling party and the country is unchallengeable. She has many reasons to act – her concern for India’s place in the world and her own in history. If she is seriously interested in ensuring Rajiv Gandhi’s succession to her, she has another powerful reason to put the Congress (I) on a sound footing. The key question, therefore, is whether she has the will to act.
Favourable
Time alone can provide the answer to this question. There have been some favourable indications – the appointment of reasonably honest and competent men as secretaries to the Union government, her recent address at a meeting of top officials asking them to tender honest advice to ministers, and the removal of Mr Reddy and Mr Pahadia. But these are not conclusive. The rot has spread too far and too deep to be tackled by such gestures. Much more will need to be done to restore the confidence of the people in the system.
To be able to do so, Mrs Gandhi will need to get over past suspicions and attitudes. She will need to pick up men and women on the basis of just one criterion – their integrity and competence. She will also need to win the support of those opposition parties and leaders who can be persuaded to bury the hatchet, rise above sectarian interests and serve the nation.
The Times of India, 23 September 1981