Mrs Gandhi’s charge that “the press is the opposition in India” is open to two interpretations. First, that since there is no worthwhile organised political opposition to her in the country, she has to care only about the criticism in the press. Secondly, that the press functions as an arm of opposition parties.
If the Prime Minister is right on the first count, as, in our view, she is, she cannot be on the second. Indeed, it is precisely because the opposition is in a shambles that the criticism of her party and government in the press has become so important to her. The people look to the press and not to opposition parties to give expression to their grievances.
To avoid unnecessary confusion, certain points regarding the press need to be made once again. As in any democracy, the press in India is not a monolith controlled and directed from a single centre. Even newspapers and journals in the same house follow different policies. Much of the press is too vulnerable to official pressures, too dependent on governmental and ministerial patronage, too ill-equipped professionally and too weak financially to assert its independence. Thus, the whole debate centres on a dozen or so newspapers and magazines.
All these newspapers and magazines are not in opposition to Mrs Gandhi, and hardly any one of them is in permanent opposition to her. Almost all of them have supported her on one policy issue or another and have even acknowledged that there is no alternative to her, whatever, in their view, her failings. But they are under increasing popular pressure to speak out against the government.
Urban Phenomenon
It has also to be recognised that the press in India is essentially an urban middle class phenomenon. Most of the readers of even well-circulated (in our terms) Indian-language newspapers and journals come from this class not only because they have the necessary purchasing power but also because by and large they alone are significantly interested in bigger social, economic and political issues. The people in the countryside, including the relatively prosperous ones, are almost wholly preoccupied with their own problems and absorbed in their little private worlds.
The middle class in India, as in other developing countries, is a new social formation. To begin with, it owed its rise to the introduction by the British of Western-style education, trading practices, and modern professions such as law and medicine. It has expanded vastly as independent India has become the tenth most industrialised country and acquired the third largest pool of scientific and technical manpower in the world. It is as much the creator of modern India as the product of modern India.
It is dynamic and insecure for the same reason – the fusion of Western intellectuality and rationality with the Indian psyche based on tradition. Even if its practices often conform to old religious and caste traditions, it derives its values and yardsticks from the West. It could not but feel alienated in the current political milieu. This is especially true of the salariat (the educated intelligentsia), the honest members of which have suffered greatly on account of inflation in the past two decades.
The intelligentsia could relate itself to the government so long as Mr Nehru was Prime Minister. He was its best (in moral and intellectual terms) and its most distinguished (in terms of popularity at home and recognition abroad) representative. Even his critics among this class – and they were fairly numerous for a variety of reasons – had a soft corner for him. They do not show similar consideration for Mrs Gandhi, though, during the early stages of her Prime Ministership, they regarded her as one of them.
Intense Debate
This alienation of the intelligentsia from Mrs Gandhi has been a subject of intense debate for a whole decade. The debate has been one-sided since 1975 when she first refused to resign in the face of an adverse court judgment and then enforced an internal emergency. Since then, she has had only limited support among educated Indians.
This mutual distrust has been the result of lack of comprehension on both sides. Mrs Gandhi has, for example, consistently failed to appreciate the obvious point that she cannot go on attacking the two institutions the intelligentsia most respects – the judiciary and the press – without alienating it further. She could offset the influence of the liberals so long as she was willing to subscribe to radical slogans (1969-71) and thus appeal to the intelligentsia’s yearning for social justice. It is her tragedy that when she finally abandoned this path because of its ill-effects on the economy, she had to introduce the emergency, which inevitably meant curbs on the press and the judiciary. But she could have shown respect for the intelligentsia’s susceptibilities once she was back in office in 1980. It is a pity she has not done so. The intelligentsia has been equally unappreciative of Mrs Gandhi’s compulsions and its own interests.
The old Congress system over which Mr Nehru presided broke down in 1967 when the Congress lost office in all north Indian states, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. It could not be resurrected. A new one had to be raised in its place. Broadly speaking, two options were open to the country – the coalitional one whereby parties enjoying the support of certain caste and communities could have ruled the country, and the unitary one whereby Mrs Gandhi would appeal to the common people on the strength of her personality and secure a mandate from them to manage India’s affairs from New Delhi.
This assessment clearly runs counter to the widespread view that it was possible for Mrs Gandhi, if she was so disposed, to revitalise the Congress and restore the pre-1967 status quo and that she has acted in the way she has because her main objective has been personal power. Both these proposed traps are, in my view, open to question. But even if one accepts them for the sake of argument, they cannot invalidate the above proposition. For in retrospect, it is obvious that no other leader or group has been in a position to restore the status quo ante.
To return to the main argument, both options open to India represented a reversion to the past – a fact which hardly any commentator on the Indian political scene has noted. While Mrs Gandhi represented the return to the early Moghuls who were determined to unify the country under one rule, the opposition represented a return to the Maratha confederacy out to undermine central authority. It is ironical that the once ardent nationalist, Mr Jayaprakash Narayan, should have led the assault on the centraliser of authority (Mrs Gandhi) and that the self-proclaimed upholders of a strong Hindu rashtra, the RSS, should have provided him with the necessary forces. But history is full of such ironies.
Neither of the two options could have excited the intelligentsia which has grown up in the belief that we can replicate British institutions, norms and conventions in our different clime. But of the two, the coalitional one should have been less appealing to it. For one thing, it struck at the very roots of the concept of nationalism because it pandered to regional, communal and caste loyalties. For another, it had failed by 1969 when all SVD governments had collapsed one by one. But so great has been its appeal that even the failure of the Janata experiment has not persuaded the intelligentsia to support the other alternative.
This is a measure of Mrs Gandhi’s failure as well. If the intelligentsia has not appreciated her importance in holding the country together in a period of revolutionary change, she has not shown much awareness of the fact that she cannot manage effectively to run the government without its willing and indeed enthusiastic co-operation.
Contradictory Person
Mrs Gandhi is a contradictory individual. How else can one explain that a person who can hold her own in dealing with the leaders of the two super-powers in face-to-face encounters should allow an LN Mishra or an Antulay to besmirch her image? Or that a person who is such a patient listener in private is so sharp and persistent in her public criticism of the opposition and the press? But great leaders are often contradictory. In any case, that need not build a wall of incomprehension between her and the intelligentsia.
One has to operate at two levels in our country. One has to recognise the reality, understand the forces behind it and to an extent come to terms with it, but without abandoning the will to change it gradually to make it accord in some measure with cherished values. This is not an easy task. But if there is one country in the Third World where it is possible to bridge the gap between the old reality and modern values and sensibilities, India is that country. In our impatience, we should not weaken and undermine our own potential allies.
In its broken-down state, the Congress (1) cannot be Mrs Gandhi’s instrument for consolidating the Indian state and transforming Indian society. In its ramshackle condition, the opposition cannot be an effective ally of the Indian press for raising the level of public morality. Both have to draw the necessary conclusion and act accordingly.
The Times of India, 24 February 1982