It is not quite clear when exactly the concept of “politics of consensus” in relation to Jawaharlal Nehru was first formulated, or when it found widespread acceptance. But there can be little doubt that the intention of those who sought to popularise it in the seventies was to contrast Nehru’s supposed style with Indira Gandhi’s, of course, to the daughter’s disadvantage. She was accused of pursuing the “politics of confrontation”. Now Rajiv Gandhi’s style is being contrasted with Indira Gandhi’s again to the latter’s disadvantage.
Not only political commentators but also active politicians such as Mr. Ramakrishna Hegde tell us that Rajiv Gandhi is trying to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather and not of his mother. For all we know, the Prime Minister too may be seeing himself in that light. To be seen to be engaged in such an effort is certainly a paying proposition, as far as the western media and upper crust Indian public opinion are concerned. Indira Gandhi remains a taboo for both of them.
But let us put Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi aside for the time-being and try to assess whether the proponents of the concept of politics of consensus are being factually accurate and whether they are being fair to Nehru. To answer these questions, we have to go back into history.
We need to recall that when we Indians staked our claim to self-rule in the late 19th and early 20th century, we were called upon to find evidence in our history that we were capable of self-government in a democratic manner. We found the evidence. We discovered that we had panchayats in our villages in ancient times and claimed that they were democratic institutions; indeed that they were superior to modern democratic institutions in that they functioned on the basis of consensus and not of counting of heads.
This served two useful purposes. It helped legitimize the demand for self-rule in our own eyes and it helped us fight the sense of inferiority the British had successfully instilled in us not only on the strength of their military, scientific, technological and economic superiority, but also of their supposed moral authority. In the light of the discovery of the panchayats and their approach to disputes, we could claim to be superior to them at least in this one respect – our capacity to function on the basis of consensus. In fact, we claimed that while the west based its civilization on the theory of conflict being central to life – conflict with nature as well as fellowmen – we built ours on that of harmony – harmony with nature as well as with fellow humans.
Another Reason
Leaders of the freedom movement had to emphasize the politics of compromise or consensus for yet another reason. They had to create an atmosphere in which it would be legitimate to push social conflicts into the background in the interest of the larger goal of national independence which called for unity. The conflicts were partly genuine and partly the products of the British policy of “divide and rule”. In fact, it will be more accurate and honest to say that while the conflicts got aggravated as a natural result of the British impact which disrupted the existing social arrangement and brought to life various relatively dormant elements and forces in our society, the rulers took advantage of them in order to blunt the cutting edge of our freedom movement. So we had of necessity to blame the conflicts wholly on the British policy of divide and rule and to claim that without this external intervention our society would return to its age-old harmony based on reconciliation of all interests.
As we know from our experience since independence when we have witnessed the sharpening of social conflicts, especially among the Hindus, this talk of social harmony in pre-British India was a myth. But it was a useful myth. It gave the freedom movement a legitimacy it could not have possessed even for its leaders and supporters if the fact of the genuineness of social conflicts was acknowledged. The myth achieved its greatest potency and sweep during Gandhiji’s leadership of the freedom struggle because he possessed a most remarkable capacity to press his radical social programmes such as the eradication of untouchability as if these had the sanction of tradition behind them and as if they represented a national consensus.
But Gandhiji could not be and was not a man of consensus. He was a revolutionary in the most profound sense of the term. His goal was nothing short of reordering Indian society on the basis of a concept of equality which was deeply Christian-western in inspiration, even if it could be explained, as it was, in terms of our own inheritance, such as Buddhism and the Bhakti movement. He, of course, fought untouchability but more importantly he sought to reinterpret the very basis of the Hindu social order, the Chaturvarna Ashram (the four varna system), though he did not formally challenge it. But while he accepted it as a functional arrangement, he denied its very raison d’etre, the theory of the relative purity of the four orders with the Brahmins at the top and the Sudras at the bottom and the untouchables beyond the pale.
Gandhiji was not an obvious westernizer or modernizer. He did not denounce religion and commend western science and technology. But he sought to bring Indian society in line with the central western-modern values of social equality and justice.
Strange Amalgam
Like all truly effective revolutionaries, Gandhiji was a strange amalgam of the traditional and the modern. It would be ridiculous to suggest that he pretended to be a traditionalist just as it would be superficial to argue that he was anti-modem. And it is so much nonsense to talk in terms of his wanting to preserve the best in our own way of life and to take what was best in the western culture. He was not an Indian Ataturk in that he was not an imitator of the west. But he promoted the catalyst which western education above all else had introduced in Indian society and which was transforming and continues to transform it from within.
Unlike Raja Rammohun Roy and Swami Dayanand, Gandhiji did not claim to be a reformer out to rid India of its alleged superstitions, degrading customs and post-Vedic, or post-Upanishadic, accretions. But essentially he too was responding to the same stimuli – the Protestant Christian critique of popular Hindu practices and the radical western liberal-Humanist critique of religion, including the church, the two in a strange way reinforcing each other and serving as the two arms of a pincer attack on popular Hinduism. He did accept the validity of his attack. But he too subscribed to the Christian-western worldview with its emphasis on equality and individual morality and opposition to ascription as did all those who sought to reform Hindu society. He was not out to preserve the status quo; he was out to transform it from within. The western-Christian intellectual challenge had to be absorbed so that the external onslaught could be beaten back. And it was beaten back, partly through the tactics of seeking validation for western values in our own cultural heritage.
Gandhi’s capacity to wage war (politics of confrontation) while he talked of peace (politics of consensus) is best illustrated by his leadership of the freedom movement for three long decades. It is not pertinent for our purpose to accept or question the genuineness of his belief in soul force and its capacity to convert the adversary to his viewpoint. We are concerned with two facts. First, though he did not succeed in converting the British to his cause, he never gave up that platform. Secondly, while he mobilized and radicalized the Indian people and thus prepared them for a war of attrition, even if a non-violent one, with the British, more often than not he continued to talk the language of peace.
Nehru followed in the footsteps of Gandhiji. He too was a revolutionary who spoke the language of unity and peace. As a revolutionary he just could not have followed the so-called “politics of consensus”. It, of course, suited him in his capacity as Prime Minister to emphasize the need for unity and oppose not only communalism, regionalism and casteism but also the Marxist theory of class struggle, and to put himself above these unavoidable conflicts in the country. But in a fundamental sense he was deeply engaged in a battle, indeed a series of battles, with those who were opposed to his vision of a secular, strong, prosperous and egalitarian India. In that fundamental sense, he pursued the “politics of confrontation” and not the “politics of consensus.”
Short Memories
The memories of many of us who comment on these issues are rather short. In fact, it appears as if we wish to abolish history just as our forefathers did; like them, we too feel free to create myths. But this kind of amnesia distorts the truth and can be dangerous in our times when we have to interact with other history-conscious peoples on a day-to-day basis. So let us look at the facts regarding Nehru.
Nehru was by far the most important socialist leader in an essentially conservative freedom movement; unlike most of his colleagues, he did not wish to push socio-economic issues under the carpet for the sake of forging as broad an anti-British front as possible; on the contrary, he sought to give the concept of independence a socio-economic content. All this could not endear him to other top Congress leaders and it did not. He did not break with them because he did not wish to break with Gandhiji whom he regarded as a great revolutionary. But even with Gandhiji he had his differences which he did not hide. Surely all this cannot be described as the “politics of consensus”.
On independence, Nehru began his tenure of office as Prime Minister amidst a communal holocaust. The anti-Muslim sentiment had affected a vast majority of Hindus, if not most of them, in view of partition and communal riots. He fought this sentiment with courage and doggedness which has few parallels in human, not just Indian, history. Similarly, he did not seek a consensus but successfully imposed his views on his cabinet, the Congress party and the country in respect of other issues on which he felt passionately – planning, the role of the public sector, abolition of zamindari, the Hindu code bill and his foreign policy of non-alignment. In a genuinely free vote he would probably have been outvoted in his own cabinet on each of these questions.
Nehru was a genuine hero. He was committed to certain values and programmes and he fought for their acceptance and implementation with determination and skill. It is not fair to make him into a village sarpanch. India is not a village multiplied 500,000 times over. The multiplication itself makes it a very different kind of entity. It cannot be ruled as a village. Nehru knew it only too well.
The Times of India, 15 November 1985