Since the political discourse has been thoroughly personalised, it is not easy to turn the focus back to concrete realities on the ground. But it is precisely because politics at the national level has come to be seen as if it were a one-to-one combat between Mr Rajiv Gandhi and Mr VP Singh that it has become all the more necessary to raise issues relating to the correlation of social forces which must determine the shape of the Indian political order in the years to come. Before I do that, it is necessary to make some observations about Mr VP Singh.
As is well known, differences developed between Mr VP Singh and Mr Rajiv Gandhi when he was still a member of the Union government on the issue of corruption by the corporate sector and payoffs in the HDW submarine deal. There was also the complicating factor of the Prime Minister’s close friendship with Mr Amitabh Bachchan whom Mr VP Singh plainly detested as an intruder into his Allahabad domain. This made his exit from the government unavoidable. But he was not interested in leaving the Congress party. Mr Rajiv Gandhi forced him out.
Not Insincere
Mr VP Singh would, of course, have carried on his battle inside the Congress if he had been permitted to stay on. But battle against whom and what? The answer to neither aspect of the question is as obvious as is generally believed. Mr VP Singh was then not irrevocably committed to the removal of Mr Rajiv Gandhi as leader of the Congress parliamentary party. Indeed, for weeks after leaving the government, he swore loyalty to the leader. There is nothing to suggest that he was insincere. He would doubtless have spoken against the influence of money in politics and proposed some measures to contain this problem. But such talk would have met the same fate as similar talk has met in the past.
As I see things, Mr VP Singh could have been easily “contained” in the Congress if Mr Rajiv Gandhi had not panicked and pushed him out. Apparently Mr Rajiv Gandhi feared that Mr VP Singh would, especially in the context of the Bofors payoff scandal, emerge as a rival to him for the leadership of the party. It is not wisdom by hindsight which leads me to the conclusion that the fear was misplaced. I took that view then and said so, even if indirectly, when I suggested that Mr Rajiv Gandhi should step down as Congress president and get Mr VP Singh elected to that position. (“Congress Needs A New Chief” – July 19, 1987).
All that is, however, in the past. I am recalling it to make two points. First, to begin with, Mr VP Singh was interested at best in reforming the Congress and the system over which it presides and not in replacing it. Secondly, even if we assume that he was keen to overthrow Mr Rajiv Gandhi, he wanted to do so from within the organisation and the system. This must raise the question whether such a man can be enthusiastic about leading an assault on the Congress and the system it represents. I for one doubt it. I regard as fair and accurate Mr Chandra Shekhar’s description of Mr VP Singh as a substitute for Mr Rajiv Gandhi and not an alternative to him.
Much of the highly articulate Westernised elite has for close to two decades equated the Congress system with growing corruption. And this elite inevitably defines the parameters in which the political discourse has to proceed. As it happens, there is merit in its accusation. The Congress party has been corrupted by its long years in office and it presides over a system which has become increasingly venal, venal to a point where it faces the danger of suffocating itself. But the Congress has stayed in office precisely because the correlation of social forces has favoured it over its rivals in the nation as a whole and in the larger part of the nation in terms of the states. This point is generally ignored in the current discussions.
Not to beat about the bush, the brahmins, particularly in North India, have by and large formed the core of the Congress system with a significant majority of the Muslims, the harijans and the tribals providing the electoral supporting base. Though the last three communities constitute only about one-third of the country’s population, they have generally provided around 50 per cent of the electoral support on the strength of which the Congress has preserved its power all these decades in New Delhi with the exception of the brief Janata interlude in 1977-80.
Brahmin Majority
Complex factors account for the rise of this coalition which it is not possible to discuss right now adequately. Even so it may be pointed out that the centrality of the brahmins was inevitable in any democratic set-up immediately in the wake of Independence because of the preponderant role they had played in the Freedom Movement. I do not possess the community-wise breakdown of those who went to jail in the various movements Mahatma Gandhi launched from 1920 onwards. But the figures I have seen in respect of some districts lead me to believe that the brahmins constituted a majority. The number of brahmin chief ministers and Union cabinet ministers in 1947 reinforces me in this belief. And assuming that they did not constitute a majority, they were without doubt the largest single group among the active participants in the Mahatma’s struggle.
The point has often been made that since the brahmins were the quickest to take to Western education, it was only natural that they would dominate professions such as teaching, law and medicine, the services, and subsequently politics in British India. Obviously there is merit in this proposition. But the rise of the brahmins also spoke of the decline of the warrior groups in British India and the emergence of a civil society in which the pen was truly mightier than the sword in everyday life. Moreover the brahmins were also among the most deprived sections of society. Well over 50 per cent of them are said to be below the poverty line currently in Bihar, for example, and one study places the figure in Andhra Pradesh at around 75 per cent. This fact may partly explain the radical commitments of so many brahmin leaders from Jawaharlal Nehru to EMS Namboodiripad.
The supreme leader of the Freedom Movement was, of course, a non-brahmin. Gandhi was a bania by birth. But he made himself into a super-brahmin, a sanyasin in effect. I doubt whether he could have acquired the grip he did on the popular imagination if he had not so transformed himself. The suggestion is not that he did so deliberately as an exercise in public relations but that he had to evoke the brahminical ethos in order to be able to mobilise the people behind him. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was his logical successor in specifically Indian terms. For too long have we analysed Gandhi and Nehru in terms of Western concepts. It is time we discussed them in the framework of Indian history.
Different Pattern
It is plausible to argue that Indian politics could have taken a different turn if instead of Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel was to be India’s first Prime Minister and to stay in the awesome office for close to two decades as Nehru did. Sardar Patel was a peasant by birth and he, unlike Nehru, was well disposed towards business. The pattern of economic development under him would certainly have been very different from what it was to be under Nehru. A differently oriented economy could in turn have helped shape a different kind of political order. As it happened, the Sardar was not as sympathetic to the plight of the Muslims in the wake of partition as was Nehru partly because the Persian cultural influence was absent from the lives of his forbears. Thus a possibly winning coalition under his leadership would in all probability not have included the Muslim component to the same extent as it did under Nehru. In fact, it is also open to question whether the harijans and the tribals would have rallied under the tricolour if the Sardar and not the Pandit was holding the flag. Despite Gandhi’s struggle against untouchability and personal identification with the scheduled castes, they were not important participants in the Freedom Movement. They, like the Muslims, came over in search of protection.
But the buts and ifs of history need not concern us. We have to be concerned with the fact of the coalition and whether Mr VP Singh can build, as he now appears to be committed to building, an alternative winning coalition with the peasant castes, called the other backward castes (OBCS) in the current jargon, as the centrepiece. This is the heart of the issue on which the debate should, in my view, focus. I shall be taking up this question in the weeks ahead.
The Times of India, 20 July 1988