Mrs. Gandhi has apparently decided to suppress dissidence in the Congress (I) with a heavy hand. It is unlikely that she would have otherwise gone to the extent of denying Mr. Yogendra Makwana, Union minister of state for communications, a party nomination for election to the Rajya Sabha. Mr. Makwana has finally won a reprieve. Mrs. Gandhi has heeded his desperate plea and agreed to include him among the Congress (I) candidates for the upper house from Gujarat. But his public humiliation underscores the point that she is not going to allow her partymen to defy Congress (I) chief ministers so long as they enjoy her confidence. Mr. Makwana has been at odds with the Gujarat chief minister, Mr. Solanki, ever since the latter assumed office in 1980. And so has Mrs. Makwana who is a member of the Gujarat Vidhan Sabha. Mr Makwana suffered a demotion at the time of the last cabinet reshuffle when he was moved from home to communications and Mr. Maganlal Barot, who had also been critical of Mr. Solanki, was altogether dropped. Thus if Mrs. Gandhi’s intention was primarily to back Mr. Solanki against his detractors, this would have sufficed. But she has not allowed matters to rest there. She has once again given public expression to her intense displeasure with Mr. Makwana. The chances are that she has chosen to make an example of him in order to send a message to dissidents all over the country.
It is not for us to say whether Mr. Makwana has deserved this treatment on account of his feud with Mr. Solanki or for some other reason. But there can be little doubt that an episode like the present one cannot enhance the prestige of the Congress (I) and its leadership. As the people become increasingly conscious of their rights, they want to know the reasons for Mrs. Gandhi’s actions, their confidence in her notwithstanding. As in the cases of others – Mr. Kamlapathi Tripathi, Mr. VC Shukla, Mr Jagannath Pahadia, Mr. Chenna Reddy and Mr. Anjiah – she has not offered any explanation in Mr. Makwana’s. If in the collective wisdom of the Congress (I) parliamentary board, it was proper to deny him party nomination at one point, the people would like to know why it became appropriate to reverse the decision soon afterwards. It is also open to question whether this is the best way to deal with dissidence in the states. Indeed, it is possible to argue that all dissidence is not against the interests of the party and the country. For instance, both would have escaped considerable damage if the activities of Mr. Pahadia and Mr. AR Antulay and the ineptitude of Mr. Anjiah had been exposed much earlier. In Maharashtra, Mr. Antulay was allowed to remove Mrs. Shalini Patil and Mr. Baburao Kale from the cabinet when instead he himself should have stepped down. Their opposition to him cannot be said to have been unprincipled. Thus while the dissidents may not be guided by worthwhile considerations in all cases, it does not follow that they are merely disrupters who do not deserve a hearing at all. That would be a non-dialectical and therefore untenable view of life.