It is impossible to appreciate the historic significance of Indira Gandhi’s leadership for close to two decades unless we grasp certain fundamental issues which the party and the country have faced since independence. Indeed, it is the widespread failure to place developments in their proper historical perspective, that accounts for much of the misunderstanding of Indira Gandhi and her role among the intelligentsia.
The Congress is, of course, the party of Indian independence. It struggled for and won freedom for the country from the British. But it was not just an anti-British formation. It had another role, which was equally important. The Congress under Mahatma Gandhi’s leadership fought relentlessly against certain aspects of the Indian social reality – the Hindu-Muslim misunderstanding, untouchability among the Hindus, the low status of women among all Indian communities, and so on.
This multi-faceted task of refashioning India and winning and consolidating freedom required a well-oiled party machine for mass mobilisation. Gandhi was the architect of the strategy and he remained the supremo of the Congress for three long decades. During that period, he mobilised the Indian people as no had ever before, or has ever since. No section of the population escaped his appeal.
This created serious problems; mass mobilisation brought to the fore conflicts within the heterogenous Indian society, which the British inevitably exploited in the pursuit of their policy of “divide and rule”. Independent India too has not managed to dispose them of.
Gandhi was a revolutionary par excellence. He initiated a revolution of the profoundest significance when he brought into the freedom movement even segments of society whose touch, or even shadow, was supposed to pollute. For in the process of mobilising them, he gave them more than a sense of dignity of their rights; he gave them a kind of power, which they had never possessed and which they could develop and use, to enforce their legitimate demands. And that was not all. His campaigns ended the age-old separation between the rulers and the ruled, and established between the political order and society a link, even if one of opposition.
British Role
This process of linking the two did not of course, begin with Gandhi’s arrival on the Indian political scene. It had begun with the emergence of the “extremists” in the Congress at the time of the agitation against the partition of Bengal. But mass mobilisation under their leadership was, by and large, limited to the upper crust of western educated Indians. Gandhi alone produced an effective strategy for building a mass movement.
This brings us to a British role which is generally ignored. Their presence in an adversary role was essential to the Gandhi-Congress mobilisation of the Indian people. The British served as an object of resentment and even hate against which the Indian people could be
asked and expected to unite.
The Raj served another purpose which was equally, if not more, vital. It tried and contained the upheaval which the Congress under Gandhi brought about. Finally, as the upheaval increased at the end of World War II partly as a result of the Muslim League’s politics of communal violence, and as the administrative machinery itself was both radicalised and communalised, the Raj gave up and transferred power, in as orderly a fashion as was possible in the circumstances.
Every revolution is a dual process. Mass mobilisation on the part of the revolutionaries has to be accompanied by a determined attempt on the part of the authorities to contain it. When the revolution succeeds, some of the erstwhile revolutionaries themselves have to accept and discharge the obligations of the overthrown regime. That is why all revolutions devour their own children. Containment of the revolutionary fervour is an essential component of the dialectical-revolutionary process. Or else, the result would be anarchy and not revolution.
India went through such a period of anarchy on the eve, and in the wake, of the transfer of power on August 15, 1947, precisely because the mechanism for the containment of popular passions could not cope with them. The anarchy took the form of communal carnage because in the years preceding independence, mobilisation too, had been given a violently communal turn by the Muslim League under Jinnah’s leadership.
Power Transfer
The transfer of power transformed the role of Congress leaders, as it were, overnight. Agitators became rulers. As if to symbolise the change, they even moved into British-built spacious bungalows and surrounded themselves with liveried servants and other appurtenances of power. Gandhi was appalled and wanted them to continue to live as ordinary citizens. But basically the issue was not a moral, but a political one. It related to the change in the role of top Congress leaders – from mobilisation of the people to the containment of popular passions and aspirations.
Gandh I recommended the dissolution of the Congress party so that those who were interested in parliamentary politics (ruling the country) could form their own party, and those who were interested in constructive work, (mobilisation of the people) could go their own separate way. Once again the old man offered a unique solution to a problem which has concerned all democratic politics since the time of the Magna Carta in the 13th century: And once again he was wanting to tilt the balance against those in office, by depriving them of the prestige of the party of independence and the support its workers could provide them.
As on the issue of partition, Gandhi was isolated on the question of dissolving the Congress organisation on the achievement of independence. But the question he raised did not disappear. What was to be the relationship between the government and the party?
Brought up on British constitutional practices, Nehru had no doubt that parliament was supreme in the country and that the Congress party’s parliamentary wing must have precedence over the organisational set-up, because the elected members represented the Indian people. But in his capacity as Congress president, Acharya JB Kripalani, disputed this proposition and demanded a say in the formulation of the government’s policies. Nehru brushed aside the demand, Kripalani resigned and Nehru, in addition to being Prime Minister, took over as Congress president temporarily.
But in the Indian context, this could not settle the issue once and for all. India was no Britain. The country was undergoing rapid change and democracy was still in its infancy. The issue surfaced again in 1950, when Purshottamdas Tandon was elected Congress president against the wishes of Nehru who then, ironically enough, favoured Kripalani. Tandon enjoyed the support of Sardar Patel and his group. In that sense the election was not a confrontation between the government and the organisation. But it involved defiance of the Prime Minister. Nehru swallowed his pride and for the sake of the party’s unity, allowed himself to be persuaded to serve on Tandon’s working committee. But he was not reconciled to the situation; he could not be. One of his closest colleagues, Rafi Ahmed Kidwai, resigned from the Congress along with Kripalani and there was widespread speculation that Nehru himself might follow suit. Fortunately, this did not happen; it would have been a disaster for the Congress and the country. In December l950 Patel died; Nehru forced Tandon to resign soon afterwards, and once again took over as Congress president.
After this, there was no challenge to Nehru’s position till the Chinese attack in 1962, and the subsequent deterioration in his own health. Congress presidents subordinated themselves to him, as did other Congress leaders. But in his decline, when perhaps he knew that the end was near, he also felt obliged to seek the help of the then Congress president, Kamaraj Nadar, to remove some of the Union cabinet ministers and chief ministers who he (Nehru) did not like, among them Morarji Desai, who for years had seen himself as Nehru’s natural successor. This was an indication that the status of the organisational bosses had improved, while that of the Prime Minister had suffered.
This fact was not obvious immediately; such was Nehru’s prestige. But it became clear first in 1964, when the organisation men headed by Kamaraj Nadar secured Lal Bahadur Shastri’s elevation to the office of Prime Minister, in the face of opposition from Morarji Desai and then in 1966, when, on the sudden death of Lal Bahadur Shastri, they managed to put Indira Gandhi in that august office, again in the face of opposition by Desai, who this time decided to contest. Like her father, Indira Gandhi, too, could not agree to subordinate the office of Prime Minister to that of the party chief, though she had to bide her time and could perhaps have lived with an uneasy truce, if the organisation bosses had not thrown the gauntlet in 1969, when they decided to ignore her wishes in the selection of the party’s nominee for presidentship of the republic. Indira Gandhi did not shirk a fight, if it was imposed on her, but she was not keen to provoke a fight
Major Split
So we were back to square one, even before Indira Gandhi took over as Prime Minister in January 1966. We are all familiar with the consequence in the shape of the first major split in the Congress in 1969. But that was not all. When on independence, the Congress took over the responsibility of managing the country’s affairs and when inevitably the top leaders moved into the government at the Centre and in the States, it could not continue to mobilise the people in the old way. All it could do, was to advertise the government’s achievements and claim support on that basis.
In view of its presence all over the country, up to the village level in most states, it could become and it did become a superb election machine. But it could do so only by coming to terms, at least to a significant extent, with established and emerging interests. It could not
mobilise the people against them in the context of competitive politics.
The change in the Congress role and approach created a sort of a vacuum in the country’s political life. This fact has generally got ignored, for a variety of reasons. But
the vacuum was a fact.
(To be concluded)
(This is a slightly shortened version of “The Indira Years: From 1966 to 1984” that appeared in “100 Glorious Years”, edited by Dr. Rafiq Zakaria, on the occasion of the Congress centenary)
The Times of India, 19 November 1986