THE TALE OF TWO PARIWARS AND TWO POLITICAL PROPHETS

The 2014 general elections seem to mark the zenith of power, so far, of the Sangh Pariwar’s affiliate, the BJP, and the nadir of the Nehru Pariwar’s fortunes. It is interesting to study the relationship of rise and fall of these two Pariwars.

Before the arrival of Gandhi on the Indian political scene, Indian nationalist politics was dominated by two different schools of politics. One comprised the likes of Pherozshah Mehta, the anglicised drawing room nationalist, who thought that most of the answers to human problems had already been found by the Anglo-Saxons in Western Europe and Northern America and that all we had to do was to copy them deftly. The other school, equally powerful but the opposite pole, was represented by the likes of Bankim Chandra who, loosely put, suggested that going back to the days of ancient glory was the answer to all present-day problems.

Gandhi snatches the politics away from these westernized drawing rooms and ancient caves and makes common cause with the common man howsoever illiterate and poor he may be. The present, as it is, in its ugliest form is embraced with a resolve to make it beautiful in accordance with an indigenous vision, rather than being remade in the image of some remote western model or some ancient dream.

But these two powerful thoughts reassert themselves soon - almost together. The Sangh Pariwar is founded in the year 1925. It follows the legacy of Bankim Chandra. The drawing room of Mehta is reborn when the Nehru dynasty is founded in 1928. Jawaharlal Nehru is made the president of the Indian National Congress in 1928, a few years before his contemporaries such as Prasad, with active support from Motilal, and another Pariwar is born. There are letters from Motilal to Gandhi pushing for Jawaharlal to be made the Congress president in the year 1928. Similarly in the 1950s, immediately after Jawaharlal Nehru resigns from the Congress’s Central Parliamentary Board, Indira Gandhi is nominated for this highest political decision making body of the Congress. Indira Gandhi is made Congress president in 1959 when Jawaharlal is the prime minister. We will not be able to find many great political achievements of Indira Gandhi making her eligible for this top post of Congress in 1959. Contrast this with Gandhi, who, when offered a choice of nominating a young student for a foreign scholarship, prefers to send somebody else over his sons. When Patel becomes a minister after independence, he bars his son from coming to Delhi lest there be a notion that his son had access to the highest echelons of power. Motilal and Jawaharlal, in that glorious galaxy of nationalist leaders, are the rare exceptions who pushed, with some circumspection, the political careers of their offspring and established their Pariwar.

There have been insinuations that one Pariwar had, at least some relations with Godse, the man who killed Gandhi. However, Godse was too small a man to be capable of killing Gandhi at the level of thoughts and ideas. The real blow to the political ideas of Gandhi comes from the other Pariwar – the Nehru Pariwar.  The post-1947 establishment under Nehru will have nothing to do with the radically decentralized Swadeshi model of political organization and development of Gandhi. He embarks upon a policy of a highly centralized model of political organization and development. To a large extent, Nehru imports and implements a centralized western Fabian Socialist model of development and damages Gandhi’s political ideas seriously at the level of thought. At the level of behavior, the attack comes from Indira. Purity and goodness, which are central to Ganhi’s political existence, are made irrelevant to a large extent, by Indira. Lohia tries to take Gandhi’s legacy forward but is not allowed to take his area of influence beyond a certain point by the two Pariwars.

The two Pariwars, the Sangh Pariwar and the Nehru Pariwar, are born together.  From 1947 onwards their fortunes have been intertwined. The pinnacle of Nehru Parivar’s power is reached in 1947 and the decade following that. The Sangh Parivar is at its lowest during that period. It is accused of having a hand in the murder of Gandhi, it is banned and so on and so forth. As the power of the Nehru Pariwar starts waning in the 60s, the power of the Sangh Pariwar and its political affiliate, the Jan Sangh, grows. In the 1967 general elections, Indian National Congress (led by Indira Gandhi) gets less than 300 seats for the first time. It is interesting to note that this is the election when the Jan Sangh makes its presence felt on the national scene with 10% of the votes and 40 parliamentary seats. Since then, in 1977, in 1989 and in 1998-99, every dip in the fortunes of the Indian National Congress has benefitted the Jan Sangh and its other political avatars, the Janata Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party. Similarly, the surge of the Congress in 1971, 1980, 1984, 2004 and 2009 has been at the cost of Jan Sangh/ BJP. The 2014 general elections is the starkest example of this trend. The biggest loss of the Congress in 2014 elections has produced the biggest win for the BJP. (1991 is an exception where sudden decline of the Janata Dal benefitted both the BJP and the Congress apart from the event of unfortunate assassination of Rajiv Gandhi).

Nehru and Golwalkar are the most articulate voices of these two powerful political forces representing the two sections of Indian society. They set out, in their own deeply flawed ways, to reconstruct India and unleash their formidable political energy. At their best in the decade of the 50s, they represent two opposite sides of ideological spectrum and are able to get a whole generation of Indians to take up the project of, what they believe in their own ways, national reconstruction. The rise of these two forces drowns the voice of Gandhi.

Both the Pariwars have exercised significant influence on Indian history, especially post-independence. They have been the biggest national political forces in the last century. The Communists and Ambedkarites have never been a national presence electorally. The socialists of the 1950s and 60s also could not have a pan-India presence. Mulayam, Laloo and Nitish have neither been socialists nor maintained a national vision. Much as one would like to criticize them, the two pariwars have given some kind of political stability to the country. From 1951 onwards, more or less, their combined vote-share in the national elections has been more than 45% and they have, together, got more than 300 seats giving the country political stability. They have also given some semblance of growth. However, the legacy of Gandhi and Lohia has been buried somewhere.

The last three decades have seen a steady decline of the Congress even though they have won some elections. The organization of Congress hardly exists in the Hindi heartland. The only ideology they seem to possess is singing paeans to the Nehru Pariwar.

For BJP’s Ramdev, Sonia had Imam Bukhari. Imran Masood of the Congress who threatened to chop Modi to pieces can find a good friend in Giriraj Singh of the BJP who threatened to send people who would not vote for Modi to Pakistan. The right wing politics of the BJP can be put to shame by the right wing allies of the Congress in Kerala.

At a superficial level, the 2014 election seemed to be glorious for the Sangh Pariwar. The battle of images was won by Modi. But the history, when it judges him, will go far deeper than the 3D holographic projections.

For any discerning eye, the intellectual and moral decline of the Sangh and the BJP in the last few decades is more than obvious. After Golwalkar, the Sangh leadership can be seen in constant intellectual decline in Deoras, Rajju Bhaiyaa, Sudarshan and Mohan Rao Bhagwat. Rahul Gandhi is as much a caricature of Nehru as Sudarshan was of Golwalkar.

Six months in power could be early days. However, the six months of the present government read with the six years of Bajpayee Government can lead one to a safe conclusion that there are not many fundamental differences in Manmohanomics and BJP’s economic policies. Crony capitalism was as rampant in Bajpayee’s Government as it has been in Congress Governments. Modi Sarkar is trying to make a pretence of difference on that account however on the issue of black money it has repeated the same false excuses which Modi was so fond of pillorying from his 3D holographic projections. 

Modi himself has nothing to do with Ekatm Manavwad of Deen Dayal Upadhyaya which as it is, a confused doctrine created for the sake of having a doctrine. The corruption and Congressisation of the BJP is complete. Modi Sarkar has already started leaking stories as to how the Prime Minister is rapping its corrupt ministers on the knuckles. There is an uncanny resemblance of these stories with the Congress leaks where Sonia was always trying to straighten its hugely corrupt cabinet ministers. The fundamental spin of both the narratives is the same. The top person who is projected as a demi god is good and is trying to control his/ her cabinet ministers whose being corrupt is inevitable.

The BJP is nothing more than a saffron Congress as once suggested by its now discarded patriarch Advani.

One pariwar got replaced by another in the 2014 elections. However, the prospect of a regenerative Indian politics is not a concern for either of them. There is hardly any replacement in the real sense of the term because the two streams have become completely interchangeable. In their rise, the two Pariwars, represented two streams flowing in opposite directions – eastward and westward. Subsequently both have gone downhill and they seem to merge in their decay. But this merger is not producing a Sangam.

Will the Sangam come from the ideas of Gandhi and Lohia, the two most formidable political thinkers of the last century who are yet to gain their due! Who will revive the legacy of Gandhi and Lohia and make it a national force?

 

Is Modi OBC enough - The wheel has turned

The working of sixty five years of Indian democracy has shaken the foundations of more than three thousand years old Indian feudalism. When the last so-called Hindu Hriday Samrat (Shiva Jee) made his pitch for a pan-India empire, he had to call for Brahmins from Benaras to establish his Kshatriya origins, because his alleged savarna origins were doubted by his detractors.

Three hundred and fifty years later, when the next self-proclaimed Hindu Hriday Samrat (Modi) is making a pitch for himself to rule the country, one of his election issues has been his much advertised OBC origins. The response of the Congress is: no - no, Modi is not OBC enough.

The Indian feudalism ran on the basis of strict control of hierarchies. Disabilities were inflicted or un-earned qualities were bestowed, the moment an infant was born, on the basis of his or her caste and family. This allowed a lot of mediocres to grow far beyond their hard work or entitlement and stifled talent. Indian feudalism straddled our society on two legs – caste and family.

When men / women of talents and ambitions from deprived sections built-up kingdoms and empires for themselves, they had to engage renowned Brahmins to trace a fake genealogy for themselves linking them to some savarna caste and famous ancient family. Mauryas of Patliputra and Shiva jee from Maharshtra can be cited as examples. There are also examples galore from Central India, of some adivasi kingdoms doing something similar. For instance, the Raj Gonds of MP/Chhattisgarh are a case in point. Dilip Singh Judeo of the BJP, who was widely tipped to be the CM of Chhattisgarh, had fate not intervened, was a Raj Gond.

The independence, education, adult franchise combined with the leadership of Phule, Periar, Ambedkar and Lohia has shaken the foundations of Indian feudalism in our political life. To be from a Dalit or OBC caste does not mean political weakness any more. It is a sign of strength. Vasundhara Raje tom-toms her Gujjar marriage and underplays her savarna birth. Karunanidhi, Lalu, Nitish, Mulayam and Mayawati have already reaped the benefits of this changed phenomenon at the state level. Modi is trying, to an extent, to do the same at the central level. Rahul Gandhi is being attacked by all his opponents for what has been his only strength – his family. It is another matter that most of these enemies of savarna caste hierarchies have established their family fiefdoms - which was the another side of the same coin – Indian feudalism.

As the grand old party heads towards its worst ever defeat in the Hindi heartland since 1977, should it blame Manmohan’s corrupt government and Rahul’s infantile leadership only? Has it ever wondered in the last twenty years when it has been suffering one defeat after another in Hindi heartland, as to whether it’s largely upper crust/ upper caste leadership needs to be replaced by leaders of humbler social and economic origins.

The writer is not a supporter of Modi or his politics. But any student of Indian politics will see how he has denied tickets to old war horses like C P Thakur in Patna and given it to new entrants like Ram Kripal Yadav. The reasons are obvious. When the growth of BJP plateaued in 1990s in the Hindi heartland, its ideologue Govindacharya advocated his famous “social engineering” and promoted OBC leaders like Sushil Kumar Modi in Bihar by discarding the likes of Tarakant Jha. However, the largely savarna BJP/ Sangh leadership did not allow his idea to prosper. The result was BJP plateaued in Chattisgarh, Rajasthan and declined in UP. In Bihar they were able to hold on to something with the help of Nitish. Overall BJP came down in the next fifteen years from its 1998-99 peak. Wily Modi has recognized this.  If BJP does well in these elections, the reason will not be so-called Modi wave or his governance. It may just be a calculated recognition of the changing realities of Indian Politics which other national players have failed to recognize.

If today Droncharya had to pick up – possibly he would prefer Eklavya over Arjun who would have far more political potential. With all its distortions, there is no denial that the wheel has turned in Indian Politics. One leg of Indian feudalism has been seriously damaged and it is limping.

When will the turn of family come! When will the time come when Mulayam and Sons, Chautala and Co, Nehru, Gandhi and son and son-in-law, Sindhia and Daughters, these family firms which are already ideologically and intellectually bankrupt will be wound up politically?