By Inder Jit
(Released on 2 January 1990)
Familiar resolutions and exhortations are withusagain in the New Year, which also marks the beginning of the new decade. The air is appropriately full of bon homie and good cheer. Nevertheless there is a feeling of uneasiness deep down as most people seek an answer to one question: What will 1990 and the nineties bring for India? Stability and progress or instability and strife? Many hopes have nodoubt been roused by the new government. It has promised, among other things, “to restore the dignity of the individual” and “to adopt an alternative model of governance and development based on socialist ideals of economic equality and social justice …” But disquiet persists and many ask: Will the V.P Singh Government last and, if so, how long? Will the National Front continue to place the country before self or will its leaders repeat 1979? Will the BJP and the Left Front parties continue to extend full support to Mr. V.P. Singh? Or will they fall apart in the pursuit of their pet politics?
Expectedly, crystal gazers and political pundit have been in great demand over the past week Answers vary, depending largely on personal predilections and respective attitudes to Mr. V.P. Singh and Mr. Rajiv Gandhi. What 1990 may bring is anybody’s guess. One thing alone is clear. The V.P. Singh Government has a fair chance of survival for one simple reason. Every party, big or small, and every MP want the ninth Lok Sabha to survive, notwithstanding its hung character. The recent election has left all of them exhausted not only physically and financially but also in spirit. Nobody is in a position to even think in terms of fighting another election for at least two to three years. Already, the burden of the approaching Assembly poll in several states including Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh and Assam, weighs heavily on the top leaders of all the parties, not to mention the smaller fries. The ensuing poll is certain to leave the parties more exhausted and to make them think even less in terms of another general election.
But a little will depend upon the outcome of the V.P. Singh Government’s decision to actively probe the Bofors scandal. Its Ministers are confident of getting at the truth and, to quote one senior leader, “In fixing Mr. Rajiv Gandhi”. Indeed, one leader asserted: “Once Mr. Rajiv Gandhi is seen to be guilty of having benefitted personally or having protected someone close to him, the Congress MPs will have to pause and ponder – and taken hard decisions. Remember, all of us and most Congress-I men belong basically to the old Congress culture…” The Congress-I leaders, on the other hand, talk confidently of coming out clean. Mr. Rajiv Gandhi asserted in the Lok Sabha at one stage last week: All the accusations will be proved wrong.” His aides later added: “Once our leader is proved clean, we will romp back to power. There will then be no stopping us….” In another case, the outcome is almost certain to clear the ground for a ball game at the Centre in which one to the two — Mr. V.P. Singh and Rajiv Gandhi — will surely come to acquire the upperhand.
That too, will depend on the V.P. Government’s ability to give us model of Governance and, bluntly put, to prove Winston Churchill wrong once again — as was done by Nehru, Sardar Patel, Maulana Azad and other Congress leaders in their time. What he said in the House of Commons in 1947while opposing the bill granting independence to India needs to be recalled even if the words caused great hurt. “Liberty,” he then said, “is man’s birth right. However, to give the reins of government to the Congress at this juncture, is to hand over the destiny of the hungrymillions into the hands of rascals, rogues and free booters. Not a bottle of water or a loaf of bread shall escape taxation. Only the air will be free and the blood of these hungry millions will be on the head of Mr. Atlee. India will be lost in political squabbles. It will take a thousand years for them to enter the periphery of philosophy of politics. Today we hand over the reins of government to men of straw of whom no trace will be found after years.”
Many hark back today to the hopes and expectations of Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru in the context of the promise of “an alternative model of governance.” I, for one would, however, like to remind that readers of masterly speech by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar on the concluding day of constituent Assembly. He said, “Will Indians place the country above their creed or will they place creed above the country? What would happen to her democratic constitution? Will she be able to maintain it or will she lose it again?” India, he said, was not new to democracy. Time was when India has studded with republics and even where there were monarchies, they were either elected or limited. They were never absolute. Again, it was not as though India did not know Parliaments. Not only were their Parliaments but the Sanghasobserved rules. They had rules regarding seating arrangements, rules regarding motions, resolutions, quorum, whip, counting of votes, voting by ballot, censure motion, regularization, resjudicata etc.
India had lost this democratic system, Dr. Ambedkar added and asked: “Will she lose it a second time”? Significantly, he answered, “I do not know. But it is quite possible in a country like India — where democracy from its long disuse must be regarded as something new — there is a danger of democracy giving place to dictatorship. It is quite possible for this new born democracy to retain its form but give place to dictatorship in fact. If there is a landside, the danger of the second possibility becoming actuality is much greater.” He next asked: If we wish to maintain democracy not merely in form but also in fact, what must we do? “The first thing,” he added, “We must do is to hold to constitutional methods of achieving our social and economic objectives.” It meant that “we must abandon the method of civil disobedience, non-cooperation and satyagraha.” Where Constitutional methods were open, there was “no justification for unconstitutional methods.” These methods were nothing “but the Grammar of Anarchy”.
Dr. Ambedkar added: “The second thing we must do is to observe the caution which John Stuart Mill has given to all interested in the maintenance of democracy, namely, not to lay their liberties at the feet of even a great man or to trust him with powers which enable him to subvert their institutions.” There was nothing wrong in being grateful to a great man. But he quoted the Irish patriot Daniel O’Connel to assert: “No man can be grateful at the cost of his honour, no woman can be grateful at the cost of her chastity and no nation can be grateful at the cost of its liberty.” This caution he pointed out, was far more important in the case of India than any other country. For in India, Bhakti or hero-worship was a “road to degradation and eventual dictatorship.” The third thing, he said, we must do was to make our political democracy a social democracy as well. Social democracy implied recognition of liberty, equality and fraternity as the principle of life. The three formed a union of trinity. To divorce one from other would defeat the very purpose of democracy.
Equally important today is what Dr. Rajendra Prasad stated as the President of the Constituent Assembly: “We have prepared a democratic Constitution. But successful working of democratic institutions requires in those who have to work them willingness to respect the view-point of others, capacity for compromise and accommodation. Many things which cannot be written in a Constitution are done by conventions. The way in which we have been able to draw this Constitution without taking recourse to voting and to divisions in lobbies strengthens that hope. Whatever the Constitution may or may not provide, the welfare of the country will depend upon the way in which, the country is administered. That will depend upon the men who administer it… If the people who are elected and capable and men of character and integrity, they would be able to make the best even of a defective Constitution. If they are lacking in these, the Constitution cannot help the country. India needs today nothing more than a set of honest men who will have the interest of the country before them.”
Old is not necessarily gold. We do not have to stick by all the old rules of game. At the same time, we cannot allow the law of the jungle to take over. In one single generation, we have degenerated from an honest societyinto a dishonest one. We must cry a halt to the new culture which has developed since 1969 and which saw many established norms and values crash. More and more people are today inclined to be a law unto themselves at their respective levels with little regard for integrity, fairplay or truth. Often rules and situations are fixed and manipulated to suit one’s own interest in the single-minded pursuit of power. If the old rules are outmoded, new rules must be drawn up. But we cannot do without rules. There was also need for much else: to reaffirm our commitment to the Constitution and give ourselves a code of conduct and values — values all can share and values which will rekindle trust between man and man. It’s time to heed Dr. Ambedkar’s warning and act. —INFA