Atal Bihari Vajpayee's 93rd birthday: The man who brought governance and development into political agenda

I wrote this article on the 93 birth anniversary of Vajpayee for Firstpost.
You can read a version of the article below:

Governments come and go and parties are born and disappear. Above it all, the country must stay shining, its democracy immortal. Former prime minster Atal Bihari Vajpayee said this while speaking at the Confidence Motion in Parliament on 28 May, 1996. The government that was formed that day ran for only thirteen days as he was not ready for horse-trading of MPs.

In the course of his long political journey, Vajpayee's personal integrity did not receive a single stain and his political chastity and credibility remained impeccable. Better known as Atalji, he could easily make space among people through his mild manners, gentle humour and poetic lilt. After Jawaharlal Nehru, he is the only Indian political leader under whose direction a party won three general elections in a row.

Vajpayee was conferred the Padma Vibhushan in 1992 and in 1994 he was named the best parliamentarian. At the BJP convention in November, 1995, he was declared the prime ministerial candidate for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls. In 1996, BJP emerged as the single largest party and Vajpayee took oath as the prime minister. This government , however, did not last long. In his historical speech in Parliament during the floor test he said that he will not touch corruption even with a kitchen tong (chimta). The government fell one by one.

Politics of Governance

The six years during which Vajpayee led the country, redefined Indian politics. BJP contested the elections with the slogan of ‘Able leadership, Stable Government’ and Vajpayee gave the country a much-needed stable government.

During his term as the prime minster, Vajpayee took several new initiatives. In 1998, showing great political dynamism and gusto, he green-signalled the nuclear tests that made India a full nuclear power. The USA and other countries put India under sanctions which failed to have an impact. Within one-and-a-half year, first President Bill Clinton and then other world leaders visited India and signed partnership agreements. For the first time India was beginning to make its foray as an emerging world power.

The reforms pushed by the Vajpayee government, improved the country's economic growth rate which reached 6-7 percent and the benefits of this percolated to the grassroots. Employment was generated, record foreign investment was registered and infrastructure improved like never before. India emerged as an IT super power in the world. People felt development work around them.

Vajpayee started an ambitious project to connect four ends of India with a four-lane road. It was a herculean task given the sheer volume of the project. The Golden Quadrilateral project started to became a reality with an average of 15-km road being laid each day. This project helped in putting economy on growth track. Another related project was the Prime Minster Gram Sadak Yojana whose target was to connect all the villages with the city roads.

At a BJP national executive held on 15th April, 2000, he wondered 'What after political success'. He also answered his own question saying now that the party had governments in centre and many states, its leaders should make efforts to improve the quality of governance. National interest and people ’s service should be our top priority while doing politics of governance, he said.

Vajpayee declared his long-time associate and Union Home Minster LK advani as the Deputy Prime Minster. The then BJP president Venkaiah Naidu termed Vajpayee as Vikas Purursh (Man of Development) and Advani as Lauh Purursh (Iron Man) in 2002.

On 12 January, 2004 at the Hyderabad BJP national executive, Vajpayee announced the decision to go in for elections. He said, the BJP is not just a political party but a movement of social transformation. "Different sections of the society are coming to our fold. We should again take verdict of the people and try to fulfil their aspiration. We should make all our efforts to make India a develop country by 2020," he said.

BJP lost 2004 general elections by a few seats. Atalji said after the results, "We have lost the government but we have not lost sight of our commitment to national service. We have lost elections not the determination. Victory or loss are integral parts of life, we accept them with equanimity." Atalji gave up political life in 2005. In 2015, President Pranab Mukherjee visited Vajpayee at his house in a special gesture and conferred the highest civilian honour - the Bharat Ratna - to him.

Observing his commitment to governance and development, the central government has decided to celebrate his birthday as Good Governance Day. Besides being a man of masses, an author, journalist and thinker, Atalji also was a great administrator and statesman. He set the new standard of politics - one of governance and development - inspiring millions who contribute to the country's social and political life.

Dattopant Thengadi: Man Who Brought Workers And Peasants Under The Saffron Flag

I wrote this article on Dattopant Thengadi for Swarajya. You can read a version of the article below:

In the 1950s, one-third of the world was besotted with communist ideology. The famous slogan in India then was Lal kile pe lal nishan, maang raha hai Hindustan (India wants to see the red sign at Red Fort). The Left ideology dominated the labour movement in India at that time. It was at this juncture that Dattopant Thengadi successfully made inroads into worker and peasant movements in India and established the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) in 1955. Today, BMS is a leading workers' organisation in the world and represents the country at bodies like the International Labour Organization.

Rise In Public Life

Dattopant Thengadi was born on 10 November 1920 in Vardha, Maharashtra. After completing BA and LLB, he became a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) pracharak in 1942. At the age of 15, he joined Vanar Sena in Vardha to fight for the freedom of the country. As an RSS pracharak, he was sent to Kerala where he stayed for two years and was later transferred to Bengal. In 1949, he was assigned the task of organising workers and labourers. Six years later, he established the BMS which later became the largest labour organisation in India.

Thengadi entered Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS) under the directive of the RSS and worked as an organising secretary in Madhya Pradesh and in the south India. He was a member of Rajya Sabha from 1964 to 1976, where he raised demands of workers and peasants. When Nanaji Deshmukh and Ravindra Verma, the secretaries of Struggle Committee against Emergency were arrested, Thengadi took up the mantle and directed all his efforts towards the foundation of the Janata Party. But, he did not like politics and returned to his first love - workers and peasant movement.

He was the founder of many other organisations like the Swadesh Jagran Manch, Samajik Samrasta Manch and others.

As an author, he wrote more than 80 books and booklets, most of which dealt with the hardships of workers and the downtrodden. His books include Labor Policy, Karykarta, Destination, Focus, The Hindu View of Arts, The Perspective, Our National Renaissance, Third Way, Ambedkar and Social Revolution.

Saurashtra University, Gujarat, conferred a doctorate on him for his contribution to the labour and peasant movement in India.

Workers, Unite The World

With the consent of Guru Golwalkar, Thengadi had been organising workers since 1949. He applied Deendayal Upadhyay’s philosophy of integral humanism to the cause of workers and peasants and replaced the idea of class struggle with class coordination and cooperation. He was the first person in Indian history who established a worker's movement that was not inspired by Marxist ideology or any other political party and factored in the Indian value system. He was of the view that with time and space, ideas and their relevance changes. At the first all-India workshop of BMS on 27 October 1968 in Maharashtra, he said, “If there exist different societies in different conditions in same time period, then there could be no one 'ism' for them. Similarly one idea cannot be considered appropriate for one society over different time periods. Nor a single 'ism' can be a panacea of all ills because time and conditions change and any ideology or 'ism' takes shape out of the knowledge pool of that time.'

Thengadi was clear that the fight had to be against injustice and not against any class. He gave the call, ‘workers, unite the world’ in place of ‘workers of the world, unite’.

Earlier, chanting Bharat Mata ki Jai and Vande Matram at rallies and programmes of workers was unheard of. BMS broke this silent taboo and started hoisting a saffron flag and chanting nationalist slogans.

Thengadi wanted to free the labour movement from the clutches of the Left that looked to the then USSR and China for inspiration. So he gave the slogan - Lal gulami chhod ker, bolo Vandematram. (Leave Red slavery, chant Vande Matram).

The movement from red flag to saffron had a deep impact and even today the indigenous labour movement, BMS, use a saffron flag.

The core philosophy of BMS entails nationalisation of workers, industrialisation of nation and labourisation of industries (Shramikon ka Rashtriyakaran, Rashtra ka Audyogikikaran aur Udyogon ka Shramikikaran).

In Moscow, Thengadi floated the idea of an apolitical labour confederation at an international meeting of World Federation of Trade Unions. This forum was supported by Leftists and his resolution was rejected. He, along with others, floated a new labour federation at the intentional level and named it 'General Confederation of World Trade Unions' and provided it with a white coloured flag in the place of the trademark red one.

In 1985, for the first time, a nationalist labour organisation was invited by the Communist Party of China and a BMS delegation participated under the leadership of Thengadi. Every year now, a BMS delegation takes part in the labour conference in China.

After membership verification in 1989, the Labour Ministry of the government of India declared BMS as the largest labour organisation in the country.

A great scholar, organiser and a greater leader and activist, Thengadi walked the path that none before him had taken. Over the years he became a huge source of inspiration for millions of activists striving for the welfare of workers and peasants.

Search For The ‘Third Way’

Thengadi worked under the ideological guidance of Dr Hedgewar and Guru Golwalkar. He himself became margdarshak (patron) of many organisations and asked juniors to lead these. He believed that a senior should assume the role of a patron and a junior should lead the movement.

He studied both the dominating ideologies of the world and also visited capitalist and socialist countries, and reached a conclusion that there is a need for a third way. He was of the firm belief that the third way could emerge only from the Indian soil.

In one of his lectures at Bengaluru, he claimed that we should not imitate the West blindly. He declared that Westernisation is not modernisation. “We do not think that modernisation is westernisation: Due to over a century of brain washing through Macaulay system of English education, majority of Indians are habituated to believe that anything west is always best. To be modern our lifestyle and thought style should necessarily be western. However this is only a mental blockade. We must come out of it at the earliest and be prepared to think free of western biases. We must accept that modernisation is not westernisation and westernisation is not modernisation.’

He described swadeshi economy through four features - one with free competition without manipulated market, where movement is towards equitability and equality, where nature is milked but not ravaged, and where there is self-employment and not wage employment.

He always fought against economic inequality and opposed social inequality at every level. He worked with Dr B R Ambedkar during the Lok Sabha election in Bhandara, Maharashtra and understood his feelings both towards the marginalised sections of society and nationalism. On 14 April 1983, he established the Samajik Samrasta Manch (Social Harmony Forum) on the birth anniversary of Dr Ambedkar. Ambedkar Aur Samajik Kranti (Ambedkar and Social Revolution) was his last book where he elaborated the idea of social justice and nationalism propounded by Babasaheb.

He was of the firm view that national rejuvenation is possible only through people who strongly believe in the traditional knowledge system of India.

Dattopant Thengadi worked with labour movements but never compromised on the idea of cultural nationalism and national reconstruction. In 2011, workers of the Communist, Centre Of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) joined BMS in chanting Bharat Mata ki Jai and Vande Matram at a workers' rally. The ideas that Thengadi had sown, had come to fruition five decades later.

In Quest of an ‘Indian Right’

I wrote this article on the 'Right' discourse in India for India Foundation Journal. 

You can read a version of the article below:

Bharat is not a defeated but a wounded civilisation. Defeated civilisations cannot write their own history but ones those are wounded have the stamina and zeal for it. The question is what path must a wounded civilisation choose in its search of herself? How must it approach and read history so as to find out herself? What should this approach be called? And how do we reach such an approach?

Indian civilisational story is one of continuous evolution. Even after facing many attacks in the last 2,500 years, India has stayed alive simply because of its ability to survive and revive. At the precipice of darkness, the country has always managed to rediscover itself. Those who have faith in this past are billed as the Rightists. They are considered conservative, status-quoist, fundamentalist, rigid etc. These terms have been slapped on them by the Left-intelligentsia who dominate the social science discourse of this country. To begin with, this group of ‘Rightists’ needs to be identified and redefined, not in terms of its detractors but in terms of its own salient features. The quest for a new term may seem like a cosmetic exercise but it actually reflects the true spirit of those who want to build the future with an approach of ‘India First’, keeping in mind the agony of the present and the glory of the past.

Often dismissed for being outside the existing academic discourse, the vantage point of this intellectual-cultural tradition is largely unexplored. To take this forward, we need to arrive at a set of ideas that are not static in nature and which provide theoretical and scientific solutions to the problems of the existing world. There is also a need to identify factors that define or come close to defining the quintessential ‘spirit' of this civilisation.

We must also relook at thinking within the framework of Right and Left. Dattopant Thengdi (RSS Ideologue and Trade Union Leader) talks about the ‘Third Way’ which is neither Right nor Left but talks about indigenous knowledge system and national interest. Conversely, going by popular intellectual discourse, we can say that in the 1990s, RSS-BJP were culturally Right but economically Left. It was a time when RSS-BJP were raising issue of Ram temple on one side and advocating Swadeshi and opposing GATT and WTO, on the other. Bhartiya Mazdoor Sangh and Bharitya Kisan Sangh (Trade Union and Farmers Union associated with RSS) had almost same views as Leftist Trade Unions. Even today, many policies of Modi government cannot be classified under the ‘Economic Right’. C. Rajgopalachari was the guiding light of the ‘Economic Right’ in independent India and advocated free economy. He left Congress when Pandit Nehru declared in 1955 that Socialistic pattern of the society will be the official policy of the Congress in Avadi Session. Rajgoapalchari founded Swatantra Party which along with Bharitya Jan Sangh (BJS) and Lok Dal was instrumental in the defeat of Congress party in nine states in 1967 elections.

Four Points of Reference

In my understanding, there might be four points of reference which should be kept in mind for better understanding and reformulation of ideas what is known as Indian Right. First, India i.e. Bharat has to be studied and understood as a civilizational-state and not just a constitutional-state or nation-state. The idea of nation-state evolved only in the last 350 years after the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 when the Papacy of medieval age was questioned by the newly formed ‘sovereign’ states which were supported by the capitalist merchants. On the other hand, India has existed as a civilizational unit since several millennia. After the Independence, the idea of constitutional nation-state came into being. The current history of modern Indian nationalism also does not go back to more than 150 years which is said to be evolved after the so called Indian renaissance during the time of Ram Mohan Roy and others followed by the evolution of the Congress party. For India to be studied as civilizational-state, we need to resuscitate the history of India of thousands years.

Second, the study of India as a civilizational-state will take back our civilisational march from Indus Valley to Saraswati Valley. Traces of the existence of the civilisation will have to be rediscovered where there have been no or negligible efforts since Independence. Recently, there was a small report that Bhirrana in Haryana was claimed to be much older than sites of Harappa and Mohanjodaro. Many more such discoveries need to be made to fill in the existing gaps in India’s historical map.

Third, the history of last 1,300 years needs to become the reference point to know about our freedom struggle instead of just 130 years. While it is acceptable to study the history of Modern India from where modern nationalism begins, but without the reference point of 1,300 years, our understanding of Modern India can never be complete. We cannot brush aside the critical context of King Dahir, who ruled over Sindh and whose defeat at the hands of Mohammed Bin Quasim heralded a long phase of stagnation in knowledge, culture and tradition. Instead of spiritual and mental battle, the country was now fighting for its existence. Hereon, the caste system became rigid, women were confined indoors and ill-practices proliferated. The chain of philosophical tradition' set by the Upanishads was broken. One cannot understand India just by studying history of last 130 years, for that we need to take into account 1,300 years. While the history of the freedom movement of modern India is a great educator, we also need to study the freedom struggle of medieval India for a more comprehensive view. Moreover, our study of history has to be both dispassionate and unapologetic.

Fourth, spiritualism is the mainstay of this civilisational-state. This civilisation is not intolerant simply because its essential nature is of assimilation and evolution. From Peshawar to Ganga Sagar the plains between Indus and Ganges are as fertile as its culture and tradition. Suitable climatic conditions and fertile land made life simple and easy and this provided scope for inner quest i.e. 'chintan'. As a result, for many millennia, spiritualism became the basic foundation of Indian civilisation. Each time the civilisation stepped into decadence – Buddha, Shankar, Mahavir, Tulsi, Soor, Kabir, Gynaeswar, Ramanand, Vivekanand, Gandhi, Golwalkar and Ambedkar showed up and reignited the light of knowledge, making India a ‘Sanatan' civilisation.

India is a spiritual entity which evolved in thousands of years. The spiritual power of India is so immense that it accommodates everyone and evolves without struggle and also without compromising with its core values. The history is replete with instances of rulers (Kanishk and Milind) who won in the battle field but were defeated by the spiritual power of this land.

India Today

Having set a foot firmly in the past we must now turn our eye to the future. What we need is a new set of ideas, tools, symbols, terminologies and methods to re-establish our civilisational march. So far we have been working with those provided by our detractors. We might win a debate or two with this borrowed armoury but we can never make a lasting contribution.

As we build our own bank of ideas, we also need to answer some critical questions. What should be our vantage point - Harappa Valley Civilisation, Chandra Gupta Maurya or 1947 or Ramayan and Mahabharata period? Far from the line-up of Ashok ‘the Great’ and Akbar ‘the Great’, what about Chandra Gupta Maurya, Rajendra Chola, Lalitaditya, Samudra Gupta, Rahtrakoot, Pratihar, Marathas, Kanishka, Harsh and others. On the other hand, what about the origin of caste based biases and women subjugation? Similarly, we need to find the answers to the question ranging from territorial integrity, economic policies to gay rights and other issues. By doing this we will be making contemporary derivatives and linking our past to the present. Without this connection we cannot claim our rightful place in the ideological streams of India.

Three Ideological Streams

Three ideological streams have been in existence in India for the last 100 years. First is of Congress inspired by the ideas of Jawaharlal Nehru which says that India is a 'nation in making' started with independence of India. The second is of Communists which say that India is not a nation at all and there are many nationalities and they support all the secessionist movement as a matter of principle in the name of self-determination. Third ideological stream is of Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) which talks about national reconstruction. It believes that India was a glorious nation for a long time. It's glory, lost in the last 1000 years, needs to be restored; hence there is a need to reconstruct our nation and society.

We currently study a distorted face of history where we are taught that Aryans came from Iran and ruled India first. Later, it was Turks and Mughals and then the British. The broad idea here was to establish the civilisational superiority of the West and justify their invasion of this land with narrative of ‘White Men’s Burden’; and to prove that caste and woman subjugation has been an integral part of Indian society and philosophy. Two hymns of Manu Smriti and Ram Charit Manas were used to build up an entire discourse against this  civilisation.

After the formation of the Modi government it was believed that an ecosystem will emerge that will assist the creation of a new narrative to understand the civilisational march of India.  However, the idea that India should remember and develop her own narrative is not is everyone’s interest. Hence, all efforts are being made to block the growth of any such narrative. Since the Modi government came to power, several attempts have been made to malign the image of the government and raise issues like intolerance, fundamentalism and fear of minority communities. Terms like "Hindu Pakistan", "forces of intolerance", and the "situation worse than Emergency” have been coined in the last 45 months. People campaigning on these lines are decidedly anti-Modi and propounded these theories when the formation of a Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre started looking imminent. Many of them had even claimed at that time that they will leave the country if Modi became the Prime Minister. Like true followers of Karl Marx, 'secular-liberal' intellectual elites started with a conclusion and all their arguments now are directed at proving it. Having lost the battle of ballots, they want to now take the fight to academic institutions using universities as semi-liberated zones.

Academia: The New Warfront

A world-renown artist like Anish Kapoor wrote that India is ruled by "Hindu-Taliban" and an academic like Irfan Habib thinks RSS is comparable to ISIS. The factiousness and monotone of these remarks makes one question the  sincerity of our present intellectual scenario. The most obvious yet inconspicuous truth about the academic and intellectual environment in India is that it has for years remained overshadowed by Western and Leftist thinking while maintaining the façade of ‘independent’ thought. Having accepted another's thought tradition as the benchmark we forgot that each country has its own unique knowledge and experience, in our case it was the Indic tradition.

Anish Kapoor and Irfan Habib are the products of an intellectual sphere with strong imprints of the British and Marxist legacy. British bureaucrat Lord Macaulay designed a strategy to make it easy for the British to rule India. He advocated an education system which would produce Brown British to work as loyal clerks under the regime. The key to this was to make the "natives" disown everything Indian and covet everything that was British. We were made to see how flawed and redundant our traditions were and we were so grateful to learn the spelling of 'renaissance'.

The post-Independence India could not rid itself of this mindset. Nehru-Indira governments gave ample space to Leftist-Marxist discourse and institutions like Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) churned out thousands of bureaucrats, academics, journalists and activists with ‘Leftist' leaning. Over a period of time, the Left discourse elbowed out the Indic intellectual ecosystem which was shunned as regressive and backward.

Even today the course on Indian philosophy is not taught in JNU and the proposal for a centre on Sanskrit and Yoga studies is met with stern resistance by Leftists including teachers and students. It is this intellectual tradition that convinces people like Anish Kapoor and Irfan Habib that the Indian civilisation has forever been exploitative and hence the need is to stitch up a new system with no Indic traces.

According to ‘Left-Liberal’ line of thought Sanskrit is the road to Conservatism and Brahmanical dominance. The theory of a terrible Brahmanical regime thus comes to be accepted as a fact and often dangled as a fearsome consequence of faith in the Indic system. No one, however, cares to question that if the theory holds water, how was it that the two greatest Indian epics were penned by Valmiki and Ved Vyas, both non-Brahmins. Does no one wonder if it is possible for an exploitative civilisation to organically survive for more than 5,000 years?

Liberal and Popular Discourse

There is no liberal discourse in our country but there are only predominantly Left-liberals working in the field of media, academics and development. When the intellectual class should have worked on developing an ‘Indian Left’ idea, they found it convenient to accept super-structures dominated by Classical Marxism. The essential Indianisation of Marxism or Left never happened and we created a false paradigm for our debates and discussions.

In the field of popular cultural discourse, Indian cinema is one of the important media. India cinema has played a significant role in developing understanding of our myths and history in the last half century. There are more voices from the world of cinema that influence different issues of national importance. There is a need of group of cinema and literary personalities which can speak on issues of national importance but with a different perspective and represent the counter-cultural narrative of the current times which is now shared by millions of youth of this country and which the outdated intellectual class want to brand as 'intolerant' and crass.

A peek into the time of Partition provides us valuable insight into the Left leanings of the Indian film industry. That was the time when actors like Dilip Kumar and the Lahore Writers' Group became a dominating force of the "Bombay" film industry. Many from the Progressive Writers' Forum (read Communists) also joined the film industry from time to time like KA Abbas, Bhim Sahani, MS Satthu and others. Like the rest of the country, the film industry too was deeply influenced by the wave of Nehruvian-Socialism. The film circuit, as a result, was dominated by Left-liberals and Congress-supporters like Nargis, Sunil Dutta, Amitabh Bachchan, Rajesh Khanna and Shah Rukh Khan. During the Emergency the cinema fraternity was asked by "Yuvraj" Sanjay Gandhi to organise musical nights and create an environment in support of Emergency. The only dissenting voice of that time was of Manoj Kumar who made patriotic films like Upkaar and Purab Aur Paschim. Today, there are few cine stars like Anupam Kher who have broken away from the old guards and taken a nuanced ideological position. We need more Anupam Khers which can represent a parallel narrative which has the potential to give birth to a new paradigm of intellectual-cultural tradition free from old ideological shackles and representative of a de-colonised Indian mind.

In Search of Indic Tradition

Collective efforts are needed to search and work for an Indic tradition. For Left-liberals, Indic is equivalent to Right-wing, Hindu-centric, nationalist or Hindu-nationalist but actually it is more than that. Indic comprises anything that originates from this land, blossoms in this atmosphere and prospers in this geo-cultural territory. An Indic tradition can lead to assimilative points of view, nuanced solutions and the creation of truly ‘new’.

Such an Indic ecosystem based on our civilisational values can provide the adequate environment to discuss our civilisation background, its legacy and relevance as well as its lessons. Today, when religion is a major area of conflict, very few academic institutions conduct a comparative study of religions. This is because of an academic-intellectual environment that alienates and distances religions from each other. An Indic intellectual environment will provide the necessary insight and compassionate approach needed for such a study. Our ancient texts and writings of intellectuals like Coomaraswamy, Yadunath Sarkar, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and Vasudev Agrawal can provide the ammo to start this intellectual spark.

Respect for local heroes, beliefs and modernisation of Indian traditions would be the basic foundation of an Indic intellectual ecosystem. It would take inspiration from the past, think about the present and envision a prosperous future for all Indians. We can not prosper and develop with a borrowed narrative. We need to have our own story, conceptualised and narrated by our own people.

The creation of an ‘Indic' intellectual ecosystem does not entail wipe out the Left-Marxist system, but simply balancing it out. It is the responsibility of the academic and intellectual community to create a new narrative that springs from their own intellectual rigour.

Conclusion

Mughals and Turks destroyed Indian temples and knowledge centres but the British developed an education system that was meant to kill India's faith in itself. As a legacy of that education system, the colonial mentality still works in our mind obstructing our journey inventing or discovering anything new or original. There is a dire need to rejuvenate our civilisational discourse and develop an Indic knowledge tradition that will help us and also benefit people all over the world.

We need to develop a theoretical foundation for Bhartiya Drishti - an 'Indian Way' or Indic tradition to look at all the perpetuating problems of India and the world. Before that we need to understand ourselves - develop a vantage point of our knowledge tradition, study when and how it got weak and how it could be revived. We can reform only when we know the form.

A Case for Simultaneous Elections

I wrote this research article on simultaneous elections with my colleague Sushant for India Foundation Journal. You can read a version of the article below:

Introduction

The kind of electoral exercise that we witness in India is unparalleled in the world. Due to the sheer size of electorate and the expanse of our democracy, this electoral exercise doesn’t only assume gigantic proportions, it also leads to huge electoral expenditure. To add to the existing woes, our general and state elections are not held simultaneously and thereby one part or the other of our country is always electorally alert. The Election Commission of India is on its foot throughout the year because of this. This is the situation when we are not taking account of local elections for panchayat and urban municipalities. The ever-rising electoral expenditure on the country because of this can prove detrimental to our governance and developmental goals.

One of the pillars of Indian democracy is the periodic organisation of free and fair elections. Thenature of our elections to be free and fair is threatened by the rising cost of elections as political parties and candidates who contest look out for other sources to cover these costs. It is an open secret that this contributes to political corruption as pointed out by many studies. The frequent elections are also an ever increasing administrative burden for the Election Commission of India (ECI).

Simultaneous elections at the Parliament and state assemblies’ level have been mooted out by many as a remedy to this problem of Indian democracy.

History of Indian Elections

The first election after Independence was held simultaneously for the Parliament and State Assemblies in 1952. The practice was followed without any hitch in three subsequent elections held in 1957, 1962, and 1967. This was mainly because non-Congress regional parties (except Communists in some places) were not as powerful and influential as Congress and thereby were not in a position to dislodge it in the legislatures or in general elections. Things after 1967 changed. It was on account of both state and national politics due to which elections to parliament and state assemblies were delinked. The Fifth General Elections were due in 1972. But in early 1971, Indira Gandhi dissolved the LokSabha, and held the Fifth LokSabha elections in March 1971. The Assembly elections took place as scheduled in 1972. This is how the initial delinking of LokSabha and Assembly elections took place. Due to irresponsible and politically motivated use of article 356, many state assemblies were dissolved in between leading to finalisation of this delinking process.

Simultaneous elections have become exceptions rather than rule. As a result, the Election Commission is busy throughout the year conducting polls in some part of the country or the other. Apart from general elections in 2014, we had legislative assembly elections for eight states: Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Odisha and Sikkim. In 2015, we witnessed elections in Delhi and Bihar. In 2016, five state legislative assembly elections took place: Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Kerala, Puducherry and Assam. That is, in a span of three years (2014-2016) we have conducted one general and 15 state assembly elections.

Countries conducting simultaneous elections

England has chosen to hold general elections and local government elections on the same day since 1997. But, in practice, local elections are delayed if polls to European Parliament have to be held.

Italy, Belgium, and Sweden are some countries that conduct general and local elections together.

In Canada, municipal elections are on fixed dates while provincial and federal elections take place at any time. The Canadian Prime Minister and provincial Premiers have a right to call elections at any time during their tenure of five years. This right could be used by them to prolong their stay in power by going to polls when their popularity is rated high. This led to the rise of “fixed election date” movement a decade ago. It succeeded in introducing set election dates in eight out of 10 provinces. At the centre, the Fixed Election Date Act was adopted in 2007.

In South Africa, national and provincial elections are held simultaneously. Municipal elections are not linked with these.

In India, the question of a fixed tenure has been discussed several times without arriving at any consensus. In 1999, the Law Commission recommended that the cycle of elections every year should be put an end to.

Now we will discuss the issues that arise due to delinking of national and state elections.

Rising Electoral Expenditure for the Government

The expenses incurred by the Government in preparation of electoral rolls, I-cards, election booths & officers etc is significant. The table below indicates expenditure incurred on LokSabha Elections in various years as available on the website of Election Commission.

Year       Expenditure Incurred (Provisional) (Cr Rs)

1952       10.45

1957       5.9

1962       7.32

1967       10.8

1971       11.61

1977       23.04

1980       54.77

1984       81.51

1989       154.22

1991       359.1

1996       597.34

1998       666.22

1999       880

2004       1300

2009       1483

2014       3426

Source: Election Commission of India

2014 elections were the most expensive LokSabha elections ever, entailing a cost of Rs.3,426crore to the national exchequer, a substantial jump of 131% over the Rs.1,483 crore incurred in the 2009 polls. In 1952, the cost of elections per elector was 60 paise which increased to Rs 12 per elector in 2009, a 20-fold hike.

Rising Electoral Expenditure for the Political Parties

Electoral expenditure of political parties as per details given to ECI for 2014 elections.

Political Party     Expenditure incurred (in Rs)

BJP         7,14,28,57,813

INC         5,16,02,36,785

NCP       51,34,44,854

BSP        30,05,84,822

Source: Election Commission of India

The funds collected by the political parties also show a significant rise. The EC report indicates that funds collected by national political parties increased by a whopping 418 per cent in the past 10 years. It is an open secret as to what form of political corruption takes place in fund collection by various parties.

This situation was no different in 2009 when cash accounted for 75% of the money raised by the Congress and half of that of the BJP. In 2009, BJP spent Rs 448.66 crore in the 2009 LokSabha elections, while the Congress spent Rs 380.04 crore. Data analysis shows that only 24 per cent of the total election funding the Congress received was made through cheques and demand drafts, the remaining being in cash. The BJP, however, received close to half (49 per cent) through cheques and demand drafts.

The funding of political parties increased by 35.53 per cent from Rs 854.89 crore in 2009 to Rs 1,158.59 crore in 2014 general elections. The poll expenditure jumped in recent years as over a period of 10 years, as the spending by national political parties during the LokSabha elections went up 386 per cent.

Altogether, the political parties exhausted Rs 858.97 crore on publicity, Rs 311.8 crore on travel, Rs 104.28 crore on other expenses and Rs 311.47 crore on expenditure towards candidates.

According to a projected expenditure estimate of Centre for Media Studies (CMS), Rs 30,000 crores would be spent by government, political parties and candidates in 2014 elections. A study carried out by CMS on poll spending says “unaccounted for” money pumped in by "crorepati" candidates, corporates and contractors has pushed up the expenditure to elect 543 MPs.Out of the estimated Rs 30,000 crore, the exchequer will spend Rs 7000 to Rs 8000 crore to hold the electoral exercise for the 16th LokSabha. While the Election Commission is likely to spend around Rs 3,500 crore, the Union Home Ministry, Indian Railways, various other government agencies and state governments will spend a similar amount to put in place means to ensure free and fair polls.

In India while we have ceilings for the expenses to be incurred by a candidate in their constituencies, there is no such ceiling on the use of money by political parties. The money spent by political parties is not added to the candidate’s expense statement. Another data (published by Association for Democratic Reforms) which gives a good idea about the increasing expenses of the political parties and candidates is the amount received by candidates from their respective political parties. To make matters worse, election expenditure statements have to be submitted only by national and recognized regional parties and rest are exempted from it.

Table: MPs’ declaration of aid for election expenses from the party

Party     Total        MPs who have           Total              MPs to whom           Total sum declared                          LS MPs   declared getting      (in lakhs)            aid was given            by party as given

                              aid from party                                    by party                       to MPs (in lakhs)

BJP         282                   229             Rs 6,589.22L               159                    Rs 4,875.03L

INC         44                       18            Rs 403.60L                      7                     Rs 270L

NCP          6                         6            Rs 279.70L                      5                     Rs 250L

CPI            1                         1           Rs 21.83L                         0                     Rs 0

CPM          9                        9            Rs 265.46L                       4                     Rs 128.50L

Total      342                    263            Rs 7,559.82L                 175                    Rs 5,523.53L

Source: http://adrindia.org/content/lok-sabha-2014-election-expenditure-analysis-declaration-lumpsum-amounts-political-parties

This data is still limited to national elections. One can imagine the scale of problem if we add up the electoral expenses incurred during various state elections happening almost every year.

From the above data presented in this section, one can imagine and make a fair estimate of the gigantic proportions our electoral expenses have assumed. It’s a burden for the government, taxpayers, political parties and the candidates.

Policy Paralysis due to Code of Conduct

The model code of conduct (MCC) is a set of norms which has been evolved with the consensus of political parties who have consented to abide by the principles embodied in the said code in its letter and spirit. It comes into effect the moment Election Commission of India announces an election schedule for polls and stays in force till the end of the electoral process. Under the code, governments cannot do anything which may have the effect of influencing voters in favour of the party in power. Grants, new schemes / projects cannot be announced. Even the schemes that may have been announced before the MCC came into force, but that has not actually taken off in terms of implementation on field are also required to be put on hold.

Due to these stringent guidelines, which comes into effect for 45 days after the schedule for elections are announced by the EC, the whole country (during the times of general elections) and states (during elections to state assemblies) come to a virtual standstill. The normal functioning of the government is hampered. It leads a situation of policy paralysis. It has become a model for inaction. Designed to prevent pre-poll populism by governments and political parties, the frequency of its application has turned the Election Commission's model code of conduct into a charter for non-governance. There are many examples as to how application of Model Code of Conduct for elections causes policy paralysis, however, we have listed a few prominent ones.

Even if status quo is maintained on the code of conduct, there are ways to ensure continuance in decision-making. One solution stems from the way the Delhi High Court decided the dispute over the new telecom policy - by making its continuity conditional on its clearance by the next LokSabha.

Instability

Connected to the above issue, the delinking of elections also leads to a situation where we witness instability at the national level. When elections happen, it involves the whole machinery of government. The party in power cannot afford to look away and even the ministers of highest ranks get involved in the campaign process. In the Bihar elections we saw that even the PM was not spared and was actively engaged in the hectic campaign process. This leads to hampering of normal functioning of the government and negatively affects the governance of the country. Among the parties, the BJP organized the highest number of election rallies — 850 — which were addressed by the party chief Amit Shah, several union ministers, Chief Ministers, party’s MPs and other star campaigners.

Lack of bold decision-making

If a party which is in power at centre loses election in a state, it is projected by the opposition as the results have made severe dent on its mandate to rule. This also leads to loss of confidence in the ruling regime. A negative atmosphere is created which contributes in affecting the governance of the country in an adverse way. A loss in a state election in the middle of the tenure of a government at national level is rapidly projected as a loss of credibility and hence all efforts are made by the strengthened opposition to stall any new reform measures.

Security issues

Fearing outbreaks of attacks by Maoist rebels, terrorist violence and communal clashes between communities, the Ministry of Home Affairs in 2014 mobilised some 200,000 security personnel – comprising 175,000 paramilitary forces and 25,000 state police officers - across the country to protect polling stations and safeguard election results. In the last general election in 2009, the central government-provided security deployment consisted of 120,000 personnel. These figures do not include the hundreds of thousands of other provincial police and local security forces that were deployed to polling stations across the country. This added feature makes our elections more expensive and the fierce competition in elections may also lead to loss of lives at many places. With the elections happening so often, these features have become a recurrent theme of our democratic process.

Recommendations made in this regard

In the first annual report of the Election Commission submitted in 1983, the then chief election commissioner R.K. Trivedi had observed: “The commission is of the view that a stage has come for evolving a system by convention, if it is not possible or feasible to bring about a legislation, under which the general elections to the House of the People and legislative assemblies of the states are held simultaneously.”

170th report of Law Commission of India on ‘Reform of the Electoral Laws’, 1999 mentioned in this regard the following:

This cycle of elections every year, and in the out of season, should be put an end to.  We must go back to the situation where the elections to LokSabha and all the Legislative Assemblies are held at once.

One of the reform proposals mentioned in National Commission to Review the Working of Constitution is: “Hold State level and parliamentary level elections at the same time. This would reduce election expenditure.”

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice headed by EMS Natchiappan submitted its report on the Feasibility of Holding Simultaneous Elections LokSabha and State Legislative Assemblies. The Committee noted that the holding of simultaneous elections to LokSabha and state assemblies would reduce: (i) the massive expenditure that is currently incurred for the conduct of separate elections; (ii) the policy paralysis that results from the imposition of the Model Code of Conduct during election time; and (iii) impact on delivery of essential services and (iv) burden on crucial manpower that is deployed during election time.

There have been demands to hold the two elections together as it can save money, time and resources and ex-Chief Election Commissioner HS Brahma recently said that he is not averse to exploring the possibility.

President Pranab Mukherjee, during his lecture to school students on the Teachers’ Day (5 September) had endorsed the idea of holding simultaneous LokSabha and state legislative assemblies’ elections. President Mukherjee had said that with some election or the other throughout the year, normal activities of the government come to a standstill because of model code of conduct. “This is an idea the political leadership should think of. If political parties collectively think, we can change it”, he had said.

The Election Commission has supported the idea of holding simultaneous elections to Parliament and State Assemblies, in a letter sent to the Law Ministry in May, 2016. This is the first time the poll watchdog has officially expressed its willingness to conduct LokSabha and state polls together. The ECI wrote, “In so far as the Election Commission is concerned, the issues involved in holding simultaneous elections are not insurmountable for it. If there is political consensus and will across the board, needless to say, the Commission supports the idea of considering simultaneous elections”.

The NitiAayog’s discussion paper, ‘Analysis of Simultaneous Elections: The What, Why and How’, bats for simultaneous elections stating that frequent polls change the focus of policy making because “short-sighted populist” and “politically safe” measures are accorded higher priority over difficult structural reforms.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself has floated a very pertinent idea of having simultaneous elections for the LokSabha and state assemblies.

Conclusion

Despite all the difficulties and occasional setbacks that we face, one of the admirable features of Indian democracy is the consistent and fairly high voter participation in elections. This undoubtedly reflects the deep entrenched belief of Indian people in the democratic traditions of this country. We should not return this favour by burdening our citizens with sky-rocketing electoral expenditure and the ill-effects that comes with it. India, being a developing country, cannot ill afford to bear the huge expenditure involved in electoral exercise. From the above discussion it is evident that the issues that we are facing now in terms of spiraling costs of elections, administrative burden on government and Election Commission and governance deficit resulting from these can be better resolved if we revert back to our earlier electoral system whereby we had simultaneous elections for both parliament and state assemblies.

Revisiting Ambedkar’s Idea of Nationalism

My article on Dr Ambedkar's views on nationalism was published in India Foundation Journal.
You can read a version of the article below:

Ambedkar stood with the most downtrodden and deprived sections of the Indian society; the sections which had no voice in public life. The social mobilization of these sections by Ambedkar helped in the national freedom movement. As the Chairman of the Drafting Committee, Ambedkar advocated a strong nation-state.

Introduction

Over thousands of years, human civilization organized itself first in the form of family, then as religion and today we are organized as nation-state. It makes you wonder which institution would the future generations be living in? I posed this question to a well-known social scientist during a discussion on globalization. He weighed several ideas but concluded that in the present context nation-state is still the most enduring institution and likely to be the organisational unit for the coming generations too.

Today we live within this institution of nation-state. Foremost of our thoughts and actions, it serves as a centre of gravity, obvious at some time and obscure at others. It is one of the most organised, well designed institutions which has an organic relationship with mankind and where universal ideas like freedom, equality and democracy have a good chance to flourish. Western thinkers like Gellner, Anderson and Hobsbawm dealt with the idea of nation, nationalism and nationhood which developed in the region over the last 400 years after the Treaty of Westfalia in 1648.

The Bhartiya concept of Rashtra could be considered a parallel to the western term ‘Nation’ but both are also different on several counts. The primary difference between the two stems from the fact that Rashtra is more of an ethic-spiritual concept while Nation is a cultural concept.(1)

Many Indian leaders like Sri Arvindo, Gandhi, Nehru, Tilak, Tagore and Deen Dayal Upadhyay delved into the idea of Indian nation and nationalism. Their ideas are either spiritual, meta-physical or statist. In this article we will try to trace Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar’s ideas and reflections on Nationalism. He is the most celebrated Indian leader, thinker and social philosopher of the 21st century who contributed in the 20th century. Large-scale celebrations marking his 125th birth anniversary were concluded recently. Observers felt that these celebrations were more wide-spread than those in his centenary year. One of the leading mainstream magazines termed him as the greatest leader of Modern India. Over the years, ideas of Ambedkar have become stronger and more relevant to the contemporary discourse.

Ambedkar and his Narrative of Freedom

At any given point of time, several parallel narratives can coexist. However, only one grand narrative at a time can push the discourse forward. Before the Indian Independence, the grand narrative was the freedom of India while several other narratives did exist. One such narrative was prescribed by the Congress party. It emphasized on freedom from the British colonisers. It can be said that this was the dominating narrative of the time. There were also other, though weaker or marginalized in comparison. One such narrative was that of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) which saw India as a glorious nation since time immemorial land targeted reconstruction of the Indian nation by strengthening its socio-cultural institutions. It wanted to arouse the national consciousness of every common Indian. The core belief in this case was that once the society becomes strong no one could enslave it.

Another narrative of the time was given by Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar. He talked about freedom of India from social inequality and untouchability. This could be understood as a subaltern narrative about the upliftment of downtrodden, deprived and marginalised sections of the society; the section that did not have any participation in public life of colonial India. Dr. Ambedkar became the voice of these 60 million deprived section known as Scheduled Castes (the term Dalit evolved later). Without emancipation of these deprived people, Indian freedom struggle was not deemed to be complete. The Indian national struggle in the first half of the century was not merely a struggle to wrest political power from foreign rule but also a struggle to lay the foundation of a modern India by purging the society of outmoded social institutions, beliefs and attitudes. Ambedkar's struggle constituted a part of the internal struggle, one of the divergent and sometimes conflicting currents all of which helped to secure 'freedom' from external and internal oppression and enslavement.

Without Ambedkar's opposition to mainstream nationalism, the process of internal consolidation of the nation would not have been carried out sufficiently enough to strengthen and broaden the social base of Indian nationalism.(2)

Ambedkar’s idea of Nationalism

Ambedkar elaborated on the idea of Nationality and Nationalism in his book Pakistan or the Partition of India. He describes nationality as a, "consciousness of kind, awareness of the existence of that tie of kinship” and nationalism as "the desire for a separate national existence for those who are bound by this tie of kinship." It is true that there cannot be nationalism without the feeling of nationality. But, it is important to bear in mind that the converse is not always true. The feeling of nationality may be present and yet the feeling of nationalism may be quite absent. That is to say, nationality does not in all cases produce nationalism.

For nationality to flame into nationalism two conditions must exist. First, there must arise the will to live as a nation. Nationalism is the dynamic expression of that desire. Secondly, there must be a territory which nationalism could occupy and make it a state, as well as a cultural home of the nation. Without such a territory, nationalism, to use Lord Acton's phrase, would be a soul as it were wandering in search of a body in which to begin life over again and dies out finding none.(3)

Expanding Social Base of Nationalism

Ambedkar had immense faith in the bright future and evolution of this country. Even when he spoke of attaining freedom for India, his ultimate goal was to unite the people. He said, “So far as the ultimate goal is concerned, none of us have any apprehension or doubt. Our difficulty was not about the ultimate thing but how to unite the heterogeneous mass that we are today to take a decision in common and march in a cooperative way on that road, which is bound to lead us to unity.”(4)

Ambedkar clearly spoke in a felicitation program of his 55th birth anniversary, “I have loyalty to our people inhabiting this country. I have also loyalty to this country. I have no doubt that you have the same. All of us want this country to be free. So far as I am concerned my conduct has been guided by the consideration that we shall place no great difficulties in the way of this country achieving its freedom.”(5)

Ambedkar was not against the idea of nationalism but against the Congress’s version which entailed freedom of India from British colonialism but not from Brahminical imperialism under which millions of Scheduled Castes had been yoked for hundreds of years. It was Ambedkar’s political challenge which compelled the Congress to appreciate the national significance of the problem of castes and to adopt measures which significantly contributed towards broadening and strengthening the social base of Indian nationalism.

Ambedkar’s Challenge to ‘Congress Nationalism’

Indian nationalism in its initial stages, by the very nature of its historical development, was an upper class (upper castes) phenomenon, reflecting the interests and aspirations of its members. Naturally when nationalists spoke in terms of national interest they certainly meant their own (class) interests. The evocation of 'nation' was a necessary ritual to ensure the much needed popular support for an essentially partisan cause. This sectarian approach to nationalism could be seen in the writings of none other than Pt. Nehru who later singled out as an example of a ‘left liberal’ view. He writes in his seminal work Discovery of India that mixture of religion and philosophy, history and tradition, custom and social structure, which in its wide fold included almost every aspect of the life of India, and which might be called Brahminism or (to use a later word) Hinduism, became the symbol of nationalism. It was indeed a national religion.

The sectarian character of Indian nationalism persisted even after the nascent upper castes' movement developed into a truly mass-supported anti-imperialist national liberation movement enlisting the support of millions of people cutting across the traditional social divisions. And, it is this failure to change its basically pro-upper class/castes orientation despite a basic shift in its underlying social base that Indian national movement in due course helped the rise of new sectarian socio-political currents, running parallel to the mainstream national movement. Ambedkar's emergence on the Indian political scene in 1920s, commencing the advent of Dalit (the scheduled castes) politics, was simply the manifestation of the same process.(6)

Ambedkar's Dalit politics posed no really significant threat to the overall domination of the traditional ruling class, yet it certainly exposed the hollowness of the Congress’s nationalist claim to represent the whole nation. Finally, the unwillingness of the nationalist leadership to attack the long unresolved social contradictions at the base of the Hindu social order propelled people like Ambedkar to contest the claim of the Indian National Congress to represent the scheduled castes.(7)

It was in the backdrop of this escapist attitude of the Congress brand of nationalism that an alternative subaltern nationalism was born through Ambedkar. Ambedkar took up this question from social below and elevated it to a political high by linking this social question of caste with the political question of democracy and nationalism. Such an effort to prioritize society over polity and then linking them together was unprecedented in India before Ambedkar. Gandhi can be said to have made such an effort but his approach was obscure and primitive. According to Ambedkar, “Without social union, political unity is difficult to be achieved. If achieved, it would be as precarious as a summer sapling, liable to be uprooted by the gust of a hostile wind. With mere political unity, India may be a State. But to be a State is not to be a nation and a State, which is not a nation, has small prospects of survival in the struggle for existence.”(8)

Ambedkar’s Faith in ‘Bharat’

Ambedkar had faith in ancient Indian institutions and texts except caste. He was convinced with the spiritual aspect of Indian texts and codes but not with its ritualistic aspects which had developed in last 1200 years. He talked about Annihilation of Caste not Dharma. He understood the importance of Dharma in India and when the time of conversion came as he had declared earlier, he chose Buddhism and not any other Abrahamic religion. He also had the option of declaring him as an Atheist but his rootedness in Indian ethos compelled him to choose Buddhism.

Dr Ambedkar pointed out that historic roots of democracy in India go back to pre-Buddhist India. A study of the Buddhist Bhikshu Sanghas discloses that the Sanghas were nothing but Parliaments and knew all the rules of Parliamentary procedure known to modern times. Although these rules of Parliamentary procedure were applied by the Buddha to the meetings of the Sanghas, he must have borrowed them from the rules of the political assemblies functioning in the country in his time Dr Ambedkar emphasized that Hindus need not ‘borrow from foreign sources’ concepts to build a society on the principles of equality, fraternity and liberty. They “could draw for such principles on the Upanishads.” Even in Riddles in Hinduism, he points out that Hinduism has the potential to become the spiritual basis of social democracy.

Strengthening Nationalism through Constitution

Ambedkar opposed insertion of Article 370 which gives special status to the state of Jammu & Kashmir but Nehru still went ahead with it to appease Sheikh Abdullah. Ambedkar wrote to Sheikh Abdullah on Article 370, “You wish India should protect your borders, she should build roads in your area, she should supply you food grains, and Kashmir should get equal status as India. But Government of India should have only limited powers and Indian people should have no rights in Kashmir. To give consent to this proposal would be a treacherous thing against the Interest of India and I, as the Law Minister of India, will never do it.”(9)

Justice K. Ramaswamy while probing into the legal aspects of nationalism likes to call Ambedkar a true democrat, a nationalist to the core and a patriot of highest order on various grounds.(10) He was the author and principal actor to make the ‘Directive Principles’ as part of the constitutional scheme. When it was criticized that the directive principles could not be enforced in a court of law, Ambedkar answered that though they were not enforceable, the succeeding majority political party in Parliament or Legislative Assembly would be bound by them as an inbuilt part of their economic program in the governance, despite their policy in its manifesto and are bound by the Constitution. Ambedkar, in his Constitutional schema of nationalism, undertook the task of strengthening the Executive in particular and the notion of 'Integrated Bharat' in general.

Rising above the regional, linguistic and communal barriers in a true republican spirit, Ambedkar invented a democratic nationalism consisting of Uniform Civil Code for India. His views of Uniform Civil Code were radically different from his contemporaries including Nehru who in principles accepted Hindu Code Bill and Uniform Civil Code but in practice, failed to get the Bill passed in one go, in spite of being in Government with majority. Ambedkar on the other hand made it a point to add the word 'fraternity' in the Preamble to the Constitution in order to inculcate the sense of common brotherhood of all Indians, of Indians being one people; it is the principle which gives unity and solidarity to social life.

He was also critical of Muslim Personal Law and tried his best to abolish it in favour of Uniform Civil Code. Ambedkar did not agree to the fact that Muslims had any immutable and uniform laws in India up to 1935. Ambedkar emphasized that in a secular state religion should not be allowed to govern all human activities and that Personal Laws should be divorced from religion.(11)

Dr. Ambedkar in his very first speech in the Constituent Assembly on 17 December 1946 had emphasized the need to create a strong Centre in order to ensure that India's freedom was not jeopardized as had happened in the past on account of a weak central administration. His view was hailed by the Assembly and came later to be reflected in the Emergency Provisions of the Constitution. Undoubtedly the states are sovereign in normal times but by virtue of these provisions, the Centre becomes all-powerful and assumes control over all affairs of the nation whenever a situation arises which poses a danger to the security of the state.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that Ambedkar was vehemently opposed to the unjust social stratification in India, but to say that he was against the nation is wholly wrong. He was definitely against the Congress version of Nationalism. Ambedkar says, “I know my position has not been understood properly in the country. I say that whenever there has been a conflict between my personal interests of the country as a whole, I have always placed the claims of the country above my personal claims. I have never pursued the path of private gain… so far as the demands of the country are concerned, I have never lagged behind’.(12)

Last year, In a seminar organised in New Delhi, Dr. Krishna Gopal (Jt. General Secretary, RSS) claimed, “Besides being a champion of the untouchables, Ambedkar was, first and foremost, a nationalist, a virulent anti-Communist and had immense faith in Hinduism; he was against Brahminical structures but some of his closest friends were from upper castes, while Brahmins provided him vital help at key moments in his life; he dismissed the historical theory of the Aryan invasion of the Indian subcontinent. He apparently also promised "shuddhikaran" or purification for those Dalits who had converted to Islam in Hyderabad state in 1947-48.”(13)

It is evident from the above discussion that Ambedkar was neither an anti-national nor just a leader of the Scheduled Castes. He was a national leader who understood the problems of the most exploited communities and tried to bring them into the main stream. He expanded the social base of Indian nationalism which helped first to attain freedom and later to put the country on path of progress. Today, when all thought converges around inclusive politics, Ambedkar has become more relevant than ever.

Nationalism is a dynamic process of social assimilation and therefore nationalism is to receive its perfect harmony in the realization of social brotherhood of men irrespective of caste, colour and creed.  Nationalism is not antithetical to humanism or individualism. One can enjoy complete individual freedom within a nationalist framework. Everyone needs a space to think, to grow and liberate. In the present point in time, Nation is the best institution we have to fulfil this purpose. We do need a grand narrative which includes the last woman in the queue. Dr. Ambedkar did give us a grand-narrative of “equality in socio-economic life along with political equality”.

Decoding A Colonial Design

I reviewed Meenakshi Jain's book Sati: Evangelicals, Baptist Missionaries, and the Changing Colonial Discourse for Indian Historical Review (a Sage publication). You can read a version of the article below: 

It is the biggest irony of our times that while all contemporary sociopolitical discourse hinges on multiplicity of arguments, we tacitly agree to see some subjects in absolutes. The practice of sati is an example of the latter. Meenakshi Jain’s tome Sati, however, brings on record historical facts and data that build the ground for a comprehensive picture. She begins with the basics—‘Was sati a religious obligation?’—and has the academic stamina to see each thread through. In this book, Jain works with primary sources ranging from the incident witnessed by the Greeks in 326 BC to that recorded by missionaries in 1820s. This makes her work authentic and her observations pioneering. She is able to lay on the table a great expanse of research that breaks past fallacies and academic bogies.

A Framework for Discourse

Meenakshi Jain’s approach is academic and unbiased. Her key observation is that sati was used by evangelists and Christian missionaries to whet their enfeebled cause both in India and Britain. She begins by building a backdrop which shows an increase in frequency of incidents after contact with Muslim culture. Documenting and analysing the instances of sati as recorded by foreign travellers, Jain observes that by the seventeenth century, the practice of sati had turned into a ‘wonder’ that found a place in any account of India. She contends that the demand for such accounts and voyeurism compelled travellers to include these in their works even if the narratives were second-hand or fabricated. It also traces the germination of the nineteenth-century construct of heroic colonial officers saving Indian women from sati and other such ‘barbaric’ customs.

Her primary sources indicate change in the texture of practice from being voluntary to forced, honourable to disgraceful, with woman being a beatific participant to being passive victim and Brahmins transforming from preventers to promoters of the practice.

It is possible to divide foreign accounts of sati into two broad phases—a pre-and post-Baptist phase. With the advent of the Baptists, earlier sentiments of wonder and astonishment were almost entirely replaced by condemnation. Sati was labeled as murder or suicide and used as a moral justification for the British rule (p. 41).

Jain presents all facets of her research irrespective of whether it is in tune with her premise. She chooses not to whitewash sources or make them comply with the broad theme of her work. For a reader, this approach throws up some surprises, for example, the numerous descriptions of sati as being voluntary and the participating woman as intransigent.

A Political Tool

The missionary problem with the practice of sati, according to Jain, can be seen in early accounts. Unlike the Indian concept of fire, where it is viewed as positive and purifying, missionaries equated the funeral pyre to putative fires of hell. However, towards the end of eighteenth century, Englishmen—led by the likes of Warren Hastings and William Jones—had developed admiration for Hindu religion and philosophy which eventually developed into orientalism. Jain devotes a complete chapter to the ‘State of English Society at Home and in India’. At a time when Britain was witnessing ‘spiritual torpor’, the Evangelical Movement found a place in the upper classes. From this emerged the Clapham sect, which aimed to open up India to missionary enterprise, and Charles Grant, who went on to become the ‘father and founder of modern missionary effort in Great Britain’s Indian empire’.

Jain accesses the ‘Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain’ which was prepared by Charles Grant for President of East India Company’s Board of Control. ‘Grant’s Observations “gives a fair exhibition of the Evangelical mentality” (Stokes 1982: 29). It invented the reform agenda for the British and thereby provided a justification for British Rule in India. (Trautmann 2004, p. 99).’

Grant aimed to bring his influence to the renewal of East India Company’s charter. It is to Jain’s credit that she gives due space to views of other Britons who opposed overtures of the Evangelists. However, Grant continued to spearhead the evangelical cause and became the chairman of East India Company in 1805. It is important to note that soon after, in 1806, utilitarian James Mill began work on ‘History of British Empire in India’ which eventually became a textbook for candidates for the Indian Civil Services.

Mills History of British India represented the starting point for the ‘theoretical repositioning’ of India in relation to Europe following the growth of industrial capitalism. It was an attempt at the intellectual subordination of India to the ‘universalist principles’ of European social theory that accompanied European imperial expansion (p. 107).

Jain contends that together the evangelists and utilitarians converted ‘British Indomania’ to ‘Indophobia’ through their sustained campaign against sati and Hindu pilgrimages (like the Jagannath Yatra). She divides the evangelical-missionary campaign against sati into two parts: from 1803 to 1813 when the case was prepared and from 1813 to 1829 when figures were produced to validate claims. ‘Sati was the first “political” issue in which British women were directly involved to gather support for their luckless “sisters” in India (p.185).’

Facts and Fallacies

Among the greatest achievements of this work is that it exposes the erroneous figures touted to show that sati was widely practiced in India. She analyses the data collected and estimated by the missionaries under William Carey in 1803. The information was collected by ten people within 30 miles of Calcutta. Each informant was to cover an area of 800 sq. km; the presumption was that they would get to know of incidents even if they were unable to witness each by themselves. This made data collection dependent on local tales and word of mouth. The data hence collected were applied on the rest of the country and it was concluded that several thousands of widows were burnt every year. These figures were widely publicised to raise funds for missionary work and expose Hindu superstitions.

In 1815, the government began to register cases of sati. It threw up skewed figures with a majority of reports coming from Bengal, which had not been historically associated with the rite. Jain points to the essential question if the alleged high incidence of satis in Bengal was a missionary manufacture. She also unveils other inconsistencies in the data related to ‘kulin’ Brahmins and age group of victims.

Conclusion

Packed with facts, analysis and primary sources, this magnum opus by Meenakshi Jain will be an essential companion to any study on the subject. Jain’s book is well researched, cogent and admits a range of views and possibilities. She establishes how the already dying practice of sati was brought in the spotlight to serve specific ends. As she quotes Christopher Bayly,

The British obsession with sati was boundless. Thousands of pages of parliamentary papers dealt with 4,000 immolations wile the death of millions from famine and starvation was mentioned only incidentally sometimes only because it tended to increase the number of widows performing the horrid act (p. 188).

The Right Shade of Saffron!

Review of Kingshuk Nag's book Atal Bihari Vajpayee: A  Man For All Seasons first published in The Book Review. 

In the year 1996 during an election rally in Lucknow when Atal Bihari Vajpayee stepped on the stage the excited crowd chanted, ‘Hamara PM kaisa ho, Atal Bihari Jaisa ho’. Vajpayee retorted in his characteristic style, ‘Arre PM chodo, pahle MP to banao’. What followed was another round of applause and cheers. Such rallies became Vajpayee’s trademark where he used wit and humour to strike a chord with his listeners instead of empty promises. In his sixties, Vajpayee had a huge following of youngsters who had been brought up in Uttar Pradesh and other States of the Hindi heartland of 1990s and had grown up listening to his poems and anecdotes. He could play with words in poetry as well as prose. He used more than just words—body, gestures, eyes, even pauses—to express himself. A number of times his pauses were more potent than his words. This gift went a long way in his journey as a respected parliamentarian and later the Prime Minister of the country. Atal Bihari Vajpayee: A Man for All Seasons is a first concerted attempt in English language to chronologically document the life and times of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The author Kingshuk Nag has been a journalist for the last 22 years with a prestigious national newspaper. Currently, in an editorial position, Nag had covered events in Gujarat and elsewhere during his role as a political reporter and written books on Prime Minister Narendra Modi as well as the Bhartiya Janata Party.
Nag met several senior politicians, bureaucrats and journalists to bring out the little known facts about Vajpayee. Given the dearth of literature about the man who is today considered one of the key movers and shakers of post-Independent politics of India, this book becomes an important reading for the scholars and practitioners of Indian politics. Though we can find events related to Vajpayee in many books on political history of post-Independent India, few provide such comprehensive and focused coverage about him.  

While this book is more journalistic in nature, it provides a unique insight into the political and personal life of Vajpayee. Due to lack of active documentation, several facts and facets about Vajpayee and his long political journey are not known even to long serving activists of the Bharitya Janata Party (BJP) and Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS). For example, not many would know that Vajpayee had supported the candidature of Jagjivan Ram as the Prime Minister in year 1980. An offer was also made to Vajpayee and others to join the Janata Dal with the leaders suggesting that he will feel more liberated in the new party which was claimed to be closer to the ideas of Jai Prakash Narayan and Gandhi as compared to the BJP.

This book also offers a chapter that reveals details of Vajpayee’s personal life that have so far stayed out of the public view. However, Nag does not allow this part to overwhelm him. It was a proof of Atal’s master statesmanship that he never hid his association with a lady named Mrs Kaul and was never questioned about it too either by media or by his fellow politicians - both friends and foes. Nag sticks to facts in this regard and takes care to not impose words on one of the most inconspicuous yet important equation in the life of Vajpayee.  

The book also takes head on the controversy about Vajpayee being a freedom fighter. Nag chronicles the events that took place when Vajpayee participated in the Satyagrah of 1942 in his native place in Bateshwar near Agra.

Various facets of Vajpayee’s life and personality – as a young student, journalist, parliamentarian, foreign minister, family man, poet, orator, statesman and prime minister - have been dealt with authenticity in this book. However, there are two aspects that could have been given more focus, one of them being Vajpayee as an RSS Pracharak. Vajpayee became RSS Pracharak in mid-1940s and always remained one. He worked in Sandila near Lucknow among other places in this capacity and reiterated ‘RSS is my soul’. However since the dominant discourse finds it hard to see the two together, the tendency is to club his being an RSS man with his refusal to be dictated by the organisation, as this book also does.

The other aspect that could have received more attention is of Vajpayee a futurist who envisioned the ambitious National Highway Development Project (NHDP) project. The coming generations will know Vajpayee as the leader who planned the Golden Quadrilateral project that entailed a highway network running through major financial and cultural centres of the country. How this project was conceived and pushed past cynics could have been an interesting and informative read.

While ‘Atal Bihari Vajpayee: A Man for All Seasons’ successfully fills the gap in information about Vajpayee and emerges as among the best available books in English on the subject, it does not clearly answer the question of Vajpayee’s stand on Ram Temple. The book does, however, document Vajpayee’s statements in this regard given at different time, locations and contexts.

“Atal was able to balance the Ayodhya issue very finely….on 6th December 2000 – the anniversary of the Babri demolition – he said that the Ram Janmabhumi movement was the expression of national sentiments that was still to be realized’…….He told parliament, ‘I never asked for building a Ram temple at the site of the disputed mosque.’”

Nag credits Atal as pioneer of the politics of governance who contested the general elections of 2004 on that agenda. Though Vajpayee lost those elections but he set the tone of new politics for the 21st century India. Atal also harbingered the second generation reforms in the Indian economy and widened the gate for private companies to work in India.

The book establishes Atal as being the right shade of saffron, something that was accepted within the RSS cadres and also among non-Congress parties. It makes an interesting point for those who argue that BJP is essentially an extreme Hindu Right wing party that Vajpayee was chosen by RSS Sarsanghchalak Golwalkar over Balraj Madhok who was an extremist Right wing leader. The RSS leadership knew and understood that Vajpayee had the capability and the right mix of vision to lead the party and later the country.

Classical Political thinker Plato in his work ‘The Republic’ talks about the Philosopher King as ruler of the Ideal State.  In the contemporary scenario in India the closest version of a philosopher king would be a ‘Philosopher Democrat’ and Nag’s work establishes Vajpayee as the one. Despite not being a member of the Congress party which dominated the unipolar political set up for forty years, Vajpayee rose to greatness and became the first non-Congress Prime Minister of India in the 20th century who served full term. This book is written keeping this in mind and is a good read for all those who follow, observe or analyse Indian politics.