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cc David Floyd
Published in 1963
To
The Editor
Daily Telegraph
London
Dr. Lohia and Indian Parliamentary Revival
According to an Indian wit, there is a probable explanation
of the sudden Chinese decision to have a cease-fire after
the advance of their troops had put the Indian army in
disarray. The story goes the President of India, Dr.
Radhakrishnan, former Spalding Professor at Oxford, whose
speeches on almost every subject are garlands of
Sanskritisms, made a speech when the fighting had flared up
on the border and declared, “We shall not lose for dharma
is on our side”. When the speech was relayed by Chinese
intelligence to Peking, Messrs. Mao, Liu-shao-chi and Chou
were completely baffled by the word dharma. They
feared it might even be a secret American weapon, the
ultimate weapon. They unanimously decided to declare a
unilateral ceasefire.
Indian politicians have a predilection for a
political strategy based on a doctrine of salvation. Some
like Tilak and Gandhi had an academic interest in the
Bhagvad Gita. Their politics were often an exercise in a
contemporary explanation with reference to the scriptural
context. A backward glance at the political situation in
1947, when the Transfer of Power took place will show that
Gandhian thought and practice had crated a wide gulf between
politics (as understood in most free and democratic
countries) and political-cultural-social voluntary work.
There were heated debates on the subject: Are religion and
politics the same or different activity? Mahatma Gandhi
stood securely on the position that these two were basically
the same activity and it was wrong to separate the two.
Gandhiji’s idea was not altogether untenable and today in
many countries other than India one can come across such a
type of political leader. The last Pope, Rev. Martin Luther
King and Lester B. Pearson may all be seen as
representatives of the sort of political leadership to which
we may be moving. There is no need to dwell here on the
Gandhian atmosphere of politics, except to emphasise the
important point that the particular situation in India in
1947 did not help to clarify the scope of the state
system and the distinct field of social-political
activity. Some like Jawaharlal Nehru had no difficulty
in attaching themselves to the state system. Nehru
was no Gandhian and the British were impatient to hand over
power. But there were several others. The early days of the
Gandhian movement had brought together some of the best
minds in India. Many of these leaders could have found
themselves in key positions if they had indicated their
desire to join the government. Gandhi, himself, could have
seized state power and there is no basis whatsoever for the
belief that he was other-worldly. Gandhiji had a remarkably
efficient administrative mind and after all he had been
called to the bar in London and had practised as a lawyer.
The key positions in the state system were abandoned
by Gandhiji’s key men. These disciples were led to believe
that legitimate power in free India would be found
distributed according to some uniquely Indian law.
The lack of concern with the state system
led leaders like Vinoba Bhave, Kripalani, Lohia, Jayaprakash
Narayana, Achyuta Patwardhan, Shankerrao Deo and several
others to underestimate Parliament as a vehicle for the
expression of the Indian commitment to the important
political, economic, social, and ideological issues of the
day. This was undoubtedly an error of the first magnitude.
The discipline which Gandhiji had demanded of his close
followers would have been an asset in the attempts of the
Indian state to exercise its state power in its early days.
Although people like Narayan and Lohia were in touch with
political parties, they did not wholeheartedly extend credit
to the Parliamentary way of life. They were not for
totalitarianism. Rather they were committed to the idea
first expressed by Gandhiji in Hind Swaraj in 1908 that
India could express its political genius by organising a
system which avoided the “power structure” based on brute
force and substituting it by a decentralised system based on
“passive resistance”. These leaders it seems misjudged
Gandhiji’s work on the level of universally valid ideas.
Gandhiji presented a unified goal for small-sized autonomous
communities which could avoid revolutionary upheaval while
obtaining the fruits of whatever progress is promised by the
fanatical leaders of totalitarian movements. This unified
goal cannot however be applied in a facile manner to India
or to any other country except when there are firm
foundations for political practice which consolidates power
of the “forces of good”.
In post-Independence India, “the forces of
good” were threatened from both within and without. The
orthodox Gandhian views would happily suffer revision to
help maintain the spirit of much of Gandhi’s work. This
seems to have come about in 1963. It is however, difficult
to believe that it should have taken so long but there is no
doubt that kaleidoscopic changes are taking place in India.
The border conflict with the Chinese gave a tremendous push
to everyone and to the way minds of political leaders were
working. The tangible evidence was revealed when the
enigmatic Dr. Lohia, a close and trusted disciple of
Gandhiji decided to jump into the fray of Parliamentary
life. He won one of the bye-elections along with Kripalani
and Masani against the ruling Congress party. But Lohia’s
victory is to be seen against the background of his earlier
refusal to take serious note of Parliamentary life which had
led him often to use harsh and offensive language against
Parliamentary institutions. His debut in Parliament in
August this year received wide publicity and according to
one noted Indian political analyst “created an ideological
chaos in the mind of the Congress Party.” Lohia’s attacks
on the Congress Party and on Nehru cannot be brushed away as
irresponsible. He demonstrated the unconvincing nature of
most of the improvisations the Congress leadership has made
and its refusal to undertake basic reforms. Lohia has shown
rare political courage by accusing the government of even
undoing some of the advantages conferred by British rule, a
statement which could cost any lesser leader the future of
his political life in the country. The Congress Party can
draw an important inference from the reception of Lohia’s
performance in Parliament: the intelligentsia are determined
to secure a revitalisation of public life in India, and the
sort of activity which party hacks have tried by labelling
the opposition as “unpatriotic” will simply not work in the
case of Lohia. The Congress Party has taken up a policy of
reconstruction by calling in the resignations of several
important ministers. It is, however, confronted with a
problem of the first magnitude. Lohia has emerged as the
national symbol of the “opposition” and his political
reputation and the skilful parliamentary tactics of which he
gave excellent proof in the August session of the
Parliament, have helped to establish the pre-eminence of
Parliament in the minds of Gandhi’s personal heirs.
Gandhi’s political heirs are increasingly aware that
a period of instability is in store for them. The fateful
consequences of Dr. Lohia’s return to the main current of
political life in the foreseeable future are to be found in
the militancy against those who in the post-1947 period
entrenched themselves in power and are now disinclined to
allow public discussion which was a hallmark of Indian
political life under British rule. While this may cause
concern to the outsider interested in the orderly evolution
of Indian politics, to the Indian and particularly to the
younger generation, the characteristic feature of the
developments narrated above spells hope. |
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