Barack Obama: A Man For All Seasons

He Came From Nowhere
Barack Obama isn’t so much Black or even half-Black as he is a Mirror, on which a nation, once great but now in the throes of an unprecedented identity crisis, sees the reflection of its diverse, divergent desires. Until two years ago, he was a global non-entity; a name often confused with its (then) more familiar if somewhat notorious homonym, Osama (after the Al Qaeda leader, Mr. Bin Laden).

Yet it is precisely this fact- of his discreet, even dignified, obscurity- which paradoxically enough accounts for Mr. Obama’s meteoric metamorphosis as the world’s most recognizable, talked-about Face: ever an artful politician, he pulled off electoral history’s greatest coup by turning what appeared to be his most debilitating weakness into his greatest strength: capitalizing on his Obscurity, he suddenly became all things to all people.

His infinitely more famous rivals- Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain, to name two more unfortunate ones- simply didn’t have that sort of advantage. Having been in public life for decades- in Mr. McCain’s case, for almost as long as Mr. Obama’s earthly life- their every action and every utterance had been dissected, discussed, debated, deified and demonized to death; more to the point, most people had already formed their variegated Opinions of them and those that didn’t probably couldn’t care less. Mr. Obama- and his excellent campaign team- had the astuteness to make the most of this. He began by making those who didn’t- couldn’t- care, care.

Like Karl Rowe (George W. Bush’s wizard of a mentor), who based his protégé’s victories by tapping into America’s hitherto untapped and instinctually conservative exurbias, Mr. Obama’s team reached out to an entirely new demographic: the hitherto politically nonchalant but temperamentally liberal Generation Y; the sort of chaps who hang out at Starbuck’s and inhabit fast-mushrooming social networking websites like Facebook; the kind that are desperately looking for a Purpose, any purpose. Mr. Obama gave them a Purpose: he- Mr. Obama- was it.

And The Money Kept Rollin’ In
Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain meanwhile were busily wooing the Establishment with its tempting $2500-a-plate fund-raisers. In retrospect, that wasn’t very clever: America, after all, is a land that thrives on Las Vegas, and Vegas is a place that thrives on slot-machines, which account for more than 70% of its takings, and not on high-rollers (who in any case prefer to head for Monte Carlo and now increasingly to Macau). That, I guess, is the Cardinal Rule of how the world works: Ignore the little people who persistently, patiently put coins into insatiable slots, and you’ve no business left; get the slot-machines ringing, and the high-rollers follow. In the Gamble that is Politics, Mr. Obama went straight to the slot-machines, and- there’s no better way to put this- he hit the jackpot, big-time.

Every time he needed money- and rest assured, he needed loads of it to establish a campaign machine to rival that of the formidable Clintonistas as well as the GOP’s (Grand Old Party is how the Republican Party is more commonly known)- he simply went to the tens of millions of mostly youthful members logged on to his webpage on Facebook, and lo and behold, the money kept rolling in: by donating a few dollars each, they suddenly found involvement, purpose and hope; and the trickle of online dollars almost magically transformed itself into a flood of several millions. But that wasn’t all: Mr. Obama also ensured that their participation didn’t end with the dollar; like some post-modern Messiah, he urged his minions to go out, commune at homely gatherings, and spread the Word deploying the very latest media modern technology has to offer.

John 1:1
And that brings me to the single most important aspect of Mr. Obama’s campaign: before everything else- even before the untapped demographic and the money- there was the Word, which set everything in motion. Actually, there were Two Words. Change and Hope, Hope and Change. At first, they sound awfully clichéd. We’ve heard politicians of all persuasions utter them countless times before; their etymology is primordial, buried deep into our species’ collective unconscious as a palliative to fear and fossilization. Yet, when Mr. Obama uttered them- and this wasn’t a very uncommon occurrence, to say the least- it struck a cord in those mysterious places that set butterflies magically aflutter in our bellies.

Poetry aside, it is important, I think, to understand just why that happened. Here, we must perforce employ the tools bequeathed to us by Jacques Derrida and examine three things: what was said and why (content and context); who said it (author); and what was meant and how the meaning thereof was perceived by those who heard it (or to use Quentin Skinner’s terminology, the ‘intended illocutionary force’).

Osama begat Obama
To first understand the significance of the content, we must necessarily look to the context. This was provided most obviously by the Bush Years, marked as they were by a spiraling descent into war, penury and global ridicule. This was an era (hopefully now ending) permeated by what I’ve elsewhere called Osama-phobia after the chief cause- the sine qua non- of President Bush’s abject but involuntary reversal from his first campaign’s big-on-morals-and-small-on-government stance. Fear, or more precisely, the fear of Fear, fed into- and authored- every decision he took. (His Vice President, the much more hated and aloof Dick Cheney, didn’t do anything to assuage these fears.) The two parameters of American Supremacy alluded to by Henry Kissinger in his monumental treatise on Diplomacy- military might and economic prowess- were both put to severe test by the quagmire of the double-invasions of Afghanistan & Iraq, and a widening and ultimately insurmountable Deficit- the typically American habit of spending more than they earn- that has brought about a global recession.

In the memorable words of the Eagle’s song, Iraq, in effect, became Mr. Bush’s Hotel California: You can checkout any time you like, But you can never leave! Despite his rather premature “Mission Accomplished” glee, the war in Iraq procrastinated indefinitely. From the start, the Invasion of Iraq was doomed: his justification for the invasion- that Saddam Hussein, the then Tirkiti despot of Iraq, possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which he hoped perhaps to use against America in league with Al Qaeda- turned out to be, to put it mildly, untrue; his method of conducting that invasion- against the express wishes of the international community- ended up alienating even America’s closest friends (with the notable exception of Britain’s Tony Blair, who inturn ended up losing his own chair); and his hope that the invasion would somehow usher in an era of democracy in the Middle East wasn’t quite realized to the extent that he had expected.

In the Case of Jefferson v Hamilton
But despite all this, Mr. Bush’s worst enemy wasn’t Osama bin Laden, the Taliban or even Saddam Hussein: it was the American People themselves. No wartime American President with the possible exception of Franklin Delano Roosevelt has for long enjoyed his fellow-citizens’- and the Congress’- unflinching support: despite their rather militaristic national anthem, Americans have never been comfortable with the sight of body-bags of slain soldiers wrapped in star-spangled banners arriving home. At heart, they remain Jeffersonians (after Thomas Jefferson), content to be an island (albeit a rather large one!) blissfully unaware of what’s happening beyond their shores and hoping that they wouldn’t need a government to govern them at all. Let us not forget that when Mr. Bush first emerged on the scene, he too was something of a Jeffersonian in the ideals he so passionately espoused.

But he too, like most Americans, was confronted with a distinctly Hamiltonian reality (after Alexander Hamilton): the almost instinctual need of the American Establishment- Noam Chomsky’s military-industrial complex- to look for new enemies when old ones are gone, as epitomized in the ironically self-fulfilling prophecy of Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the New World Order. In this sense atleast, Huntington gave a fresh, new lease of life to Hamilton. And what a lease that was! President Bush, the quintessential Jeffersonian, became a die-hard disciple of Hamilton in what was to be his life’s second epiphany (the first one took him from Booze to the Bible). Of course, it would be wrong to put all the blame on the Establishmentarian Inertia of Washington: Mr. Bin Laden, in all fairness, deserves much of the credit for Mr. Bush’s conversion.

His attack on the Twin Towers (9/11) only amplified Mr. Bush’s innate sense of Christian morality: his world was suddenly divided into black & white, good & the axis of evil, and under the circumstances, Crusade was the logical outcome of Jihad. Morality breeds decisiveness; lack of it makes one indecisive. This is America’s lesson gleaned from its last two Presidents, Mr. Bush and Mr. Clinton. I’ve often wondered what Mr. Clinton would’ve done had he been President on 9/11. Sure, he wouldn’t have invaded Iraq, WMDs or no WMDs (remember his dilly-dallying on Kosovo, Congo and the rest); he would certainly have ruled out going it alone, without the backing of the world community (God knows, Mr. Hussein counted on that!); he might not even have considered an outright invasion of Afghanistan, toying first with Diplomacy or being content with the destruction of Mr. Bin Laden’s person. But the question that begs to be answered is this: would Al Qaeda be as thoroughly destroyed as it is now; and would 9/11 have been the last terrorist attack on American soil?

As far as the Bush Legacy is concerned, I believe in two things: one, that it was Mr. Bush’s pandering to his Jeffersonian instincts that ultimately led to his failure in Iraq. He wanted to invade Iraq, destroy Saddam and get out as quickly as possible with a minimum of force and cost; the idea that nations don’t just build themselves after being invaded and destroyed didn’t quite cross his Jeffersonian mind (apparently he forgot all about post-second world war Western Europe and Japan, both of which required prolonged infusions of American money, manpower and foresight to rebuild themselves). The success of the Surge in Iraq- today’s provincial elections have brought true democracy to the Middle East for the first time in history, and Mr. Bush should be given due credit for it- shows that the middle-of-the-road approach is at fault. Had Mr. Bush not been bullied by public opinion and his own mindset to limit the costs to America in the first instance, his country wouldn’t have ended up spending so much- in terms of blood, sweat, toil and money- in Iraq, and thousands of innocent lives might’ve been saved. In short, if he is to be blamed, it should be for doing too little; not too much. Secondly, I also believe that it is too early to pronounce judgment on the Bush Legacy: History will have to wait for things to settle down in Iraq before arriving at any sort of decision; hopefully, it will look more kindly upon the Bush Years than our own generation. (To see what I mean, take a look at HBO's award-winning mini-series on John Adams, America's mostly-forgotten and much-misunderstood second President.)

No Specifics Please, We're American
But I’m getting ahead of myself: it is precisely from the as-yet-unsettled dust of the Bush Years that an obscure entity like Mr. Obama has emerged to take on the world; the Present, and not History, is responsible for that. Hope and Change- the Two Words- stand for everything the Bush Years did not; they are, in a way, the anti-thesis of everything those Years have come symbolize today. They’re also, interestingly enough, the Lowest Common Denominator (LCD)- that indescribable abstract- which binds together today’s America. Looking back at the rhetoric of his campaign- both before and after the Primaries- it appears that Mr. Obama said very little indeed: he said that things were bad and that change was needed (without elaborating on the how of it); he said that America needed to get out of Iraq soon (again, without letting us in on the how and when); he said that he was for the New (but not against the Old); he said that the poor deserved to be taken care of by the state and the rich didn’t have to be taxed needlessly to do that (not letting us in on the secret of just where he was going to get the money from to do that); and he said that there was Despair everywhere, and he was the Hope that would drive it away (again, not telling just how he hoped to do that). In short, he said Everything without saying Anything.

It was this artful avoidance of the pitfalls of getting into the specifics of things- something which his rivals simply couldn’t resist in their desire to show that they knew it all- that made Mr. Obama’s Words so appealing to so many not just in America but around the world. The Color of his skin also helped. In electing their first Black President, America belied its earlier Image as a Hypocritical Hegemon that systematically excluded its non-White population from everyday governance while pretending to be the very Beacon of Liberty. Till the very fag end of campaigning, my father, so used to this Image, believed in all sincerity that “they would never elect a Black man as President.” But they did precisely that- and in doing so, they busted the myth that President Lincoln even after waging war on his own people for the sake of ending slavery couldn’t. And who better than a President Obama- half-black, half-white, half-Muslim, half-Christian, half-African, all-American- to send out the Message that America has Changed; or to use Mr. Obama’s own historic words, “Change Has Come to America.”

A Napoleon in America?
Truth be told, after the nine angst-ridden years of Osama-phobia, America- and the world- has quite simply been swept off its feet by Obama-mania. Mr. Obama likes to compare himself with his illustrious forbearer, Abraham Lincoln. Like him, President Lincoln, who hadn’t won a single election before, was a relative non-entity amidst more celebrated personages such as Stephen Douglas; and like Mr. Obama, he owed his victory chiefly to his charismatic powers of oratory. But while his rise was most certainly unexpected, it was by no stretch of imagination heroic. (The heroism part was to come much later, when the outcome of the Civil War against the Confederacy became apparent.) It did not for instance signal the fruition of centuries of anti-racist struggle as Mr. Obama’s has done for many. Fear- and not Hope- marked President Lincoln’s first Inauguration.

In all probability, future-day historians would find more fascinating similarities between our Age and that of Napoleon after the 18th Brumaire: Bonaparte’s rise not only marked the ending of Jacobin Terreur- and momentarily, the Ancien Regime (which was to reassert itself one last time at the historic Vienna Congress of 1815)- but also ushered in an era of Hope throughout the Western World, prompting among others the composer Beethoven to compose & dedicate his majestically beautiful ‘Eroica’ symphony to ‘Napoleon Bonaparte, the Child of Revolution’.

It was only much later that the by-now completely deaf composer regretted his dedication: by then, the Child of Revolution had crowned himself Emperor, invaded much of Europe and installed his siblings as kings and queens: the Ancien Regime was back in full swing. I’m sure that President Obama would do nothing of the sort, and the comparison is totally undeserved. But then again, come to think of it, who could’ve thought that Mr. Bush would do the things he did?

After all, being all things to all people is no easy task. As Mr. Obama knows only too well, you inevitably end up disappointing someone: “One thing you can be sure of,” he told his fellow-diners at the Congress on the day of his Inauguration, “I will make mistakes.”

Let’s hope they are few and far in-between. America- and the world- can’t afford too many.

Godspeed, Mr. Obama!
Read More (आगे और पढ़ें)......

ESSAY: SITUATING NEHRU

Note: I had written this essay more than two years ago in the confines of Raipur Central Jail: all I can now remember of that August-monsoon is that the surfaces- walls, ceiling- of my cell leaked profusely, especially after the PWD's efforts to repair them; and ravaging my ration of one (heavily-censored) newspaper per day, and writing about what I had read after lockup, became my only real contact with the world beyond the walls. Not surprisingly, I would sometimes drift into a world inhabited almost exclusively by ideas and imaginings; a world into which I now offer to take the Reader.

In a way, this is also my tribute to the Nation's Founder on his 118th birth anniversary: after all, it was in his peculiar world of ideas and imaginings that India, as we know her now, was born.

(1)
From today’s newspaper, it appears that Pandit Shyama Charan Shukla, a three-time former chief minister of Madhya Pradesh and the doyen of Chhattisgarh’s lone dynasty, has inadvertedly stepped into a political-quagmire: his utterance that Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s ‘western’ upbringing is to be held responsible for India’s many problems is bound to inflame Congresspersons, most of who see India’s first Prime Minister as the nation’s architect-in-chief. Arguably this is not the first time Nehru’s ‘western ideas’ have been criticized : the Mahatma himself was not very pleased when his favorite disciple- along with a certain Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose- labored to incorporate the socialist objective in the ‘Purna Swaraj’ Resolution of the AICC session at Lahore (1929).

For the next two decades, the Congress continued to be influenced by an ongoing conflict between the socialists led by Nehru and the conservatives represented by Sardar Vallabhai Patel. The Mahatma’s conservatism, if anything, became even more reactionary as his anti-imperialist crusade evolved into an all-encompassing ‘critique of the Civil Society’ (Partha Chhatterjee): the railways came to be seen as ‘drain-pipes’, which rob the wealth of self-sufficient villages to enrich cities [it is another matter that the Mahatma first became familiar with the immensity of British India traveling by third class railway coach]; even the corporatisation of khadi under the auspices of ‘Khadi Gram Udyog’ was viewed as subversive to the ideals of the Gandhian ‘Ram Rajya.’

Before proceeding any further, it becomes imperative to make certain observations: first, before and even after Gandhi’s epiphany at Peitermaritzburg, where the young attorney was rather unceremoniously thrown off a first class railway coach, he continued to be ‘a faithful servant of the Empire’ believing in its inherent goodness, and even working on the frontlines as a Red Gross Volunteer during the Boer’s War; like him, both Nehru and Patel had been called to the Bar at the Inner Temple at London. Indeed the Empire at its Victorian Zenith had sown the seeds of its own destruction. To put the blame, as it were, on Westernization is to reverse the argument: the nationalist discourse of the Third World, as Edward Said points out in his monumental ‘Orientalism’, is post and not anti-colonial: Churchill’s ‘half clad naked fakir’ was not too long ago a distinguished gentleman at Madam Blavatsky’s Theosophical soirees. The ‘turning point’- even catharsis- came on a cold wintry day in 1919 with General Dyer’s massacre at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar: henceforth it became obvious that the well being of the Empire was in fundamental contradiction of the interests of the Indian people; for Macaulay’s Anglicized Indians, it was a rude Ending of Illusion.

Secondly, Gandhi & Patel’s embracing of conservatism has to be understood in the context of their anti-imperialistic politics: much of the leadership of the Congress, as the historian Judith Brown explains, was based after all on a rather intricate ‘patron-client’ model. The support base of the Congress was provided chiefly by ‘native’ agrarian and commercial ‘interest groups’: zamindars, petty-traders and even industrialists, all of who felt as unduly bearing the economic burden of Empire. For them Independence- with its promises of cessation of taxation on agricultural income and protectionist fiscal policies, both of which were implicit in Gandhi’s construction of ‘Ram Rajya’- thus became a cherished, much sought-after objective, and Congress under the Mahatma was obviously the best agency to deliver it. It was only natural then that the Congress in the person of Mahatma Gandhi should emerge as the principal ‘patron’, promising his ‘clients’ Independence in return for their support. The ‘falsifiability’ of Prof. Brown’s thesis can be effectively tested at Champaran, where the Father of the would-be Nation launched a satyagraha against the exploitation of British indigo-planters. It would not be far-fetched to assume that peasant cultivators all over India were equally- if not more- exploited and yet no such Satyagraha was initiated against the chief cause of this injustice: the antiquated Zamindari System crystallized under Cornwallis. In retrospect, it becomes clear that Champaran was chosen as the site for Gandhi’s first rural ‘satyagraha’ specifically because here the ‘Zamindars’ were British; there was never any intention to launch a nationwide struggle against the universal practice of Zamindari, simply because it would mean an alienation of a very important ‘client’- something which the Congress could not risk at the time. The entire surmise of this disquisition is not to show an overlooking of the peasant condition by the Congress leadership of the time, but merely to reveal the fact that despite their espousing of different- even vastly divergent- ideas, the founders of modern India remained remarkably pragmatic in their approach to Independence.

Thirdly the ‘catharsis’ of the ongoing conflict between socialism and conservatism- what are now known as the ‘left’ and ‘right’ wings of the ideological spectrum- occurred during the debate on the abolition of Zamindari, land-ceiling and the constitutional status of property rights in general. In the aftermath of Gandhi’s assassination by a Hindu fanatic- who felt that the Mahatma’s policy of minority appeasement led to the Partition, something that he could have prevented- the socialist agenda came to dominate the proceedings of the Constituent Assembly, as discussed by Prof. Granville Austin in his book, ‘Working a Democratic Constitution’: the Constitution adopted by the Republic of India on January 26, 1950 resolved the first two aspects largely in favor of the socialists but left the status of property rights ambiguous, mainly due to President Rajendra Prasad’s (himself a landlord from Bihar) fierce opposition. Ultimately, it may be argued that socialism prevailed- although the words ‘socialist’ and secular’ found their way into the Preamble much later, vide an Amendment in 1973 when the Parliament’s power to amend under Article 368 itself had been severely contained by the Supreme Court- in the formulation of the nationalist discourse and identity, and Congress itself became something of a paradox: a party of mostly right-wingers led by an aggressively socialistic leadership, which under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi would become even more assertive by enforcing the nationalization of banks, abolition of the Privy Purse given to erstwhile princes of Empire, the 42nd Amendment- all of which came together to give birth to a hugely populist creed called ‘Garibi Hatao’. As the discussion below will show, these three precepts- Westernization as intrinsic to nationalism, Pragmatism of the nationalist leadership, and the growing sway of Socialist ideology over the Congress and the country- illuminate an assessment of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s role in the shaping of modern India.

As with most other leaders of the ‘Gandhian phase’ of the nationalist struggle, Nehru’s formative socio-economic-political ideas were shaped in the crucible of Victorian-Edwardian England: infact so caught up was he in the ‘esprit’ of the Age that he wrote his father, the eminent lawyer Motilal Nehru, expressing a wish to join the Irish Republican Army (IRA); not surprisingly, he was asked to return. His initial forays into the legal profession didn’t meet with the success his father might have expected: at his first appearance before the High Court at Allahabad, rather than plead his client’s case, he wept. However under Bapu’s tutelage, it became clear that politics came easily to Nehru. Broadly speaking, his role in the politics of pre-Independent India can be categorized as follows: as a ‘socialist-satyagrahi’; as Gandhi’s de facto ambassador abroad; and as the imprisoned-author of ‘Discovery of India’. Infact, the Nehruvian impact on Independent India is a direct outcome of this three fold categorization: the ‘socialist-satyagrahi’, in a typical response against the Totalitarianism and the Depression of the late 1920s-1930s, became a firm believer in the efficacy of top-down, centralized economic planning; Gandhi’s ambassador to Europe realized the value of non-alignment in the bipolar world of the Cold War; and the author of ‘Discovery of India’ set about the business of forging a nationalist identity for the new nation based on the notion of ‘unity in diversity’.

There is a tendency, widespread among contemporary historians and political commentators, to view each of these three outcomes as a product of Nehru’s ‘utopian idealism’, largely a product of his Anglicized upbringing, which they naturally conclude was anomalistic to Indian realities. In making his controversial observation, S.C. Shukla was subscribing predominantly to this view. Needless to say, such a view has only been reinforced by the subsequent juxtaposing of ‘Nehruvian Idealism’ with the ‘realpolitik’ espoused by his daughter, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (1967-77, 80-84). In the subsequent section, I shall endeavor to test this hypothesis against the background provided above.

(2)
In may be argued that there is a dominance of the ‘Hero archetype’- to use Carl Gustav Jung’s term- in the collective unconscious of the Indian civilization: put simply, this means that Indians have time and again exhibited an almost chronic need for heroes, powerful personalities that they can look upto, and worship; more often than not, such heroes- and heroines- become something of living gods. At the same time, the overpowering influence of Upanishadic (or post-Vedic) thought makes them skeptics, given to excessive criticism. For leaders destined to rule India, this means exposure to both an abundance of adulation but also badgering of prolific-criticisms. Nehru, as the last of ‘the Giants’ - people who won India her freedom- naturally became deified: he himself realized this when, writing under a nom de plume, he warned his countrymen against letting ‘Nehru become a dictator’; even his style of working was more consensual than autocratic as shown in the importance he gave to Parliamentary debates and the frequent letters he wrote to Chief Ministers, soliciting their advice on everything including even foreign policy. Although he inevitably tended to side with the Government (Legislature) when it came into conflict with the Party to the extent of admonishing partymen to keep away from the business of governance, the fact that such conflicts were not infrequent meant that Party bosses (like Puroshottam Das Tandon et al) weren’t exactly docile: infact, Tandon ensured that Nehru, even as India’s Sole Leader, failed to have his nominee appointed as President of the District Congress Committee (DCC) at Allahabad, his (Nehru’s) hometown. The ‘turning point’ for ‘Pandit ji’ came in the aftermath of the debacle of Sino-Indian War when suddenly murmurs of criticism became increasingly audible: here too Krishna Menon, his pro-Soviet, anti-American Defense Minister, took most of the flak, and justly so.

It was much later that Nehru came to be criticized, almost retrospectively, for all of India’s problems, most notably:

(a) Partition (Maulana Azad, a contemporary, in a posthumously published autobiography, described Nehru and Patel as ‘old men in a hurry’ to get power even at the cost of accepting the divisive Mountbatten Plan);
(b) Kashmir (again, Nehru’s eagerness to call back Indian troops from Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) in 1948, and his subsequent granting of special status to the state are held responsible for the present militancy in the valley);
(c) the Sino-Indian debacle of 1962 (despite portentous border disputes over Sikkim, Arunachal, the MacMohan line and the status of Tibet, he let himself be deluded by Menon & the Panchsheel Pact with China);
(d) the ‘Mixed Economy’ (which as one cynic remarked ‘has neither the merits of socialism nor capitalism while having both their disadvantages’);
(e) Nonalignment (all sound and no substance, which made India something of an international untouchable);
(f) the Famine of 1966-7 (Nehru’s prioritization of heavy industry, which he described as ‘Temples of Modern India’, over agriculture in the first two Five Year Plans);
(g) the growth of ‘Hindutva’/Communalism (his socialism, as reflected in ceiling and the abolition of Zamindari, alienated the traditional ‘client’ support base of the Congress, causing them to shift to the Jan Sangh, the precursor of BJP);
(h) Vietnam (B.K. Nehru, his Ambassador to the U.S., laments in his memoir ‘Nice Guys finish Second’ that when President Kennedy sought his advice on the subject, Nehru simply dozed off); and most recently,
(i) Failure to ‘Go Nuclear’ (despite overtures from America before but especially in the aftermath of China’s nuclearization). Indeed the list is hopelessly long.

One way of responding to these allegations would be to provide a comprehensive rebuttal to each of the charges but that will have the inevitable effect of reducing the entire analysis to a ‘for & against’ polemic, much in the fashion of the Dutch historian Pieter Geyl’s brilliant study of Napoleon, also written when he was in prison. For the moment, I shall resist the temptation. Instead, it is better to focus on what can broadly be called ‘Nehruvianism’: a single point of view that explains all of Nehru’s political & socio-economic thoughts and action. That, as will become apparent subsequently, was surprisingly pragmatic. In outlining the course the new nation would take, India’s first Prime Minister categorically laid out what he termed as ‘the Four Non-negotiables’: anti- imperialism; democracy; socialism (‘equal opportunity for all’); secularism (sarva dharma sambhava or equal respect for all religions). ‘Everything else,’ he said, ‘is negotiable’.

For an incredibly diverse country like India, this left a lot of room for ‘maneuver’- in terms of policies it could pursue, institution it could build and its relationship with the world- but equally significantly it identified precisely the Four Pillars on which a common unifying national identity could be built. In retrospect none of this seems particularly innovative: the fact that Indians, or atleast a vast majority of them, have come to accept their ‘Indianness’ as a fiat accompli, even as ‘Non-negotiable’, overlooks the equally pertinent fact of History that prior to Queen Victoria’s Proclamation as ‘Kaiser-é-Hind’ & Mallika-é-Hindostan’ in 1861, India, as we now know it, had never really existed as a single, consolidated politico-administrative entity; prior to this, India was an idea but even after the British left, the possibilities of about five hundred principalities choosing autonomy over accession were pregnant in the Mountbatten Plan for Transfer of Power. Infact the tide of history had actually been on the side of further Balkanization following Partition with ancient differences of caste, creed and community threatening once again to erupt: now that the British had gone, what, if anything, could keep the infantile nation from falling apart; from collapsing under the surmounting weight of its intrinsic disparities?

Under the circumstances, Nehru’s role wasn’t so much as discovering an India but something infinitely more arduous and audacious than even he could have imagined: ‘the Invention of India’. It is in this context that Nehru should rightfully be assessed: the point is not whether he is to be held responsible for India’s banes but whether there could have been an India without him? It is fashionable now to exclusively credit Sardar Vallabhai Patel as the moving force in securing the instruments of accession: ‘Nehru’s Kashmir’ is compared with ‘Patel’s Hyderabad’. This depiction of the Sardar as ‘India’s Iron Man’ is done to show Nehru as something of a ‘sissy’, a man of words, not actions: no doubt, the not-so-invisible hand of the RSS- which, as India’s most persistent right-wing outfit, has paradoxically ‘hijacked’ both the Sardar and the Mahatma as its role-models- can be seen behind this lop-sided portrayal. (It is another matter altogether that it was the RSS that masterminded the cold-blooded assassination of a defenseless Mahatma and that it was Patel who banned the outfit even though later Nehru, as a true democrat in the fashion of Rousseau, lifted that ban.) While Sardar Patel’s single-minded determination in the consolidation of Princely India cannot be underestimated, it is also true that Pandit Nehru’s conciliatory policy created the conditions which enabled the peaceful accession of an overwhelming majority of principalities littered all across the subcontinent thereby making, in these cases, the confrontationist stance of the Sardar unnecessary: that force or threat to use force was a last and not first resort is proof of the commonality of interests- identified by Nehru- which cumulatively brought disparate, often conflicting, entities into the emerging-nation’s fold.

In this, Westernization was not a detriment; infact it may even have been the sine qua non. Writing in a wholly different context- his own rather grim version of Discovery of India- the Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul makes an observation, which might be said to apply to Nehru as well: as a species, persons born- or brought up- outside of their home lands look upon themselves as belonging first and foremost to those ancestral lands from where they originated and not in terms of affiliations to any particular region, caste, creed or language. To put it differently, their primary identity is national and all other identities are relegated; become secondary. Thus it was that the Kashmiri Pandit came to see himself firstly as an Indian; and not surprisingly, he went about the business of casting India ‘in his image’, to paraphrase the author of Genesis.

From the above, it is clear that the ‘Indian national identity’ (INI hereafter) is a composite construction: those who think of it as ethereal- something that was always there since times immemorial, unchanging and immutable- abrogate history. Indeed in our own times, less than four decades after Nehru, that identity- of course, he would have preferred the word ‘concept’- has- and is- undergoing cataclysmic transformations: older loyalties and affiliations that had sought to have been relegated have become almost suddenly, resurgent. Is this Nehru’s failure- or the failure of the ‘concept’? The answer is: neither.

The problem lies elsewhere, in the very nature of contemporary- ‘post-modern’- Knowledge, or what Prof. C.P. Snow called ‘The Two Cultures’: the fundamental dichotomies between Science and non-Science (philosophy). It is a long and complex debate, and I shall refer to it here only in context of Nehruvianism. The inventor/creator of the modern Indian National Identity (INI) had very clearly expressed the hope that its continued longevity would depend, more than anything else, on Cosmopolitanism: the techno-sociological growth of urbanization. Cities, he felt, would automatically mutate affiliations to caste, region, language and religion into a composite amalgam of ‘class’ identified exclusively in terms of economic function and bound together by the Four precepts of the INI. It is therefore in the prescriptive (normative) rather than the analytical (positivist) aspects that Nehru is revealed most obviously as a ‘neo-Marxist’. Here, he seems to have grossly underestimated the socio-cultural inertia of an ancient civilization. Nehru’s ‘Temples of Modern India’- heavy industrial townships and mammoth dams like Bhakra Nangal- simply couldn’t- can’t- replace the immense multiplicity of temples and beliefs, based as they are in a space-less, timeless warp of antiquity. However the fault for this does not lie with Nehru but in the very nature of knowledge, where philosophy or wisdom has failed miserably to keep pace with the meteoric advancements in science & technology: the ‘cosmopolitanism’ that he had prophesied has done very little to engulf casteism, communalism, regionalism et al.

Perhaps it’s too early to judge Nehru: awakened, the ‘Elephant’ is marching but slowly; civilizational metamorphoses, more often than not, is spread out over several decades, if not centuries. A better appraisal of the functionality of the INI concept in contemporary India comes from employing Prof. Arnold Toynbee’s “challenge-response” model for historical evolution: every civilization, wrote the great historian, is confronted with challenges and it is the manner in which it responds to these that determines its fate; the process is vicious, unending for each response produces in its wake yet another challenge. Likewise concepts, like civilizations, are constantly challenged by the ever changing ‘force of circumstance’ (to use Somerset Maugham’s phrase): they are adapted and transformed, at times even distorted ad corrupted. This should account for the failure of totalitarian and dogmatic concepts- more commonly known as ‘ideologies’- to become universal. As discussed earlier, taken holistically as an amalgam of the necessary non-negotiables and the mutable negotiables, Nehruvianism, despite the suffix of ‘ism’, is neither totalitarian nor dogmatic: its ‘Gospel’- the Constitution of the Republic of India- is a surprisingly practical Document, which as Prof. Austin has shown can ‘work’ in extremely different ways, determined principally by the machinations & the mood of the times in which it is evoked. To put it differently, there are no fixed answers and no fixed questions. It remains as workable in the liberalized/reformist era as it did during the protectionist regime, and under the Centre Leftists as also the rightists. What the ‘Four Non-negotiables’- inbuilt into the spirit of that majestic, almost magical, Document do- is restrain India’s rulers and her citizens from overstepping the line which once crossed would surely result in the disintegration of the nation while also safeguarding the interests of one against the other. In its sheer workability- admirers call it ‘pragmatic’ while cynics refer to it as ‘ambiguous’- the Constitution- and by implication Nehruvianism- are incomparable.

Ultimately the success or failure of Nehru becomes irrelevant; the only relevant fact- or if one has to be epistemological, ‘truth’- is how leaders choose to interpret him and his ‘concept’ to meet the exigencies of the time when they are called upon to serve the people of India. For better or worse, it is the one mirror that allows Indians- and India- to see themselves as a unified whole; there is no other.

(3)
In this final section, I undertake to examine the workability of Nehruvianism in India, and the various transformations it has undergone. To begin with, I look at the evolution of the mind in whose interstices the identity was incubated; a mind that prefaced the million mutinies. It would not be wrong to say that at a very generic level the Nationalist Mind, during the zenith of the freedom struggle, came to view the world in black & white: Imperialism was evil; Independence good. Despite the numerous differences and divergences prevalent among leaders- disparities that resulted in Partition, for instance- there existed a broad unanimity on this bipolar schemata. With the passage of time however things weren’t- couldn’t be- that simple: a lot of it has become Grey, cloudy. The Rationalism that germinated Nehruvianism too was a creature of this simplicity: it subscribed to a view that linked economic development, social equality and democracy with the notion of ‘Progress’. For most part, that view still prevails. Neither the means prescribed nor the end desired are questioned: the ‘linkage’, as it were, is intact. It is simply that the meaning of these ‘means’- economic development, social equality, democracy- isn’t so clear anymore; and the notion of ‘Progress,’ as understood by Nehru, seems rather ambiguous. What has happened ?

Put simply, the rationalist idea of progress is no longer held to be valid: to be progressive no longer implies a movement against the dependencies of nature or the opposition- even if it is in the form of evolution- to the currents of history; neither does it signify a revolt against the intuitive grain of passion. The efficacy of equating economic development with state- planning, construction of Temples of Modern India, and a protectionist self-sufficiency- is unsustainable in the light of radicalized environmentalism and globalization; social equality does not mean a syncretic class-based cosmopolitanism but an increasingly assertive role for traditionally peripheralized castes and communities; the idea of democracy itself has become confused with majoritarianism that is closer to the classical (Platonic) definitions of ‘mobocracy’, which prioritizes, as Sunil Khilnani observes, the pageantry of elections over institution building. Everywhere passions hitherto repressed have returned, with a terrifying vengeance.

What concerns me here is whether Nehruvianism contributed to this repression; or did it simply, like Victorian London at its zenith, sow the seeds of its own revision? The answer is: both. To be sure, Nehruvianism- as a child of obsessive Rationalism- sought to supplant the bedlam of history and tradition in the sense that it envisaged ‘taking India forward’, away from not merely the imperialist experience but also the deeper asymmetries of Dumont’s “homo hierarchicus” society, but in seeking to do so, it brought forth a whole new awareness that made the acceptance of its prescriptions difficult: the primordial instinct for self-survival having been aroused, castes refused to disintegrate and reorganize themselves around the alien concept of class; and the infusion of caste and communal politics metamorphosed democracy into something of a battleground. Not surprisingly, the Prophet has foreseen this: long years ago, Nehru had warned of the dangers of majority-communalism masquerading as democracy; to him, there could be no greater threat than this. Almost six decades before, this threat had resulted in the three fold ‘amputation’ of the Indian subcontinent (the phrase is Salman Rushdie’s); it has never quite left.

The ‘cataclysms’ described above point to a very veritable Insurrection; just as the Jallianwala Bagh massacre had announced the End of the Age of Illusion (see section 1) for Gandhian nationalists, one now witnesses an Ending of the Age of Reason as embodied in Nehruvianism; but it is difficult to put a precise date- or even a phenomenon- to it. In many ways, the politics of Nehru’s daughter and eventual successor Prime Minister Indira Gandhi reflects this ending: with the possible exception of the Mahatma, modern India is yet to see a leader more attuned to the primordial sensibilities and ethos underlying this ancient civilization, as reflected in her studied as well as intuitive grasp of its several and severed sensibilities, myths, idioms & legends. Yet unlike her father, she didn’t endeavor to transplant them with a new Rationalism; instead they became a source of unbridled strength, enabling her to establish direct and personal communication with each individual member of a vast and marginalized majority: women, dalits and tribals. The crucial point however is that she did not deviate from the fundamentals of Nehruvianism, its non-negotiables; au contraire, they were radicalized and strengthened by her. More than anything else, this signifies the remarkably enduring adaptability of Nehruvianism: its phenomenal capacity to imbibe the insurrection of passions, and channelize their energies to bring forth a further consolidation of the INI.

What Nehru gave India was an ‘ideal’ that would preserve the independence & integrity of India by identifying a universal commonality built around the lowest common denominator of the four non-negotiables; for better and worse, that ‘ideal’ is the product of an Anglicized (Westernized) mind and Rationalist thought; to subtract from the ‘ideal’ necessarily implies the disintegration of India; thus as long as India is to remain, so must the ideal. The ideal gave rise to an awakening and has and continues to survive the resultant Insurrection of Passion; constantly adapting to it. Any failure, with due apologies to S.C. Shukla, lies not with Nehruvianism but with those entrusted with its legacy- which must necessarily include men such as himself.


Amit Aishwarya Jogi
August 3-6, 2005
Raipur Central Jail
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गांधी जयंती पर

I
कामुकता पे काबू
दो अक्टूबर को हम गांधी जयंती के रूप में मनाते हैं। ये मात्र एक औपचारिकता बन चुकी है। हाँ, पिछले साल लगे रहो मुन्ना भाई फिल्म ने गांधीगिरी को कुछ दिनों के लिए ही सही, लोकप्रिय तो कर दिया था। युवा वर्ग इससे खासा प्रभावित होता नज़र आया। यहाँ छत्तीसगढ़ में भी गान्धीगिरी की चंद वारदातें हुईं। छात्र नेताओं ने खुद की गन्दी नालियाँ साफ करते हुये फोटो अखबारों में छपवाई। भ्रष्ट कर्मचारियों को फूलों के गुच्छे भेंट किये गए। लेकिन फिल्मों का असर आखिर कितने दिन रहता? धीरे धीरे हम सब भूल गए।

गलती हमारी नहीं है। गांधी जी को उनके जीवनकाल में ही देवता बना दिया गया था। वे एक इन्सान भी हैं, इस बात को भुला दिया गया। उनकी सभी बातें, उनके सिद्धांत, सब अव्यवहारिक लगने लगें। अल्बेर्ट आइंस्टाइन का वो कथन कि आने वाली पीढियां कम ही विश्वास कर पाएंगी कि हाड़ और मांस का ऐसा आदमी पृथ्वी पर कभी चला था, सच सिद्ध हुआ। आज अगर सरकार को राम सेतु की तर्ज़ पर गांधी के ऐतिहासिक अस्तित्व को प्रमाणित करना पड़े, तो शायद ऐसा कर पाना मुश्किल होगा। जो लोग मोहनदास करमचंद गांधी की मानवता से परिचित हैं, वे उसे बयां करने से इसलिये कतरातें हैं कि कहीं उन पर देशद्रोह का आरोप न लग जाये?

ये सोच गलत है। अगर गांधी जी को आज के युग के लिए प्रासंगिक बनाना है, तो उनकी मानवता को एक पौराणिक कथा बनने से बचाना होगा। युवाओं को उनके जीवन के ऐसे पहलुयों से वाकिफ करना पड़ेगा जो इस बात का एहसास दिलाएं कि बापू पहले उनके जैसे ही एक इन्सान थे; महात्मा बाद में बनें। इस बात का सबसे पुख्ता प्रमाण उनकी गुजराती में लिखी जीवनी सत्व नू प्रयोग अथवा आत्मकथा में मिलता है। ये दीगर बात है कि इसका अंग्रेज़ी अनुवाद करते समय उनके लंबे अर्से तक निजी सचिव रहे, महादेव देसाई, ने काफी सारी बातों को संशोधित कर दिया, शायद ये सोचकर कि उनका गलत निष्कर्ष निकाला जाये। इन बातों का वर्णन आधुनिक मनोवैज्ञानिक सुधीर कक्कर के भारतीय लिंग-भेद (इंडियन सेक्शुअलिती) पर लिखे शोध में विस्तार से पढ़ने को मिलता है।

कक्कर का यह मनाना है की गांधीवाद के तीन आधारस्तंभ हैं: अहिंसा, सत्याग्रह और ब्रह्मचर्य। इनमें से ब्रह्मचर्य गांधी जी के लिए सबसे महत्वपूर्ण था। इसका कारण उनकी जवानी की एक घटना में मिलता है। जब उनके पिता मरणावस्था में थे, तो गांधी जी ने दिन-रात उनके पास रहकर उनकी सेवा की। शायद इसके परिणाम स्वरूप उनकी तबियत में कुछ सुधार होने लगा। अपने पिता की हालत बेहतर होते देख, एक रात वे अपनी कामुकता को तृप्त करने अपनी पत्नी के साथ सहवास करने अपने कमरे में चल दिए। इसी बीच उनके पिता का देहांत हो गया। इस बात का अपराध-बोध उन्हें जिन्दगी भर रहा, और वे पूरी तरह इस घटना से अंत तक नहीं उभर पाए।

अपनी कामुकता पर काबू पाने के लिए उन्होनें नानाप्रकार के प्रयोग किये, जिसके उल्लेख उनकी आत्मकथा के गुजराती संस्करण में है। अगर उनके पत्राचार का अवलोकन करें, तो उनकी अनुयायी, मीरा बेन, को अचानक पूणे भेज देने का कारण भी स्पष्ट हो जाता है : गांधी जी लिखते हैं कि जब भी मीरा बेन उनको चाय का प्याला पकड़ाती थीं, उनके शरीर में वासना का संचार होने लगता था; इसको नियंत्रित करने के लिए बेन का दूर रहना आवश्यक हो गया।

ऐसा ही उदाहरण उनकी पत्नी, कस्तूरबा, द्वारा अमरीकी पत्रकार, मार्गरेट वालकर, को यरवदा जेल में दिए गए एक साक्षात्कार में मिलता है। जब उनसे पूछा गया कि बापू क्या अब भी उनके प्रति कामुकता रखते हैं, तो उन्होनें इस बात से इनकार नहीं किया; किन्तु ये ज़रूर स्पष्ट कर दिया कि आख़िरी बार सम्भोग उन्होनें चालीस वर्ष पहले किया था।

हाल ही में प्रकाशित, श्रीमती सोनिया गांधी द्वारा संशोधित पुस्तक, दो संग दो अलग, में भी गांधी जी की वासना पर काबू पाने के प्रयास- जिसने ब्रह्मचर्य के सामूहिक सिद्धांत का रूप ले लिया- की एक अनूठी झलक मिलती है। नैनी जेल से लिखे पत्र के मध्यम से नेहरू जी अपनी बेटी, इंदिरा, को फिरोज़ गांधी से प्रेम विवाह रचाने की इजाजत इस शर्त पर देते हैं कि दोनो होने वाले दम्पत्ती बापू से पहले मिलकर अनुमति ले आयें। दादा बनने की चेष्टा रखने वाले नेहरू जी ये नहीं चाहते थे कि उनकी बेटी और दामाद का हाल उनके मित्र, जय प्रकाश नारायण, और उनकी पत्नी, प्रभा, जैसा हो : जब जे.पी. अपनी नव-विवाहित पत्नी को बापू से मिलाने ले गए, तो बापू ने एकाएक दोनो को ब्रह्मचर्य की प्रतिज्ञा दिला दी, ये हिदायत देते हुये कि अब से तुम दोनो भाई-बहन की तरह रहो।

II
संरक्षक
उक्त व्याख्यानों से साफ ज़ाहिर होता है कि गांधी जी उन्हीं सब भावों से पीड़ित थे, जिनसे युवा पीढ़ी आज भी जूझ रही है। उनका उपाय कुछ अव्यवहारिक सा लगता ज़रूर है, पर उनके हाड़ और मांस के बने मनुष्य होने पर रौशनी अवश्य डालता है। यही बात उनकी राजनीति पर भी लागू होती है। त्रिपुरी अधिवेशन में उनके प्रत्याशी, डाक्टर पिट्टाभी सीतारमय्या, की हार के बाद जिस प्रकार से उन्होनें नेताजी सुभाष चंद्र बोस को कांग्रेस अध्यक्ष का पद छोड़ने के लिए विवश कर दिया, वो चाणक्य की कूटनीति से ज़्यादा प्रेरित लगता है, न कि शत्रु-प्रेम के आदर्श से।

एक तरह से देखा जाये, तो गांधी जी का सम्पूर्ण राजनैतिक जीवन उनकी भारतीय पहचान की अदभुत समझ से उत्पन्न एक विशेष किस्म की व्यवहारिकता का अभिप्राय ही तो है। इस तथ्य को अनदेखा करना उनकी स्वतंत्रता संग्राम में अदा की गयी अहम भूमिका को नकारना होगा। बापू का पहला आन्दोलन चम्पारण में हुआ। आखिर ज़मींदारी प्रथा से पीड़ित किसान तो पूरे भारतवर्ष में थे, फिर चम्पारण ही क्यों? इसका एकमात्र कारण यह है कि केवल चम्पारण ही एक ऐसी जगह थी जहाँ का ज़मींदार अंग्रेज़ था, और किसान हिन्दुस्तानी। भारतीय पहचान की अदभुत समझ रखने वाले गांधी को इस रंग-भेद पर आधारित लाक्षणिक अर्थ का महत्व अच्छी तरह मालूम था, और इसीलिये उन्होनें चम्पारण का चयन किया।

इसी से जुड़ा दूसरा सवाल ये है कि चम्पारण का सत्याग्रह और जगह लागू क्यों नहीं किया गया? इसका जवाब जूडिथ ब्राउन के शोध, सविनय अवज्ञा : भारतीय राजनीति में महात्मा, में मिलता है। उनके हिसाब से स्वतंत्रता संग्राम में गांधी जी का नेतृत्व एक विशेष प्रकार के समझौते पर आधारित था, जिसे उन्होनें संरक्षक-ग्राहक संबंध की परिभाषा दी है। सीधे शब्दों में कहें, तो गांधी जी संरक्षक थे; और उनके ग्राहक, भरत का आवाम, जिसमें विशेषकर ज़मींदार और उद्योगपति भी शामिल थे।

प्रारम्भ से ही गांधी जी ने स्पष्ट कर दिया था कि स्वतंत्र भारत में कृषि पर कर (लगान) नहीं लगाया जायेगा। यह कह के उन्होनें बड़ी समझदारी के साथ भारत के ज़मींदारों को आजादी की जंग में हितबद्ध कर लिया। इसी प्रकार से स्वदेशी का मूलमंत्र देकर वे उद्योगपतियों को भी अपने- और अपनी लड़ाई के- पक्ष में ले आये। आखिर अंग्रेजी मिलों के कपड़ों का बहिर्गमन करने का सीधा-सीधा लाभ भारतीय मिलों- और मिल मालिकों- को ही तो मिला। जब कांग्रेस के लाहौर अधिवेशन में पंडित नेहरू ने समाजवाद की बात छेड़ी- जिस से दोनों ज़मींदारों और उद्योगपतियों को नुकसान होता- तो गांधी जी ने इसका यह कह के विरोध किया कि ये आजादी से जुड़ा मुद्दा नही है, और वैसे भी समाजवाद एक विदेशी विचार है।

स्वाभाविक रूप से अब ये सवाल उठता है कि क्या ऐसा कर के गांधी जी ने भारत की आम जनता के साथ विश्वासघात किया? इसका सीधा जवाब है: बिल्कुल नहीं। अगर ये दोनों पक्ष उनका साथ नही देते, तो अंग्रेजी हुकूमत को हटाना मुश्किल ही नही, नामुमकिन भी होता। इनको अपने साथ करके गांधी जी ने ब्रिटिश राज के तीन में से दो आधारस्तंभ ध्वस्त कर दिए। (तीसरा स्तम्भ यहाँ के राजाओं का था, जिन्हे आज़ाद भारत में सम्मिलित करने का काम उनके अनुयायी, सरदार वल्लभ भाई पटेल, ने बखूबी किया।) वैसे भी, गांधी जी ने जो कुछ भी छुआ-छूत को ख़त्म करने और हिंदु-मुस्लिम एकता के लिए किया, वह अपने आप में उनके दरिद्र-नारायण (गरीब से गरीब) के प्रति निस्वार्थ प्रेम का सुबूत है।

III
साधु
गांधी जी की व्यवहारिक सोच मात्र उनकी अंग्रेजों के खिलाफ राजनैतिक व्यूह-रचना बनाने तक सीमित नहीं थी; इसकी छाप उनके राजनीति करने के तरीकों में भी हमें देखने को मिलती है। राष्ट्रवादी इतिहासकार बिपिन चंद्र ने अपनी पुस्तक, भारत का आजादी के लिए संघर्ष, में संघर्ष-समय-संघर्ष (Struggle-Time-Struggle) सिद्धांत की परिभाषा दी है। जब एकाएक बापू ने चौरी-चौरा में हुई घटना- जिस में उद्वेलित भीड़ ने २३ पुलीस वालों को थाने में बंद करके जिंदा जला दिया था- के उपरांत राष्ट्रव्यापी असहयोग आन्दोलन को वापस ले लिया, तो अहिंसा के रास्ते से भटकना ही एकमात्र कारण नहीं था। वे भली भांती ये समझते थे कि किसी भी जनांदोलन को अनिश्चित काल के लिए नही चलाया जा सकता; धीरे धीरे वो अपने-आप तितिर-बितिर होने लगता है, और इसके पहले कि ऐसा हो, उन्होनें आन्दोलन को खुद ही वापस ले लिया।

अगला आन्दोलन उन्होनें लगभग १० साल बाद, दांडी यात्रा से शुरू किया। इसको भी लॉर्ड इरविन के राउंड टेबल कोन्फ्रेंस में सम्मिलित होने के न्यौते के बाद स्तगित कर दिया गया। फिर १० वर्ष के अंतराल के पश्चात् उन्होनें भारत छोड़ो का आह्वान किया। साफ दिखता है कि एक व्यवहारिक राजनेता की तरह, गांधी जी ने संघर्ष की अपेक्षा, समझौते को महत्व दिया; लेकिन इसका ये मतलब कदापि नहीं लगाया जा सकता कि वे संघर्ष करने से कभी भी डरे।

गांधी जी के संघर्ष करने के तरीके- मसलन सत्याग्रह- के भी दो पहलु हैं। इसका सैद्धांतिक पहलु इस मान्यता पर आधारित है कि हर व्यक्ति, चाहे वो कितना ही बुरा क्यों न हो, मूलतः एक अच्छा इन्सान है; इसलिये उसे अहिंसा और सत्याग्रह के रास्ते पर चलके अपनी गलती का एहसास कराया जा सकता है। ये सोच विख्यात राजनैतिक दार्शनिक थॉमस होब्बस से ठीक उलटी है। अपने शोध लेविआथन में होब्बस लिखतें हैं कि आदमी का जीवन "मलिन, पशुवत् और अल्पकालीन" है; इसे काबू करने के लिए एक शक्तिशाली राजतंत्र की आवश्यकता है। निआल्ल फेर्गुसन अपनी पुस्तक एम्पायर में दोनों दृष्टिकोणों का विश्लेषण करते हुये कहते हैं कि गांधीवाद अंग्रेजी हुकूमत के खिलाफ इस लिये असरदार साबित हुआ क्यों कि अंग्रेजी हुकूमत वास्तव में अच्छाई और बुराई में फर्क समझती थी; अगर हिटलर की हुकूमत रहती तो धरशाला के नमक कारखाने में प्रदर्शन कर रहे सत्याग्रहियों को औष्वित्ज़ जैसे कौन्शंत्रेशन कैंप में मरने के लिए भेज दिया जाता। शायद गांधी जी इस बात से सहमत होते।

सत्याग्रह का दूसरा पहलु व्यवहारिक है। इतिहासकार आर. एस. शर्मा (Sharma) अपने निबंध, भौतिक संस्कृति और सामाजिक परिवर्तन, में मानते हैं कि सम्राट अशोक के कलिंग युद्ध जीतने के बाद भारतीय सोच में एक अहम बदलाव आया : शक्ति के बल पर विजय की नीति की जगह उनके धम्मविजय (धर्म के माध्यम से जीत) के सिद्धांत ने ले ली। सीधे शब्दों में कहें, तो हम अहिंसावादी बन गए। शायद इसलिये १८५७ का प्रथम स्वतंत्रता संग्राम, और बीसवीं शताब्दी के शुरुआती दौर के विप्लववाद/उग्रवाद विफल साबित हुये। गांधी जी की महानता इस में है कि उन्होनें हमारी अहिंसावादी प्रवृति को हमारा सबसे शक्तिशाली शस्त्र बना दिया। जनमानस से अगर पार्लियामेंट के सेंट्रल हॉल में बम फेकने को कहें, तो शायद ही कुछ लोग शहीद भगत सिंह की तरह सामने आये। हाँ, अगर उनसे हड़ताल में हिस्सा लेने को कहें- मसलन काम पे न जाके घर बैठे छुट्टी मनाए- तो शायद ही कोई होगा जो मना करे। और अगर ऐसा करके, वो आजादी की लड़ाई में भागीदार बन जाते हैं, तो सोने पे सुहागा।

ठीक ऐसा ही हुआ। गांधी जी के एक आह्वान पर पूरा देश मानो थम सा जाता था; अचानक बुद्धिजीवियों और चंद क्रांतिकारियों की मुहिम ने एक राष्ट्रव्यापी जनांदोलन का रूप ले लिया, और अंग्रेजों को अंततः भारत छोड़ना ही पड़ा।

मेरे हिसाब से हमको गांधी जी से बेहतर समझने वाला नेता आज तक उत्पन्न नहीं हुआ है; और न ही होते नज़र आ रहा है। लेकिन विडम्बना की बात तो ये है कि वे हमको जितना अच्छे से समझते थे, हम उनको- उनकी मानवता को, उनकी सैद्धान्तिक राजनीति में निहित व्यवहारिकता को- बिल्कुल भी समझ नहीं पाएं हैं। इसका सबसे बड़ा कारण शायद यह है कि हम विश्वास ही नहीं कर पाते कि कोई हमारे जैसा ही कामुकता से जूझता मनुष्य महात्मा बन सकता है। मोहनदास करमचंद गांधी महात्मा पैदा नहीं हुए थे; और न ही वो किसी देवता के अवतार थे। उन्होनें अपनी मानवीय कमियों पे काबू पाकर, अपने जीवनकाल में खुद के भीतर एक महात्मा को जन्म दिया; और हमें पृथ्वी पर दिव्यता का एहसास कराया।

आज वो हमारे लिए चौक पर खड़ी एक मूरत बन गए हैं, जिसको साल में दो दिन साफ-सुथरा कर, फूल माला से सजा दिया जाता है। फिर भी कहीं ना कहीं गांधीवाद अब भी जिंदा है। गांधी जी की बात मानने वालों की संख्या पिछले दशक में बढ़ी ही है, घटी नहीं है। ऐसे लोगों की जो मात्र गांधी जी के चित्र का दर्शन कर बिना कुछ सोचे समझे, बिना किसी चीज़ की परवाह किये, सब काम कर देते हैं। बशर्ते : बापू के दर्शन कड़कते हुये ५०० रुपये के नोटों पर हो। और अगर १००० के गुलाबी नोट हों, तो फिर वाह भई वाह, क्या कहना!

महात्मा गांधी अमर रहें।

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Personal: Celebrating One Year of Orkuting

Reluctant Convert

Truth be told, I’ve never been a great admirer of the virtues of virtual communication: it is my paramount belief that there can be no substitute for actual face to face- mano à mano- flesh and blood, contact between two or more hot-blooded human beings (a fact, needless to say, epitomized by the sexual act). So, it was only after my Inbox was regularly carpet-bombarded with automated emails inviting me to join Orkut, Google’s social networking website, from the never-say-die, Rajesh Dulani, that I finally overcame my initial skepticism, and yielded (if only as a token of my inevitable appreciation for Mr. Dulani’s patient persistence).

During the past year, Orkut has helped me revive old (not to mention, cold) intimacies with long lost friends (at last count, 95), and allowed me to befriend many more (555 and counting). To illustrate, while on a pilgrimage to the khanqah of the venerable Sufi saint, Moin-ud-din Chisti, at Ajmer-é-sharif two days ago, I was pleasantly surprised to receive a telephone call from a college-mate, Aseem Andrews, who is, as it turns out, presently working for the United Nation’s Resident Coordinator at Windhoek, Namibia: when I inquired how he had managed to find me after an absence of about a decade, he exclaimed from beyond the oceans, “Thank God for Orkut!” Not only that, since Mr. Andrews seemed to know all about what’s happened to me in the interregnum simply by reading my somewhat dense, soap-operatic profile, we could resume our dialogue as if it had never really been discontinued.

Party Poopers & Gate Crashers

Now, as regards the rapidly-mushrooming Galaxy of Friends I’ve never really met, well, the experience hasn’t been quite as enriching as I would have liked it to be: to put it plainly, it’s more quantity than quality. Let me explain. It’s like meeting people at a rather large party where nobody (including the host) knows anybody: with most, one runs out of things to say after exchanging the first few pleasantries (hi!- how are you?- I am fine, thank you, how are you?- I am fine, thank you ad infinitum). This sort of conversational impasse is not unlike the dozens of automated messages we are flooded with (on say, Friendship Day or Diwali), where the need or the motivation to respond simply doesn't exist. (See my entry on 'From One Computer to Another: Shubh Diwali, Eid Mubarak etc...')

To take a pointer from Dale Carnegie’s bestseller, How to Win Friends and Influence People, we simply fail to move onto the next strata of 'virtual-proximity', which must, I guess, necessarily be based on a mutuality of shared experiences and interests (which college did you go to?- Stephen’s- O! what batch?- 1998- ah, I am your senior by a decade. Way before your time, kiddo’- Wow! is that so!- boy, do I miss those mince-cutlets!- etc. till one of them invites the other for a drink).

On the left-hand margin of its Friends section, Orkut provides a neat little hierarchy pertaining to ‘levels of friendship’. Virtual friends can be successively categorized into the following levels: haven’t met (555); acquaintances (51); friends (30); good friends (8); best friends (6). If one remains actively involved with Orkut, then there’s a fairly good probability that a lot of people in the haven’t met-list will move up to the acquaintances-list, who will in turn rise to the friends-list, and so on and so forth. As the numbers I’ve indicated in the brackets above show, the greatest hurdle is to migrate from the haven’t met-list to the acquaintances-list. From there on, it becomes relatively easier. In my case, of the 606 persons who were originally on the ‘haven’t met-list’, only 51 became acquaintances. In most of these 51 instances, I must admit that the ‘initiative’ to do so has almost always come from the other party. To enable this upward movement, Orkut offers two rather interesting options.

First, there are tens of thousands of ‘communities’ catering to every conceivable interest-group, from Harry Potter to ‘Against People Who Hate Sonia’ (a community formed in response to its rival, ‘I hate Sonia Gandhi’). Every day, hundreds more are being added (‘Free Sanjay Dutt’). It would seem that all one has to do to move to the next proximity-level is to join any of these communities that might be of interest to you. I am now a member of a staggering 115 communities (three of which were started by me). However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that I actively participate in all of them; or even that most of these communities have activity of any kind going on. A majority of them are quite simply, defunct. In retrospect, the only reason why I joined most of these communities was the exact same reason why I joined Orkut in the first place: not only to stop people- ‘friends’- from stuffing my Inbox with invitations to communities that couldn’t possibly be of interest to me (‘Raipur Property Developers’) but also to avoid offending these gentle souls.

Of course, there have been a few praiseworthy exceptions: SNT’s ‘Jai Chhattisgarh’ community has done more to revive a love for Chhattisgarhi-culture and language among our youth than any other forum, virtual or otherwise, I know of. However, to get it off the ground, he had to take out several hours from his daily schedule, sending invitations, posting topics, conducting polls, and even telephoning friends to join. Needless to say, not many of us can put in this kind of singular dedication and time, which is a requisite to keep a niche-group like this one alive. In contrast, a community named ‘India’, which doesn’t really cater to any particular interest or sentiment, doesn’t require this kind of effort: yet, of its 447,417 members (!) only a miniscule percent actually participate in any kind of community-discussion. So is there an alternative to ‘communities’?

To use an analogy, if ‘communities’ are akin to ‘parties’, and you don’t really feel like going to one, then Orkut offers you a second option: its rather powerful ‘search engine’ allows you to look for, and directly get in touch with, like-minded individuals (as opposed to communities), with whom one might share a hitherto undiscovered niche. For instance, typing ‘à la recherché du temps perdu’ will fish out all those who, for one reason or another, love Proust; and then, you can while away time musing about Cambray in chaste provincial-French. Chances are you will both also like listening to Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1: ‘I love the way it opens with oooo such aplomb, and then quietly disintegrates into near-oblivion’. And what’s true of Tchaikovsky also applies to most virtual dialogues I’ve endeavored to sustain: for better and worse, their disintegration into ‘near-oblivion’ has been inevitable.

The reason, I believe, lies in an unavoidable ‘structural blockage’ inherent in all virtual communication. And the only way to overcome it is to quite literally, step out of each others’ computer monitors, shake hands, and embrace. Needless to say, this requires a ‘leap of faith’: what if, for instance, this person who loves Proust and Tchaikovsky turns out to be Dr. Hannibal Lecter, the brilliant psychiatrist from Thomas Harris’ novel, The Silence of the Lambs, who preferred to eat his patients’ ‘liver(s) with a nice bottle of Chianti’ on the sole pretext that their ‘therapy wasn’t going anywhere’? Well, unless and until one decides to meet, there’s no other way to find out, is there? And this is precisely where most people chicken out, and rightly so. As things stand, web-based social networking is fraught with a variety of dangers, both foreseen and unforeseen. Allow me to share three anecdotes (one involving me, and two concerning friends) to elaborate on what I mean.

Three Anecdotes: On Being Deceived, Demonized and Deleted

(1)

I first got involved with the Internet thirteen years ago, in 1994. In those prehistoric cyber-days, chatting on Yahoo! was the ‘in-thing’ (if not the only thing one could do with the then irritatingly-slow internet); likewise, at that age- 17 being the time when one’s testosterones are just firing-up- one chatted mainly to ‘get hooked’. And so it came to pass that I fell head-over-heels in ‘virtual love’ with “smittenkitten”, the chosen nom de plume of the enigmatic object of my affection (or what is more commonly known as chat-ID). We’d spend hours chatting endlessly through moist summer-nights. I learnt that she lived in Bombay (was this before they changed the name to Mumbai?); despite being vegetarian, was supremely intelligent; had a wonderful, if slightly warped, sense of humor; studied FY-Eco (short for ‘first year economics’) at Wilson’s College; and hoped to become, of all things, a fashion designer. I kept begging her to meet, and she finally consented. On the pretext of attending a friend, Ravi Patodi’s sister’s wedding, I managed to fly to Bombay; then I sneaked away from the wedding, to a restaurant on Queen’s Necklace Road (a.k.a. Marine Drive) called New Yorker. I waited for two hours, slowly drowning myself in six tall glasses of excessively-sugary milkshakes to justify my occupation of the extremely hard-to-get table, and left, thoroughly disenchanted. When we ‘met’ again for PM (private messaging), I was quite naturally furious at her. But her explanation put me at rest: “do you remember the guy on the table next to yours,’ she asked, ‘the one in the dark blue polo shirt?” “Not really,” I typed back, almost shattering the keyboard. “Well, that was me.”

After all these years, I still try to laugh the whole thing off. But somehow I can’t. Perhaps, this is the principal reason why I’ve had to turn-down requests from ‘females’ who, however valid their reasons for doing so (personal safety?), cut-and-paste a Catherine Zeta Jones photo on their profile. The fact is that ‘virtual communication’ allows you to be dishonest- to project an image of not what you really are but what you would much rather want to be- in ways that real communication simply cannot. As Amit Tiwari remarks in a particularly incisive blog-entry, "We become someone else in the virtual world." (What he doesn't quite answer is whether this someone else is actually more representative of our true selves?) Whatever be the case, any relationship based on a lie, howsoever big or small, cannot endure. Understandably, after this ‘experience’ I haven’t really had the heart- or the stomach- for similar misadventures. The risks, physical but also, more importantly, emotional, are far too great, as another friend, Mohit Singhania, was to discover to his chagrin, thirteen years later.

(2)

Mr. Singhania was an ardent Orkutian, and like the me of thirteen years ago, keen on ‘getting hooked’. However unlike me, most of his real-life encounters with his virtual friends were going splendidly, thanks mostly to the relatively deserted ‘VIP Road’ (leading to the Raipur airport). That was before he discovered that his Orkut Identity- his photos, his interests, his life- had been, for lack of a better word, copied by a perverted nymphomaniac: soon, this copycat-Mohit was hosting a conglomerate of sex-communities soliciting the participation of petite Raipuriyan femmes fatale in expectedly-depraved orgiastic rituals. To use Mr. Singhania’s own words from his hedonistically funny blog-entry, ‘Why I left Orkut’: “this guy had the balls to use my snap on his profile and then join adult communities on Orkut and finally harass the limited number of females on my friends list. Already the number of females was limited and thanks to him, I was almost about to look like a total gay on Orkut with 99% male friends. Can somebody get me this guy’s address?” Well, as it turned out, another friend, Amit Tiwari, was able to find Mr. Singhania’s elusive bête noire, after which I am happy to report he is back to his good ol’ philandering ways on Orkut. He’s even found a way to ‘talk to chicks’ behind his somewhat nosy ex-girlfriend’s back: rather than scrap, he now ‘messages’ his nice little sonnets to them (like his beefy t-shirts, he’s discovered that ‘one sonnet fits all’).

(3)

A third anecdote involves Mr. Singhania’s benefactor, Mr. Tiwari himself: it illustrates how even a relatively minor ‘dispute’ can turn grotesquely ugly. Like most men of his age, he is a man of strong opinions (to see what I mean, do visit his aptly named blog, 'Chaos and Creation'): he breathes Nietzsche (but thankfully, is spared the Great Philosopher’s descent into madness). Without going into its context, Mr. Tiwari found himself engaged in a somewhat heated textual-parley with a Raipur-based Sikh boy studying at IIT, Powai. Unable to beat him in this debate, the IITian then proceeded to ‘hack into’ not only Mr. Tiwari’s Orkut account, but also his email accounts (which he used for business purposes), and quiet skillfully, deleted them: suddenly, Mr. Tiwari was without a ‘virtual identity’. As with Mr. Singhania’s case, he ultimately managed to locate his nemesis in the real-world, and persuaded him to restore his virtual life.

The point I wish to make here is this: unlike me, neither of my friends went looking for trouble. Trouble, it seems, found them. It’s kind of like that Sandra Bullock film, The Net: a cat-and-mouse tale of deception where Ms. Bullock’s character finds her entire life erased by a band of cyber-terrorists who, typically of Hollywood blockbusters, are out to take over America’s computerized-civilization. The fourth installment of the Die Hard series starring Bruce Willis is also based on a somewhat similar premise (I will spare you the details, assuming that those of you who haven’t seen it might want to do so at some later date). Unfortunately, such tales are not confined to celluloid: if newspaper reports are to be believed, then instances of Orkut being involved in anti-social activities- narco-jamborees, hate-communities, classroom harassments, even homicides- are becoming increasingly rampant in metropolitan India.

And Two Antidotes?
Not surprisingly, the Mumbai chief of the ultra-right party, Shiv Sena’s youth wing, Abhijit Panse, recently agitated to get Orkut banned: his raison d’être has little to with crime per se; instead, he believes that Orkut is, well, ‘anti-India’. Nothing could be farther from the truth: more Indians use Orkut than any other social-networking website (as a matter of fact, the number of Indians on Orkut is next only to Brazilians, and we are fast catching up). If anything, Orkut has become a powerful medium for Track Three Diplomacy (more commonly known as, P2P, or people-to-people diplomacy): the ‘India-Pakistan Friendship Club’ has 83,594 members. In fact, Mr. Panse would be better advised if he were to emulate his party’s alliance partner, the BJP, which has obviously realized the immense potential of Orkut in promoting itself among its predominantly youth members: while the ‘BJP Supporters Group’ has 7997 members, its parent-body, the RSS boasts a membership of a whopping 22,853 (which is more than all other political parties combined, Congress included). Even Lok Paritran (formed by IT-savvy IITian do-gooders), a relatively insignificant political outfit in the real-world most recognized for its anti-reservation stance, has a membership of 10,185. In contrast, the ‘Dalit’ community, whose members support affirmative action for the depressed communities, number only 505. In fact, it would not be incorrect to say that Orkut is fast becoming an ideal representative of what’s happening in- and to- Urban Upper Caste India. And even as Orkut continues to draw parts of this India closer to each other, and to the world, it also shows us how fast and how far this India is moving away from its Rural, Exurbian counterpart.

As I enter my second year of Orkuting, my effort, therefore, shall be twofold: first, at a personal level, I should like to make a conscious effort to convert my virtual friendships into real-life friendships, believing that the Good in all of us cumulatively overpowers the Bad that might exist in some of us; secondly, I would want to explore ways in which this immensely powerful medium could be used to ‘sensitize’ my Urban Friends, both real as well as virtual, to the needs, the hopes and aspirations, of the India that doesn’t quite have the luxury of connecting to the world on Orkut.

AJ
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Essaying India's Media (A): India v. Media

Etymology of the word ESSAY: 1597, "short non-fiction literary composition" (first attested in writings of Francis Bacon, probably in imitation of Montaigne), from M.Fr. essai "trial, attempt, essay," from L.L. exagium "a weighing, weight," from L. exigere "test," from ex- "out" + agere apparently meaning here "to weigh." The suggestion is of unpolished writing. Essayist is from 1609. The more literal verb meaning "to put to proof, test the mettle of" is from 1483; this sense has mostly gone with the divergent spelling assay (q.v.).

HOLY COW
Gentler souls have often dissuaded me from writing about the Media: apparently, it is one of the “Three Holy Cows” of Indian society that mustn’t dare be criticized (the other two, if you’re interested, are the Judiciary and Religion- in that order); consequently, the ideal relationship- infact, the only relationship- one can have with the media has got to be one of abject adulation: with one’s lips firmly puckered to its butt even if it decides with all solemnity to shit all over one’s face.

Forgive the scatological imagery but I’ve been there only too often to know what I’m talking about: even before the Central Bureau of Implication (more commonly known as the CBI) charged me with murdering a political-nobody whom I hadn’t heard of before, a news channel, Aaj Tak, had graphically shown me- or atleast an actor who was suppose to look like me- committing the crime in cold blood in its popular primetime program “Hatyara Kaun?” (Who is the Killer?). I suppose it doesn’t make any difference that the Court ultimately acquitted me after I had spent exactly one year locked up in jail. I mean what’s a person’s life compared to TRPs, right?

There are those who see this phenomenon- of a hyperactive media- as Progress: the Fourth Estate, after all, gives Voice to the People. That is indeed true. But the more important question is what kind of ‘people’- and why?

THE NNS SYNDROME
To understand, let’s look back at the last Lok Sabha Election (2004). The mainstream media was unanimous in its prediction that the NDA would return to power with an absolute majority; as a corollary, its rival, the UPA, was slated to be wiped out. When the exact opposite happened, the erudite journalist Rajdeep Sardesai, then political correspondent of NDTV, introspected that ‘it was the duty of the media to disbelieve; and we didn’t’. Disbelieve who?

I suppose he meant politicians. Or more specifically, the propaganda-machinery headed by the late Pramod Mahajan with its hard-selling of the NDA’s “India Shining” campaign. This machinery was cleverly named ‘National News Service’ (NNS) when infact it functioned solely as the ‘NDA’s News Service’. For one thing, it had more professional journalists and reporters on its payrolls than any other news organization in the nation (the Times of India group included). In Chhattisgarh, for instance, it was headed by Ramesh Nayyar, a former editor with the Chandigarh Tribune. Many, like my father, considered him to be the very embodiment of Nehruvian Socialism. After his stint with NNS, he has now become the principal ideologue of Dr. Raman Singh’s government.

NNS had seemingly unlimited resources and a remarkably sophisticated infrastructure at its command to conduct its massive media-blitzkrieg: Feel Good comprised only one part of its operation; a far more lethal side involved making its enemies Feel- and look- Bad. Its CCTV-wired hi-tech headquarters located on the third floor of Delhi’s posh Dhawandeep Apartment building were filled with dossiers containing damaging propaganda on virtually anyone who was considered a threat to the NDA: ‘target-specific’ websites mushroomed in seconds; passwords were hacked and emails intercepted; a virtual cyber war was waged. Even more curiously, millions were raised from the ‘Overseas Friends of the BJP’ and other similar sounding associations of sympathetic NRIs: this extraordinary largesse might well be symptomatic of an émigré’s effort to ‘rationalize’ (again, forgive the Freudian analysis) a deep-rooted sense of guilt- a feeling that springs from having left one’s Motherland for a better life elsewhere- by funneling money into the BJP’s oft-voiced ultra-patriotic agenda of making India ‘Great’ (presumably by annexing Pakistan, Srilanka, Nepal, Myanmar and Afghanistan into an amalgam called ‘Akhand Bharat’).

More conventionally, hundreds of crores of rupees were spent on buying ‘television talktime’, and ‘coverage space’ in the print media. All of this with one very convenient rider: they weren’t suppose to be shown as paid-advertisements; but as neutral, objective ‘news’, ‘surveys’ and ‘exit polls’. Any reference to their being sponsored was reduced to fine print one could barely read; later, many news organizations dispensed with even this fig-leaf.

Under these circumstances, it would be foolish to expect the media- well, most of it anyway- not to simply play along. Unfortunately for the NNS, the People didn’t.

FOIE GRAS, ANYONE?

Now, supposing that the media provides the interface between the People and their politicians, telling the former what to think and the latter what to do, the Lok Sabha results meant that the People were simply not taking this carpet-bombardment of ‘news’, ‘surveys’ and ‘exit polls’ seriously: after all, they didn’t do what the media was telling them to do, i.e., vote back the NDA to power. For a majority of Indians, most of who continue to live outside cities, “India Shining” didn’t make any sense at all: many of them genuinely believed that six years of NDA’s rule had led to their pauperization; to put it differently, the rich had gotten richer while the poor had been, well, forgotten.

It was the media’s job to tell this to Mr. Mahajan. It didn’t. Instead, it believed Mr. Mahajan’s NNS machinery, and parroted word for word what he was saying. Maybe, this was because the media itself had no idea how the people really felt?

Here, let’s stop to look at the United States, where Gallup Polls are far a more evolved ‘science’: in 2000, barring Rupert Murdoch’s ‘conservative’ media-empire (including the Fox TV network), everybody had predicted an Al Gore win; likewise, most of the ‘liberal media’ was not in favor of President George W. Bush’s comeback in 2004. The Economist sought to explain this ‘disjunction’- between the Press and the People of the world’s sole superpower- in terms of: ‘exurbias’. A vast majority of those who lined up to vote for ‘W.’ didn’t live in the big cities: they lead self-contented, some might say insular, lives in nice, little, self-contained townships that are coming up all over North America. Sociologists see this phenomenon as part of the larger ‘exodus’ from big, overcrowded, over-polluted, crime-infested, possibly even ‘immoral’ cities, and a yearning to return to the Jeffersonian vision of yore (as opposed to the Hamiltonian one); hence, I guess, the term exurbias. The genius of Mr. Bush’s campaign team- and more specifically, its manager, Karl Rove- lies in identifying and ‘reaching out’ to these extremely significant entities who were in a way fleeing the negative effects of ‘the liberal ethos’ that has come to grip most big cities, and which were largely neglected by the mainstream media.

As it turns out, this explanation provides a rather perceptive insight into the predicament of India’s Press. All that needs to be done is to replace the term ‘exurbia’ with ‘villages’ and ‘townships’. While India may live- or which is more likely, die- in her villages, its media is ensconced in the cool comforts of its blooming cities. Editors who shot to fame telling the world about starvation deaths in remote parts of Assam are now happily pontificating on the virtues of goose liver making the best foie gras. Perhaps, it would be unfair to blame them entirely for this. The fact is that news about what’s happening outside the metros doesn’t sell. It’s simply not profitable for the corporations, who now own most of the media and almost certainly, cough-up all of its advertisement-revenue (next only to Government- which fact led Noam Chomsky to call media ‘bludgeons of democratic governments’): how many villagers, after all, are rushing to buy Coca Cola when they have to worry about getting work to pay for their next meal?

One boy gets himself stuck in a well in a town near Delhi on a Sunday (which is a relatively ‘news-free’ day), and the entire national media goes agog: in minutes, crores of rupees are generated in SMSs and ‘relief funds’. On the other hand, hundreds of tribals are being killed in the Dantewada district of south Bastar since the inception of Salwa Judum in 2005, and the nation’s biggest magazine- India Today- hasn’t had one word to say about it to date.

Truth be told, there are two Indias really; and the one the media now caters to isn’t the one in which most of our fellow citizens live. In other words, the mainstream media is no longer representative of the nation.

And if that is so, then what- or whom- does the media represent?


AJ

End of Part One
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CHITRAKOTE: THE THREE TRAGEDIES OF CHHATTISGARH TOURISM

Note: Very curiously, excerpts from this entry were published in Naxal Revolution.

Diary entry of 17.02.2007
This author strikes a pose at the Chitrakote waterfall.

The site for the log-huts camp overlooking the Chitrakote waterfall takes its dying-gasp: this summer, the huts, all of which have withstood the test of time with remarkable fortitude and very little maintenance, are to be dismantled to make way for a hideous brick-and-cement ‘tourist complex’. An attendant confides to me that tourists aren’t exactly happy: “if we wanted air-conditioned buildings of concrete,” they lament, “we would have stayed back in the city.” In my opinion, the worst thing about the ‘new master plan’ are the four closely clustered cement ‘cottages’ at the edge of the cliff, which rather senselessly block what used to be the Fall’s majestic view from the rest of the (now) proposed lodges: with the exception of those lucky few allowed to stay in those four cottages- the absentee landlords of the GOC- none of the other residents will be able to enjoy the panorama of Chitrakote (see photograph below). Indeed it will not be farfetched to say that the sine qua non of why people would want to stay here in the first place no longer exists.


Under Demolition: The Log Huts Campsite at Chitrakote (can you see Chitrakote?)

Chitrakote is an ideal case study of what’s happening to Chhattisgarh Tourism- and culture- under the tutelage of its high profile- but in my opinion, misguided- minister, Brij Mohan Agrawal. The way I see it, there are three definitive shifts in the ministry’s policy.

1. OVER-BUREAUCRATISATION: During my father’s regime, the mantra was privatization: the scant tourism infrastructure we had inherited from MPTDC (Madhya Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation)- its only notable property being the ruinous Chhattisgarh Hotel at Raipur- was slated for disinvestment; likewise, parent departments of various ‘rest houses’ littered all over the state- Irrigation, PWD and Forest- most of which were built during the heydays of the Raj, were instructed to hand them over to private parties, to be run on commercial lines.

Papa’s policy was clear. GOC was to confine its role to Publicity: its job was to attract potential tourists to come to Chhattisgarh; once here, private parties, functioning with minimal bureaucratic interference, were expected to take over. Bastar of course was to be Chhattisgarh Tourism’s mascot, but other areas- Bhoramdeo, Achanak Mar and Barnawapara (all three are designated wildlife sanctuaries); Bagicha and Mainpat (both ‘virgin’ hill stations); Sirpur, Sonmuda, Dongargarh, Rajim, Chandrapur, Dantewada and Ratanpur (temple sites)- were also identified for promotion. Since ‘eco-tourism’ and ‘ethno-tourism’ constituted the very core of GOC’s policy, the departments of culture, forest and tourism were placed under one Principal Secretary to enable better synergy between them. Jai Tilak, an IAS officer from Kerala who was instrumental in putting that state- God’s own country- on the world tourism map, was ‘poached’ from his parent-cadre, and given what might be euphemistically called ‘a free hand’. All of this, it would seem, has been reversed. For one thing, Mr. Jai Tilak had been unceremoniously shunted off to Excise, where he soon tired of formulating the state's Liquor Policy.

Meanwhile, CTDC, the government-run state tourism corporation, is on a construction overdrive: tourist lodges, much like the one here at Chitrakote, have mushroomed along highways, and at various other places à la Bansilal’s Haryana. That’s all very well. What I fear- and I believe the lessons of past experiences to be on my side- is the likelihood of their falling victim to the gross mismanagement, corruption and nepotism that are the bane of most, if not all, ‘public sector undertakings’: it will not be long before they are reduced to little more than contemporary ruins. At the rest houses I halted at enroute to Jagdalpur- Kanker, Keshkal, Kondagaon- I was told that the rooms were all booked for ‘guests of hon’ble ministers’ although none of these haloed guests, with the exception of the hon’ble home minister’s wife (who spent all of five minutes at Kondagaon), had bothered showing up. In my opinion, the most sensible thing to do now would be to hand these properties over to private parties, who will, motivated as they are by profits, ensure that they are well maintained. Also, all future ‘projects’ should be organic to the state’s underlying cultural sensibilities: right now, they resemble cheap matchbox-style motels.

This in fact brings me to my second and far more serious point: the de-Chhattisgarhisation of Chhattisgarhi culture.

2. DE-CHHATTISGARHISATION: Not too long ago, I was having lunch with a journalist from the German publication, Focus. She had just been to a cultural evening organized by the Department of Culture, and her surmise of what she saw was as follows: “Chhattisgarh’s culture,” she mused, “is very similar to Rajasthani culture.” Had it not been for her local guide, who had thankfully accompanied her to the luncheon, I would have taken this comment to be symptomatic of an outsider’s total lack of cultural sensibility to distinguish a bison-horn Maria peacock dance from the Kalbeliya. He quickly clarified that the song & dance routine that my distinguished guest had seen was indeed staged by a troupe from Rajasthan, and it had nothing to do with Chhattisgarhi culture. “What else can we expect,” he said, “when the minister for culture is a Marwari (a native of the Marwar region of Rajasthan) who doesn’t know how to speak [the] Chhattisgarhi [dialect]?”

A young journalist-friend from Bilaspur, who had won the local Press Club’s local badminton championship, narrated a similar anecdote to me. While presenting him with the trophy, the hon’ble Chief Minister politely asked where he hailed from. “I am a thakur,” my friend replied, “from Uttar Pradesh.” The CM’s off-hand repartee to his query is telling: “So am I.”

It is an undeniable fact that Chhattisgarhis today find themselves being ruled by a government constituted primarily by persons who do not- cannot- identify themselves with the state’s underlying cultural sensibilities. This has had catastrophic affects. In this regard, I shall cite specific examples. At the Rajyotsav celebrations, held annually to commemorate the state’s foundation day, the amount paid to a little-known dance troupe from Mumbai in 2006- Rs. 15 lakhs- was more than that disbursed to all the other local artistes put together. Likewise the Chhattisgarhi Sahitya Academy, which was headed by the state’s poet-laureate Lakshman Masturia during my father’s government, has been allowed to go defunct while a Sindhi Sahitya Academy has been formed for the promotion of Sindhi literature (Sindh is now a province in Pakistan with its capital at Karachi). While I’ve nothing against Sindhi, it is also important not to overlook other dialects of Chhattisgarh that face a very real threat of obsolescence: Sargujiya and Nathpuriya are two that come to mind, which have a very rich literature that ought to be preserved and promoted.

As far as the local artistes are concerned, an unofficial Culturocracy dominates: it has monopolized state-largesse by systematically ostracizing artistes who refuse to kowtow to the not-so-covert politico-cultural agenda espoused by the BJP’s parent-body, the RSS. During the last Vidhan Sabha elections, professional artistes hired by one Mohan Chand Sundrani, a Sindhi by sheer coincidence, to campaign for the BJP were caught unawares when they were suddenly paraded before the Press as having en mass joined that party. Not surprisingly, Mr. Sundrani now lords over Chhattisgarh’s cultural activities as head of Sundrani World Video, a Raipur-based private limited company, which releases more than 200 ‘Chhattisgarhi’ musical video-albums and CDs every year. This is more than all his competitors put together. In fact artistes not part of his ever-growing cultural stable are finding it increasingly difficult to survive. His numero uno ‘artiste’ is one Yogesh Agrawal, the younger brother of the state’s culture minister. Mr. Yogesh Agrawal’s tallest claim to fame comes from having ‘co-starred with the Bollywood superstar, Amitabh Bachchan, in the patriotic film, Ab tumhare hawale watan saathiyon.’ In film posters erected all over town, his beaming visage dwarfed that of Mr. Bachchan’s. Cinemagoers were therefore somewhat bemused to discover that Mr. Agrawal’s sole appearance in the movie was in a five-second non-speaking scene with the superstar. Lest the audience carelessly overlook this precious misé-en-scène, owners of theaters were advised to pause and replay it at least three times over with the caption: “in this scene, Amitabh Bachchan appears with the pride of Chhattisgarh, our very own Yogesh Agrawal ji.”

Meanwhile, the ‘music videos’, far from being representative of Chhattisgarh’s incredibly rich folk culture, have become increasingly vulgar and full of cheap double-entendres: in one number, ‘aey man chali’, the Calcutta-based starlet, Oshin, gyrates to techno-rhythms with only an iota of clothing. Culture, therefore, is being sacrificed at the scaffold of titillation. The other trend discernable in the evolution of popular Chhattisgarhi music is the growing influence of Oriya, and particularly Sambalpuri, songs. This is mainly because most of the music albums are recorded in sound studios in Cuttack; more often than not, Oriya songs are simply dubbed in Chhattisgarhi. Tonight, at the Lohandiguda madai (fete) where over ten thousand tribals from all over Bastar have congregated, we saw a ‘natt’ competition. Eight parties were simultaneously performing scenes from the Ram Lila in eight separate enclosures to a suitably enthralled squatting audience, comprising mostly women. The common feature in all these performances was that they were all in Oriya (see photo below).
Lohandiguda Madai

The only place where we came across a performance in the native dialect was outside the devi-gudi (the tribal temple): a mandali (band) of performers was singing stories from the Puranas in hybrid-Halabi (which even I could follow), interspersed with ‘prasishtis’ (adulatory songs) for paying-devotees.

The biggest sufferer, however, has been the nascent Chhattisgarhi film industry. In the years 2000-03, more than 35 Chhattisgarhi films were released; from 2004-06, their number has shrunk to less than 10. Annual state film award function, started in 2003, ‘to recognize and promote excellence in Chhattisgarhi cinema’ was summarily abandoned; subsidies announced by the previous government too have been discontinued. Instead the Department of Culture organizes ‘Film Star Nights’. Here also, the ‘politics of culture’ has ensured that the more popular of Chhattisgarh’s ‘stars’- like Shekar, Anuj Sharma and Poonam Naqvi, who attained stardom with ‘Mor chaiyyan bhuiyyan’, the state’s top-grosser ever- are kept at a distance from such events. The DoC’s chief organizer of such events is the proprietor of R.P. Films Pvt. Ltd., Rajesh Mishra, who, like Mr. Sundrani, is extremely close to Mr. Yogesh Agrawal. Any artiste who is considered close to rival political organizations- like Mr. Sharma- is not extended an invitation to participate whereas little-known starlets, who are obviously more amenable to the state’s designs, are given prominent billings.

I was recently asked to preside over the closing ceremony of a statewide Gammat Nacha competition. This, as I later learnt, is an annual event organized by the Tarun Chhattisgarh newspaper. It is indeed unfortunate that although we have several dance-forms in the state, the state government has not deemed it fit to promote any of them. The solitary exception, the Panthi Nach competition announced belatedly this year (2007) as part of Guru Ghasidas Jayanti celebrations, is seen as little more than a political gimmick to woo the ‘Satnami votebank’. The prize money announced for this competition, however, was inexplicably reduced when it came to actually rewarding the winners. This laxity is understandable considering that rather than a particular 'caste' like the Satnami, the principal target of the present government’s cultural policy is indeed the ‘Hindu votebank’. This then brings me to my third- and most sensitive- point.

3. RELIGIOUS EMPHASIS: By far, the single biggest ‘event’ in the DoC’s calendar is the ‘Rajim Kumbh’: glitzy hoardings displaying smiling photographs of the state culture & tourism minister and the CM alongside that of the deity, Rajiv Lochan, are erected at strategic places all over the state; double-page advertisements are placed in every minor and major publication of the nation; sadhus (godmen) from all over the country are extended state-sponsorships to attend. While I find nothing particularly wrong with this- after all, both the Rajim Kumbh méla and the Bastar Dusshera (which has nothing whatsoever to do with the tale of Lord Ram) were popularized during my father’s regime- it is most objectionable that these religious events are being used not only to further votebank politics but also for shameless self-promotion: only last year (2006), some of these godmen were persuaded to confer, in violation of all established precedence and norms, the religious title of ‘Mahamandalesvar’ (great lord of the universe) on the personage of the state culture minister, Mr. Brij Mohan Agrawal.

Taken together, the above-described three trends have led to an unfortunate paradox: the way this present administration sees it, tourism and culture in Chhattisgarh today have very little to do with the Chhattisgarhi identity. Even more worrisome is the fact that both the existence and evolution of this identity have come under grave threat, and there is nobody to speak against it.


AJ
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