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What kind of Prime Minister does India need?

Dr. M. V. Kamath

One wonders whether L.K.Advani has read Tennyson. In one of his great and oft-quoted poems wrote the British poet: “The old order changeth, yielding place to new and God fulfils himself in many ways, lest one good custom should corrupt the world”. What Tennyson wrote in one context holds true in many others as well. The only thing permanent in life is change. And that is true of politics as well.  Often the old are pushed aside as if they have become a hurdle. Their time-tested values are no longer heeded. It is painful to watch. For Advaniji to say that the party he helped successfully to build has lost its vision may be technically correct, but it wasn’t that he was deliberately sidelined. It is just that the present has overtaken the past. How true it is comes through in Rajmohan Gandhi ‘s biography of his grandfather, entitled Mohandas. In 1946 partition of India was very much in the air but Gandhi was opposed to it even when the Congress Working Committee had come to accept it as inevitable. In taking the decision the CWC had not consulted the Mahatma who was then touring villages. Writes Rajmohan: “Gandhi was not consulted…Nehru and Patel seemed to think that Gandhi was out of touch (with reality) – a view, incidentally shared by the likes of C.Rajagopalachari (Rajaji) and others. On March 1, 1946, at a prayer meeting Gandhi said: “Whatever the Congress decides will be done. Nothing will be according to what I say. My writ runs no more. No one listens to me anymore”. (Page 605). Shocking, painful words from one who shaped the Indian National Congress from 1922 onwards. If Advaniji is BJP, the Mahatma was even more so the Congress. Gandhi had his problems with his colleagues in the Congress Working Committee, even in the matter of extending support to the British at the beginning of the Second World War. Nehru, Patel, Rajaji and even Azad differed from Gandhi who had to spend an entire day trying to convince Jawaharlal of the relevance of demanding Britain to “Quit India”. Rajaji, being a stronger man quit the party to stand by his own convictions. And talking of Britain one must remember that it was Winston Spencer Churchill who inspired Britain to fight Nazi German and Fascist Italy, in the end to win the war. How does one think he has rewarded? In the general elections held following the end of the war, it was the Labour Party that came through with flying colours and not Churchill’s Conservative Party. It was one of the biggest landslides in British electoral history, giving Labour a majority for the first time. Churchill’s tremendous contribution to the war effort proved of no consequence. How come? This is where not personal greatness but situational needs come in the picture. Once the war was over, Churchill had become irrelevant. The situation demanded a different kind of leadership which Clement Attlee provided. But then time also came for socialism to prove itself to be a failure. The British elected Margaret Thatcher who gave socialism the boot. And quite rightfully. What all this proves is that individuals are only instruments – nimittamatram – of changing situations. In the nineteen twenties India needed someone like Gandhi. It got Mohandas. In the thirties the U.S needed a Franklin Delano Roosevelt and found one. In the fifties France needed a Charles de Gaulle and Germany a Konrad Adenauer. Both the countries got what they needed. Similarly in the fifties India needed a Nehru with his desire to establish a socialist pattern of economy for the country. It failed with the fate of growth slowing down to a meager 3 percent and even less, leading a shameless economist, one Prof  Rajkrishna to coin the phrase: Hindu rate of growth. Nehru meant well and can’t be blamed but it took a courageous P.V. Narasimha Rao to turn to a more sustainable capitalism. We can look at other similar instances in other contexts: following Stalin’s death the Soviet Union went for a Krushchev and still later to a Gorbachev with his perestroika. When Mao Tso-tung died, Deng Xioping came to power anxious to undo many of Mao’s ghastly errors. Advaniji thinks that the BJP today is vastly different ideologically from the party that leaders like Syam Prasad Mukherjje and Deen Dayal Upadhyaya set up. Quite true, but in real life, one moves on. Situations create new kinds of leadership which elders may loathe as now Narendra Modi is loathed. But consider this: A Hindustan Times HT-Gfk survey carried out as recently as May 27 suggests that the man best suited to be the next Prime Minister is Narendra Modi. Nobody comes anywhere near him. A Headlines Today CVoter poll conducted between March and May 2013 by India Today notes that the Congress – led UPA “is set to suffer an empathic defeat if Modi is declared as BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate, losing 72 seats and 10 per cent of its vote share from 2009.” What should the BJP do: throw Modi out? To many (including a large number in his own party) Modi is not a human being: he is a fireball”. And a fireball singes. A flame does not just shine: it burns anything close to it. It is not just Advaniji who can’t accept Modi. Nor can Jaswant Singh, Yashwant Sinha, Sushma Swaraj and many others, who may genuinely feel their political days are numbered if Modi becomes the Prime Minister. One states this on the presumption that both the Hindustan Times and India Today poll are accurately in Modi’s standing among the public. There are Modi-hatres, God bless them. Among them are Nitish Kumar and Orissa’s Chief Minister Navin Patnaik, not to mention, Mamata Banerjee, and a more determined destroyer of unity one is yet to come across. If the BJP does not get the required votes in the 2014 General elections – and there probably are politicians in many parties who would want to see Modi humbled – we may be in for a short era of India crumbling, with a new set of Deve Gowda’s adding to the confusion. Let this be clearly understood, after ten years of weak administration India deserves a tough Prime Minister who can stand up to the United States, China and Pakistan and stay assertive. One may hate Modi to one’s heart’s content but anyone who can withstand over a decade of vilification and still survive deserves to be listened. Commonsense more than mindless vilification should be our guidelines. India is going through a generational change of great consequence: Modi represents that change in ample measure. Change invites tension and fear of what the future holds. If the two polls are any indication, it is a tough Modi that the public wants to lead the country and not petty schemers like Nitish Kumar of no consequence. One thing one can be sure of: India does not need a third front. Such a front will only bring disaster to our beloved land.