MOHAN GURUSWAMY: A TRIBUTE TO CHANDRASHEKHAR. A MOST CIVILISED MAN.

A very interesting memoir by Mohan Guruswamy on chandra sekhar. Its a good read. Mohan Guruswamy is the chairman of the Centre for Policy Alternatives, a New Delhi-based think-tank. He has over three decades of experience in government, industry and academia. He was educated at Osmania University, Hyderabad; John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University; Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University; and Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. He also served as economic advisor to FM during atal ji govt MOHAN GURUSWAMY: A TRIBUTE TO CHANDRASHEKHAR. A MOST CIVILISED MAN. I wrote this on the late Chandrashekhar's 75th birthday. He would have been 97 now. I think of him often. He has sunk from our general cosciousness into an undeserved oblivion. His squabbling family and close courtiers are fighting over the many trusts he set up. I have been telling them to institute an annual memorial meeting for him, but they show no interest. Very sad indeed. I met Chandrashekhar for the first time in early 1981 shortly after his party was decimated by the Congress-I in the mid-term elections that followed the collapse of the dismal Janata Party experiment. We were on a flight to Cochin from Bangalore and since he and I were seated next to each other, and since it was a hopping flight we had much time together. Till then Chandrashekhar was whom I used to see on stage under lights from the dark anonymity of the audience, but I now felt knew the person in the green room as well. It was much later that I came to know the man from the hero and I learnt that little separated these two. The river of time has flowed some since that day in 1981 but the man and hero continue to be indistinguishable to me. If politicians are performers and all politics is theatre, Chandrashekhar is a method actor who would have made that great acting master Lee Strasberg more than proud. He was ordained by history to play a role, but he had imbued the character with his unique personality and every public posture had its roots in a past that had seen enough adversity and struggle. The naiveté of early post independence socialism, its innocent hopefulness, its incredulous belief that we humans are all innately capable of great generosity towards each other, and its belief that all social and economic problems have public policy solutions came through in every speech and every political act. There was nothing fake in this. The sheer honesty of it all showed so clearly. Nothing about him was ever contrived. Thus when he spoke we hung on to every word, when he moved we moved with him. It was as if the stage and audience moved with him never wanting to miss a single performance. Today audience tastes have changed. Professional actors, mere singers and dancers, lip syncing words they don’t understand and moving their limbs to the choreographer’s script, have begun to straddle our public life. Politics is now more about inciting passions than exciting our imagination. It is a vocation rather than a calling. It is about base selfishness rather than selfless service to make a great dream come true. We have all become imbued with a cynicism and hopelessness. Even Chandrashekhar has not been untouched by this. How can he be? After all did he not always tell us that politics was the art of the possible? Even this Chandrashekhar retains much of the authority that his unique character endowed him with, and hence when this lion in his winter now and then roars angrily when Parliament degenerates into nothing more than a jungle, all others in that great hall, all lesser creatures without exception, heed that summons to good sense and order. Here he sits in Parliament, the solitary representative of a party that hardly exists beyond a postal stamp sized borough, yet it is to his counsel the national leadership turns to time and again when it knots itself up in confusion and rancor. His admirers cut across party lines. If Parliament were to elect a leader without the demands of party loyalties, obligations and constitutional fiats, I doubt if a Vajpayee or George Fernandes or Mulayam Singh will find favor over him with the unfettered MP’s. Chandrashekhar’s talents, abilities, passion and razor sharp intellect put him head and shoulders above the rest. This is what makes him unique, even when he sits alone, hunched on the front bench of parliament eyes intent and ears not missing a single nuance or telling inflection, as eager as a newcomer would be on his first day in the marketplace where national aspirations are reconciled into what is possible and feasible. The politics of policy are his only passion and everything that comes in-between him and that, the huckstering, the fund raising, the dust and din of campaigning, the hyperbole and exaggeration of the stump are just steps to that unique pedestal he still occupies. I was with Chandrashekhar one evening in 1985 at Pune airport after a long hot day of electioneering in western Maharashtra. He was campaigning for his candidates as well as those belonging to whatever party Sharad Pawar then had. Those who wanted him had typically provided him with a car that had to be stopped every few dozen miles and cooled down with mugs of water poured into it and over it. When it came, it came practically without any fuel. We paid for the petrol and all day long Chandrashekhar addressed meetings of farmers and small traders who moved by the idealism and sheer decency of the man manifestly apparent, despite not being able to speak their language, plied him with cash, mostly soiled and crumpled small denomination notes and coins smoothened by age. I kept counting each take and they amounted to a tidy sum each time. Chandrashekhar would keep ordering me to dispense this to candidates each time we stopped for him to make the same speech for a different candidate or a different audience. The money never stayed long enough and neither of us had the good sense to keep even our own money from the cause of candidates, many of who were clearly going to lose their deposits and some who were just pocketing what was coming their way and were contesting the elections to raise their profiles with the local constabulary and bureaucracy. A picture or two with a great man helps in this. Anyway when we reached Lohegaon airport late, partly because of the stalling car, the flight to Bombay had left and that was reason enough for the local party officials to leave. We arrived tired and wondering what next when we discovered to our chagrin that neither of us had any money. There was a flight to Bangalore in a couple of hours, which was in any case tomorrow’s destination. After washing up in the small VIP lounge and after fortifying ourselves with some tea helpfully provided by the IA officials we sat down to take stock of our situation. Chandrashekhar found all this truly hilarious and would, much to my irritation, frequently break out into bouts of laughter. “Don’t worry,” he would say, “things will work out” only increasing my irritation. I found an old telephone directory, summoned the names of a few old acquaintances and looked up their telephone numbers so that I could touch them for some money. The only fellow I could reach seemed more in need of help than us. Chandrashekhar found this even more mirthful. Now the Indian Airlines duty officer showed up wanting to know if we wanted to go to Bangalore. Chandrashekhar told him yes, but that we did not have tickets and sotto voce added, no money either. The IA official did not bat an eyelid. He just said: “Sir, I did not ask for the money. If you want to go to Bangalore I will give you two tickets on my responsibility. The money will come, I am sure.” Two tickets were provided and we were off to Bangalore. This was soon after Rajiv Gandhi had stormed into office with 425 Lok Sabha seats and when Chandrashekhar himself lost his seat form Ballia. The India n Airlines officer said something very thoughtful. He said: Sir you may have lost an election, but you have not lost your credibility. Even your word is not required. I consider it an honor to be of some assistance to you.” When we arrived at Bangalore, the run of bad manners continued. The Janata Party was in power in the state. Once again an old claptrap Ambassador was provided. The city was festooned with giant cut outs of the Chief Minister who had just embarked on his version of value-based politics. As we drove through the dusty back roads of Karnataka, there was not a single poster featuring the party president. But there was not even single disapproving reaction from Chandrashekhar. The second day we ran into Deve Gowda at Mandya’s government guesthouse. This was my first encounter with Deve Gowda. It was early in the morning when Deve Gowda rushed in with tears streaming down his ample cheeks complaining about how Hegde was not even providing him with a seat on the dais in the election meetings. Chandrashekhar tried calming down Deve Gowda. But this only resulted in more evocative wails. After Deve Gowda settled down somewhat and went to his room, Chandrashekhar very perceptively remarked: “Deve Gowda is not a man who forgets and one day he will get his back on Hegde.” That day came when Deve Gowda as Prime Minister threw Hegde out of the party, whatever it was called then, without even a pretense of due process. Chandrashekhar’s precise perception is unique. It comes from a deep understanding of the people of India, our history and our present situation. His wisdom is derived not from Marx, Lenin or even Laski, but inspired by the lives and sayings of Buddha, Kabir, Nanak, Gandhi, Narendra Deva, and Jaya Prakash Narayan. It was this perception that made him differ with Indira Gandhi when the Indian Army was sent into the Golden temple at Amritsar to ferret out a man who should have been nipped in the bud much before. After the carnage he remarked to me that anyone who knows Sikh history and understands what has made them so unique would know that this was something that will not go unanswered. The great lady paid the price a few months later. When Rajiv Gandhi embarked on his half baked and ill-advised mission in Sri Lanka soon to lead to the deployment of the Indian Army and the bloodiest fighting it ever saw, Chandrashekhar remarked that this is what happens when people who do not read history set out to make it. Once again there were tragic consequences and India lost a leader who could have towered over today’s crop and who was far better placed to understand today’s problems and solutions than the gerontocrats that came after his demise. Chandrashekhar will be 75 years old on April 17. He walks with the vigor and gait of a much younger man. He thinks like an even younger man. I have been educated at one of the world’s great educational institutions. But what I have learnt from him far exceeds what any university can give. That politics without passion was meaningless. That policy without compassion was useless. That kindness, courtesy and civility to those less privileged than oneself must not be contrived as an act of magnanimity but should come naturally. That consideration to others is the essence of democracy. He taught me a thing or two about what it took to be a civilized person. It has been my good fortune to know this truly and uniquely civilized man and call him my friend and teacher. Mohan Guruswamy Email: mohanguru@gmail.com Wednesday, March 06, 2002