The quintessential Congressman

Harish Khare

A tribute to former Indian Prime Minister Chandra Shekar, who died on Sunday. Chandra Shekar was Prime Minister for less than a year but his world view was always prime ministerial.

Though Chandra Shekhar was a member of the Congress for less than 15 years - from 1964 to early 1977 - in a political career of about 52 years, he was one of the handful of quintessential Congressmen in the post-Indira Gandhi era. And, that explains his enduring relevance in Indian politics much after he ceased to have any troops at his disposal.

And, if the Chandra Shekhar who died on Sunday morning was a much forgotten man it was because the very Congress values, ideas, traditions, and world view that he imbibed had been rendered redundant, not the least by Congressmen themselves.

Chandra Shekhar had joined the Congress in early 1964, along with Asoka Mehta and other Praja Socialist Party leaders, because this faction of the socialist movement believed that a new strategy was needed to combat the Right wing that was in ascendancy, in and out of the Congress, after the India-China war debacle of 1962.

Three by-elections to the Lok Sabha in the summer of 1963 had produced victory for three of Jawaharlal Nehru's bitterest critics - Minoo Masani won from Rajkot, Acharya J.B. Kriplani from Amroha and Ram Manohar Lohia from Farrukhabad.

The situation was ripe for a re-alignment of progressive forces. The PSP influx into the Congress was designed to shift the balance of power in favour of the Nehruvian centre.

It is this context that provides a key to the evolution of Chandra Shekhar's political persona in the years to come. Within three years of joining the party, he came to be elected as secretary of the Congress Parliamentary party, and was inducted as a member of the Congress Working Committee. Having inspired the formation of the "Young Turks" group, it was only natural that he and his co-ideologues should agitate for a socialist agenda.

That was the age of ideas, arguments and debates in the Congress. It was natural that Chandra Shekhar was the first major political personality to draw the nation's attention to monopoly capital. He catalogued the presumed excesses of the Birlas and created a stir with his suggestion that Morarji Desai as Finance Minister was extending protection to the Birlas.

Chandra Shekhar was at his ideological best during 1967-1969 as the Congress found itself having to cope with a stagnant economy and a static state order. Things could not go on as before. Something had to give way.

The party naturally found itself embroiled in an internal power struggle. It was a note prepared by Chandra Shekhar and other Young Turks that became the core of Indira Gandhi's famous "stray thoughts" at the All India Congress Committee's Bangalore session in 1969.

These "stray thoughts" proved the catalyst for an ideological shift in favour of the progressive ideas and promises, and became the basis of Indira Gandhi's famous victory in the March 1971 Lok Sabha elections.

Uncomfortable with sycophancy It was also natural that Chandra Shekhar should have gradually drifted away from Indira Gandhi, who after the Bangladesh war had emerged as the "empress of India." As a lifelong socialist Chandra Shekhar was comfortable with dissent, differences, and disputes; he was ill at ease with the new culture of sycophancy in the Congress.

The same week that Lt. General J.S. Arora forced Gen. Niazi to sign the surrender document in Dhaka, Chandra Shekhar warned in his journal, Young Indian, against the new demands of conformity and personality cult: "Congress is a vast mass organisation.

And a narrow sectarian group cannot succeed in manipulating it or moulding it into the totalitarian pattern. Such attempts were foiled in the past, even today they will fail. Those who try such methods are not conversant with the ethos, traditions and norms of functioning of their great organisation.

They can at best manage some position." It is possible to argue that had Chandra Shekhar's plea received support from fellow Congressmen, the Congress could have possibly avoided the slow but inevitable drift to the impasse that culminated in the infamous Emergency in June 1975.

Because he had positioned himself as a dissenter against the emerging leadership style, Chandra Shekhar failed in his attempts to bring about a reconciliation between Indira Gandhi and Jayaprakash Narayan.

The Congress' collective reflex of resolving conflicts had finally got blunted. Since those fateful days of June 1975 Chandra Shekhar's endeavour was to revive and restore those Congress values and traditions that proved so helpful in the early days of nation-building and state-consolidation. Even though he had become the president of the Janata Party, his passions and prejudices were vintage Congress.

And that was why Chandra Shekhar never felt comfortable with the sangh parivar and its ideology of hate and discrimination.

In the aftermath of the December 13, 2001, terrorist attack on Parliament House, Chandra Shekhar wrote disapprovingly of the ruling NDA's effort to whip up anti-minority hysteria in the country. "Those in authority should have considered the long-term implications of their responses.

Any outbursts of anger and anguish should have been avoided. Maturity in thinking was the need of the hour. Views of all sections of the people should have been taken into account.

The people should have been taken into confidence. Any attempt to arouse mass hysteria cannot lead to right decisions." In the last few years his voice had become feeble and he was able to make few interventions but his advice was invariably wise and sagacious. He was Prime Minister for less than a year but his world view was always prime ministerial.

On this count, very few Prime Ministers and prime ministerial hopefuls can compare with the man from Ballia.

The Hindu