INSTRUMENT OF GOD

KHASA SUBBA RAU

From the standpoint of national welfare, Rajaji is the most important man in India today. Importance is different from power and is measured by the influence that one exercises on the lives and thoughts of others. The British Viceroys in their time were powerful but they have been proved all the bar of history not proportionally important. Mahatma Gandhi who started a campaign of resistance against them, wielded no power when he started it, but he is acclaimed by the whole world as the most important man born in India in recent times. His importance arises from the fact that he performed the feat of liberating his country from foreign rule at a time when it seemed to have no adequate resources. He supplied the strength and the resources with his leadership.

India today is in the throes of a second liberation movement. The freedom that the Mahatma won has not fulfilled its promise of happiness for the people. Two reasons have mainly contributed to the distressing result. First, the leaders of the indigenous government formed after the withdrawal of the British, ran after power, and in the process of making themselves more and more powerful, they swallowed up popular liberties one after one relentlessly. Secondly, in the course of consolidating their power they abandoned intrinsic concepts of justice, and replaced them with organised mob clamour. Anything that a large number of people could be got together to demand became administrative policy. The pampered covetousness of the multitude, let loose on society with State patronage, made class hatred fashionable and deprived property of its sanctity. To cover up the depredatory, character of this policy and make it look grand, the name Socialism was given to it.

Under Nehru-Socialism the people of India have as individuals lost their liberties. Their property and possessions have ceased to have any assured legal validity. An atmosphere of insecurity permeates the land. The Government on the other hand has made itself more powerful than any previous government had been by drawing unto itself more and more economic power, thereby tightening its strangle-hold on the lives and occupations of the people. Existence for citizens is being rendered practically impossible without the favour of the ruling party.

We are now in need of a second liberation movement but the fight for it is complicated by the all-pervasive character of the opponent’s power. Just as civil war is more dreadful than war against a foreign enemy, the wresting of individual liberties from a government established within the country is more difficult than the achievement of national freedom from a foreign power. It is to the undying glory of Rajaji that, at a time when Congress rule had come to be accepted as invincible and irreplaceable, and people had lost all hope of ever being saved from its Communistic regimentation and oppression, he came forward to essay this supremely difficult and seemingly impossible task.

The Swatantra movement of Rajaji is thus the lineal successor of the Mahatma’s movement in the cause of freedom. The odds against Rajaji seem tremendous at the moment. So they were against the Mahatma when he embarked on his apparently foolhardy Quit India movement. The ordinary pattern of leadership is built on a psychology of expectancy in the human pursuit of power and prosperity. The successful leader has to distribute favours to his followers at the moment of success as its penalty, and these favourites not only corrupt the administration with their interference, but the privileges they enjoy also serve as a constant temptation to one and all to improve their fortunes by copying them in rallying round the leader. This type of leadership is mainly in the nature of a commercial transaction. It flourishes on votes that are in many cases secured in return for some profit.

If Rajaji’s movement had depended on this sort of leadership, it certainly could not have hoped for success, as its power of purchasing support is practically nil compared to that of the Congress rulers. It is the unique distinction of Rajaji as a leader that he offers no personal gain to any follower in exchange for his loyalty. From the Prime Minister downwards, Congress leaders when they rise to power regard their followers, friends and relatives with rich plums in various forms. This was their strength, as it bound large numbers of acquisitive fortune-seekers to their standards with the secure bond of self-interest. Such nepotism is conspicuously absent in Rajaji’s record as political leader and administrator. There has not been a single instance of administrative or other favour conferred by Rajaji out of domestic affection or clannish partiality or as undeserved reward for political allegiance. Those who rally round the Swatantra party in the expectation of personal advantage through its success are therefore foredoomed to disappointment.

This is the true significance of the Swatantra movement. The leader expects all who join it to discard self-interest in their politics, and to impel them to do so, his own life is exemplary and dynamic. With the resources of character in the country, Rajaji seeks to combat the ramified enslavements of organised greed and power emanating from an exceedingly selfish and self-centred ruling set. Here we have the actual political content of renovated Dharma. To believe that character is more important for the nation’s welfare than cunning bidding for votes, and that Dharma, and purity of mind will lead to people’s happiness and not covetous grabbing at others property is to realise the true significance of the Swatantra movement initiated by Rajaji. Dharma means a fair deal to all, administrative justice, treating others as one would like to be treated by them and it is the only potent solvent capable of ridding the people of the corruption, waste and nepotism, apart from the aggressions on the community of the rulers’ greedy quest for power, rampant in the present set-up of the government.

Dharma is not like propaganda which has two faces, reality and make-believe. The margin between reality and make-believe is occupied by falsehood in propaganda. There is no scope for such falsehood in Dharma. It is by prescription something that cannot cheat. Truth and Dharma go together and all religions teach that there is no greater power than Dharma based on truth. But the teaching of Dharma cannot be done by all and sundry. It needs a leader whose life is cast in the resplendent mould of Dharmic example from which all false values, pettiness and self-seeking have been burnt out. Such a leader of flaming probity is Rajaji. The historic role of saving our democracy from the perversions imposed on it by the false disciples of the Mahatma has fallen on him by divine dispensation.

Indian humanity is blessed in having a leader like Rajaji to inspire and guide it in the present crisis of character in the country. At eighty, according to human calculations, he must be reckoned frail. But there is no limit to the strength of causes ordained by divine will. Rajaji is an instrument of God doing God’s work. On his eighty-first birthday he enjoys the adoring trust of practically the whole of intellectual India, and his millions of admirers are buoyed up by the deep faith that the crowning glory of his life is yet to come and Providence will endow him with time and strength enough to carry to victory the noble mission he has taken on hand.

December 5, 1959

UTTER SIMPLICITY

Of the men I have met in my lifetime, men of thought, or men of action, or men of power, only Arnold Toynbee compares with C. Rajagopalachari in an utter lack of vanity or self-interest and writers and political figures are, according to my observations, the men most prone to vanity.

Like Burke (a figure naturally congenial to him) and unlike most so-called conservative parties today, Rajaji understood the basic case for conservatism, which is tradition, authority, the natural growth of things as of plants and trees and children. He understood aristocracy and so too the peasantry...He too had the inner consistency of Burke; he was, unlike so many public figures, never the actor. If only he had been allowed to rule India and to work out Gandhiji’s principles in the last formative quarter century!

–W. R. CROCKER

(Former High Commissioner of Australia in India)

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