Disillusioned Gandhian

MY LIFE AND POLITICS - An autobiography: S. Nijalingappa; Vision Books Pvt. Ltd., 24, Feroze Gandhi Road, Lajpat Nagar III, New Delhi-110024. Rs. 395.

THIS IS the gripping tale of a poor village boy, struggling to get an education for himself, of a (Chitradurga) district town advocate and politician, rising to the status of a stalwart among the national leaders of his political era, shaping the destinies of the country - S. Nijalingappa, three times Chief Minister of Karnataka and President of the Indian National Congress Party (1968-71).

As told by himself - Nijalingappa wrote his autobiography in the last days of his life and he missed being a centurion by a year - his three-year tenure of the Congress presidentship saw tumultuous developments which changed the course of the national, political, economic and socio-economic life. The main and creamy focus is the split in the Congress Party, Indira Gandhi's ascendancy, and the dark days of the Emergency she threw the country into as a reprisal against the Allahabad High Court judgment invalidating her election to the Lok Sabha on charges of corrupt practices.

Dancing at the centre stage of the political drama Nijalingappa gives his judgment of Jawaharlal Nehru who gave himself an unbroken career of two decades as India's first Prime Minister, Gandhiji, Rajendra Prasad, and Rajaji, Kamaraj, Atulya Ghosh, and S. K. Patil (forming the Syndicate), Morarji Desai, Sanjiva Reddy, Kripalani, Govind Vallabh Pant and Indira Gandhi, V. V. Giri, among others who formed the dramatis personae influencing the course of events, either for good or bad. For a time, as the narration goes, Nijalingappa was at the receiving end in the political rivalries and controversies. It is a position he both enjoyed and suffered. He was a disillusioned man, though he was at peace with himself, when the end came in August 2000.

The story gives a number of sidelights and anecdotes of unknown or less known character traits of persons in high places and demolishes many a reputation. Nijalingappa's main regret is that the quality of political life has suffered a grievous slide and that (unpunished) political wrong-doing and corruption had reached Himalayan heights, damaging the country's credibility and sapping the creative energies of the people, capped by the growing subscription to the ruling establishments, starting with Narasimha Rao, to the theories of economic liberalisation and globalisation. He calls the shift from the Gandhian economic order to the market economy as social and economic misbehaviour. In his view, lately widely shared, liberalisation had accentuated the rural-urban divide and had led to the impoverishment of the rural and agrarian economy of the country, wholly out of tune with the predominantly agricultural and pastoral ambience.

Nijalingappa had never forgiven Indira Gandhi for the split in the Congress Party following the 1969 Bangalore Lal Bagh session of the AICC and the subsequent imposition of the Emergency to shore up her uncertain personal leadership. He describes their impact thus ``I may say here that after the division of the Congress organisation in 1969, the whole political atmosphere in India grew poisoned. Selfishness, corruption and the extreme desire to be in power by adopting any means, have become rampant. These are not attributes of any one particular party; they are common to all political parties and, therefore, we have had, since then, governments that have not been really interested in building the country's economy, especially, in rural areas. In order to win elections, political parties have been collecting huge sums of money from industrialists, licence-seekers, businessmen, tax dodgers, all thrown in. It cannot be denied that Indira Gandhi was the original leader of this unholy alliance which has led to growing corruption in public life. Rajaji's book, Money Power, is very revealing in this context.'' These sentiments have been repeated in the narration which also makes a comparative assessment of the regimes of Jawaharlal Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Morarji Desai, Chandra Sekhar and V. P. Singh.

While showering praise and personal admiration on Jawaharlal Nehru as the darling of the nation, Nijalingappa questions Nehru's credentials for Prime Ministership and says, without mincing words: ``On account of his ignorance of the real economic situation in the country, especially, in villages, he was not fit to be the Prime Minister of India, a country in which more than 70 per cent of the people suffered from poverty and its consequences.

It must also be said that Nehru did not know that agriculture, on which almost a majority of the people depended, did not offer them full employment. In refreshing contrast, Gandhiji knew the rural India and its problems in an acute way. Nehru was wedded to the Soviet model of development and was a socialist. His socialistic pattern of society, adopted at the Avadi session of the AICC was pointless.''

Nijalingappa had found that Nehru had a lurking dislike of him and his tenure as Chief Minister and on being conveyed of it through Sriman Narayan, he promptly resigned when he was through with his first Chief Minister's tenure, although, he admits, it was done impulsively. He tells of the lack of warmth between Nehru and Rajendra Prasad and quotes an instance where Nehru asked Rajendra Prasad not to seek a second Presidential term on grounds of age and of Rajendra Prasad retorting that Nehru should also resign his Prime Ministership on the same ground.

In another anecdote of Nijalingappa, to his remark to Nehru that he was a rich man, he, an ``absolutely honest and poor man'', expressed surprise and said he could save only nine rupees a month from his income, admitting that he could not get a Pashmina Shervani stitched and showing the darned cuff of his jacket. But, after becoming Prime Minister and moving over to the second largest official residence next to the Rashtrapathi Bhavan, Nehru justified doing so on the ground that official dignity required it. In contrast, Nijalingappa observes, the visiting Vietnam President, Ho Chi Minh, had told him in Delhi that he had only a few clothes and only two pairs of sandals and lived in a small house.

But, in independent India, simple living, Nijalingappa remarks, became an exception. He cites the example of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, who lived in a small house, even while in office.

For Nijalingappa, Sardar Patel was a model. He says that the German leader, Bismarck, who unified Germany, was of no significance when compared to Patel whose feat of integrating India into a single political entity had no parallel in world history. No other leader, except Gandhiji, came up to his level. But yet, when everything is done to commemorate the names of Congress leaders from Nehru downwards, nothing was done for Patel (though it took some years to confer the Bharat Ratna title). Similar was the case with Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose who had his own contribution to the freedom struggle. If the Kashmir problem had been left to Patel to handle ``we would certainly not have had this terrible problem at all.''

Nijalingappa's passion for his vision of Karnataka, Railway and port development, irrigation and electricity, and Malnad development, has found copious expression in the chapter on his three stints as Chief Minister, preceded by his championship of the unification of Karnataka of which he is called the architect.

There is the second part of the autobiography which deals with India's political giants. Nijalingappa praises Jagjivan Ram as an able and efficient administrator. He is sorry that the stalwart missed a prime ministerial stint, because of an unkept promise of the then President, Neelam Sanjiva Reddy, to wait (he had wangled) for Jagjivan Ram to stake his claim after Morarji Desai resigned. He found Sanjiva Reddy changing his mind abruptly and opting for the dissolution of the Lok Sabha.

There are descriptions of occasions and circumstances connected with the choice of Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi, and Morarji Desai as Prime Ministers and of his (Nijalingappa's) role in it and of his standing down in favour of Sanjiva Reddy for the nation's President, etc.

The narration is simple and uncluttered, although, one gets the impression that apparently owing to age, Nijalingappa's comments are mellowed. One can feel the touch of humour and candidness when the patriarch goes to the extent of describing his first night with his bride as a ``messy affair''!

C. M. RAMACHANDRA

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Features
Previous : Biography of a saint
Next     : Tamil cultural heritage