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Literary Review
An excess of passion
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Exploring the interface between politics and culture, caste and religion, the essays are meant to raise the quality of public awareness and debate. But, due to a lack of a sense of history and a want of theory, the book fails to integrate individualtopics into a larger framework, says SUDHANSHU RANADE.
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S. RADHAKRISHNAN is a scholar who has turned to writing for a lay audience in an effort to raise the quality of public awareness and debate. The essays in the book, which appeared in The Hindu group of publications over the past decade, relate to the interface between politics on the one hand and, on the other, vendetta, corruption, caste, culture and religion.
There are two ways to review the book: in terms of the effect of the Professor's writing on a general audience, and in terms of the effect of his writing for a general audience on the quality of his work as a scholar. The first is easy. The articles were topical when written, had interesting things to say, and are easy to read. A great deal of work obviously went into some of them, thanks to which articles like the one dealing with reservations in Tamil Nadu and the life history of Dr. Ambedkar still retain the dew they had at dawn.
However the book does not score well on the other dimension because, thanks to an excess of passion, a want of theory, and a lack of a sense of history, it fails to integrate individual topics into a larger framework. The first of these seems to have caused a sense of gloom, despondency and weary hopelessness to descend on the author as he sat down to put his book together. As a result, all the best material is relegated to the very end while the author laments at length about the "perfidies of power: cacophony, charades, criminality, duplicity, double-speak, effrontery, felony, skulduggery, venality and what have you."
As for vendetta and corruption, the first two items on the menu, the really striking thing about the first is not that it is so sad but that it is so rare. As regards the second, the Professor does not seem to understand that the basic problem is not that politicians make money but that they do so in a way that imposes on the economy a cost that is hundreds of times greater than the loot they actually get away with. Anyone who has contemplated the fate of, say, the nationalised banks and the state electricity boards, or pondered over the way kickbacks work will have no trouble understanding this. We would all be so much better off if a way could be found of simply giving the fellows the money without putting them to the trouble of "earning" it.
As for the problem of our having got saddled with a "bad lot", the Professor would have done well to add that in a race to the bottom it can be an uphill job for those who foolishly insist on reaching for higher values, striving for higher goals. Perceptive readers will get the point straight away when they read the piece in the book that deals with the severe blow dealt to MGR when he tried to conserve reserved vacancies for the poorest of the poor. Readers who race through the book might however come away with the mistaken impression that the job remains undone simply because, until Prof. Radhakrishnan came along, no one thought about it; or cared.
As for the point about theory, history and scaffolding, a quick sketch should suffice. The struggle for independence which helped unify the nation, naturally left a vacuum in its wake. It is the struggle to fill this vacuum that is responsible for the turbulence we find ourselves in. It would have been useful to have a quick sketch of the succession of constituencies that politicians have sought to reach out to or mobilise for this purpose since the mid-1960s, with varying degrees of success; and to view the decades of caste, cultural and "religious" politics that followed from this perspective.
It would have been nice, too, if the author had stayed a bit longer, and dwelt more positively, on the "Tamil Nadu is for Tamilians" theme. If Maharashtra were only for Maharashtrians and Tamil Nadu only for Tamilians, there would of course be nothing left of India. On the other hand it would be a sad day indeed if all the states, "each of its own free accord", were to adopt the "mummy-daddy culture", and thus become exactly like one another. Besides, "cultural" politics opens the way for a promising federalism; none of the other contenders comes even close.
India: The Perfidies of Power — A Social Critique, P. Radhakrishnan, 2002, Vedams ebooks Pvt Ltd, price not stated.
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