Ramachandra Guha’s recent column in The Telegraph, June 25, “Divide and Win: The Sanjay Gandhi of this Age”, is an example of why so-called Indian liberal intellectuals have lost credibility. Guha’s column has a ludicrous premise: it argues that the politics of Sanjay Gandhi and that of the Bharatiya Janata Party president, Amit Shah, are similar. He finds similarity in the ruthlessness and “single-minded” approach of Sanjay Gandhi and Shah.
Guha should have read Vinod Mehta’s book, The Sanjay Story. Sanjay was a prince of an Anglicized Indian family and was nurtured in the traditions of the British-educated Jawaharlal Nehru. He was a Doon school product and, claims Mehta, a bit of a kleptomaniac. In 1964, a car-theft case against Sanjay was debated for months in Delhi. Mehta has written how Sanjay used his mother’s power as bait to lure girls into relationships. In stark contrast, Amitbhai has always been the complete family man and has happily surrendered to his wife’s leadership in running his personal life, home and family.
It is unacceptable that Guha, a historian and scholar with so many books to his credit, does not give any convincing argument to justify his take on Shah. By comparing the rowdy Sanjay with a self-made politician like Amit bhai, Guha is heaping scorn on those who are not privileged scions of political families but who have worked hard to make their place in politics. The once unknown Amitbhai sweated for three decades or more to make his mark in the BJP.
Guha ignores profound and glaring differences between Sanjay and Amit bhai. Before Shah became what he is today, he had not got any concession from the State, the system or the party as Sanjay Gandhi got from the moment of his privileged birth.
Guha should have read Vinod Mehta’s book, The Sanjay Story. Sanjay was a prince of an Anglicized Indian family and was nurtured in the traditions of the British-educated Jawaharlal Nehru. He was a Doon school product and, claims Mehta, a bit of a kleptomaniac. In 1964, a car-theft case against Sanjay was debated for months in Delhi. Mehta has written how Sanjay used his mother’s power as bait to lure girls into relationships. In stark contrast, Amitbhai has always been the complete family man and has happily surrendered to his wife’s leadership in running his personal life, home and family.
Soon after Shah’s birth his grandfather shifted the family to his ancestral village, Mansa in Gujarat from Mumbai, leaving behind his business in the Mumbai stock market so that he could groom Shah in the Indian value system. He wanted Amit bhai to strike deep roots in the soil of ancestry, traditions and civilizational values.
Shah is playing his part on the national stage with an ambitious agenda for his party and working to realize a broad vision that he has created of India, for India. Sanjay was a street fighter who happened to be a politician with the dynastic mantle falling on him. Did he travel thousands of kilometres by rickety buses to reach out to his party workers in the interiors of Gujarat? Shah has done this and much more and has survived only on roti-alu-sabzi during campaign times. In his 24 months as BJP president, Shah has already covered 246 districts and traversing 3,69,863 kilometres. Amitbhai‘s diabetes often shoots up to 400 because he is not living a cushioned life in the kothis of Lutyens’ Delhi as Sanjay did. In the last 25 years, Shah has never been at home for two weeks in a row as he is continuously travelling and toiling to turn the BJP into a national party.
Amit bhai looks stern but he is flexible and windows of his mind are always open. Did Sanjay know Indian legends and important dates of history as Shah does? Shah is not merely a campaign organizer, he is also an astute observer of the India that is in the making. He carries in his heart, unlike Sanjay, a deep reverence for his Gandhian mother. Sanjay used his mother, her party and her politics. Shah always followed his mother’s wishes and advice. He was totally dependent on her and yearned to receive her loving pat on his shoulder when in crisis.
Shah celebrates Diwali, raksha-bandhan, Holi, Eid, Paryushan, ekadashi and scores oftithis with complete understanding of their historical and cultural relevance in Indian life. He has studied jyotish shastra. When he was a teenager, he read and reread, under his mother’s guidance, books on Indian history. He can argue endlessly on principles ofShuddha Advaita which has shaped the Vaishnav tradition.
Sanjay Gandhi thought that his mother’s political power was at his disposal. Amit bhai lives a simple life, rarely wears branded goods, rarely travels by special flights and prefers to eat at home. No drinks, no smoking, no partying, no flirting – does this make him ruthless for Guha? Maybe. But, to his family, Amitbhai is as tender as his mother was to him.
Can Guha say what the aims of Sanjay’s politics were? Shah has a purpose which is believed in by millions of Indians. He wants India to prosper by keeping its Bharatiya identity alive. Did Sanjay Gandhi feel as elated as “ruthless” Shah does when he sees Ganga and Himalaya?
Guha may accuse Shah of being lusty for power for the BJP but Sanjay wanted power only for himself and the Gandhi family. Shah is a classic Indian who wants to be a perfect Hindu. Shah is ruthlessly pro-farmer and his views on economic policies are quite close to Gandhiji‘s ideas of rural economy. Shah, in fact, dotes on the khadi economy.
Shah had to be “single-minded” because his father or grandfather’s name would not give him a job in the BJP’s office. The elite and privileged India, of which intellectuals like Guha are a voluble part, hate the value system of the subaltern. The seculars and liberals resent the rise of Modi and Shah; they have no inkling of what will happen 50 or 100 years hence when today’s subalterns dominate the seat of power in Delhi. India will enter a golden era when the non-privileged occupy 80 per cent of India’s cabinet berths. Even then, the Guhas of the world will scream that the Dalits-tribals- and poor-dominated government does not have talent and will question the rationale of gifting plum posts to mediocre intellects.
Is it the Indian Constitution’s case that only acclaimed intellectuals and the Oxbridge educated should rule India? The non-elite who are worldlywise can also rule India. They are doing so right now. Guha’s clan will have to cultivate the habit of tolerating us. We are not intellectuals but we are wise, we are nationalists. We know how to protect India’s borders and we have a passion to die for India’s sovereignty. Guha thinks of us as people in public life without ethics because we have read Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, Bengali or Gujarati while the Indian intellectuals’ English is Greek to us and their thought process is anything but Indian.
Being a liberal scholar and a kind man one is sure that Guha will develop a little tolerance and sagacity to hear some hard facts and undeniable truths.
The author is director, Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation, New Delhi, and member, Policy Research Department, Bharatiya Janata Party. He is a member of the Central Advisory Board of Education of the HRD ministry and visiting faculty in Banaras Hindu University