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| April 17, 2000 | ||
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G's Beautiful People The fashionably leftist clique that almost rid India of Democracy By Swapan Dasgupta INDIRA GANDHI,
On the contrary the Kashmiri Pandit economics don who was chosen by Haksar to be his successor in the PMO seems to have shared few of the assumptions governing Indira Gandhi's first innings from 1966 to 1977. On economic policy, he was a sceptic and was opposed to the rash of nationalisation that marked Indira's left turn. He was not impressed by her unabashedly "feudal" style. Above all, he was disgusted by her fondness for tale-carriers. "Her proclivity for such men indicates, if not an inferior level in larger ideas, at least a rather different sort of intellectual orientation than her father's, which lowered the political milieu and calibre of discussion." Whether or not this scepticism flows from hindsight isn't clear. But it has allowed Dhar to look back on his years in the PMO with a critical eye. Particularly revealing is his assessment of the 1972 Simla accord. Dhar seems to concur with today's prevailing belief that Z.A. Bhutto took India for an almighty ride by formalising a final settlement of the Kashmir dispute. For this great Pakistani achievement, he gives credit more to Indian woolliness than Pakistani dexterity. "Strange as this may sound," he writes, "the Indian team did not seem very comfortable with the fact of having won the war." Much of this bizarre magnanimity is attributed to Haksar. "Haksar gave the soft approach a strong intellectual justification by references to comparable episodes in European history." Three years later, confronted by the draconian Emergency, Haksar -- then deputy chairman of the Planning Commission -- justified his decision to continue in office with the same intellectual sophistry. "We must stay in the system and try to reverse the process, or at least prevent further degeneration. Outside the system you will count for nothing." Albert Speer had used the same logic while serving Hitler. Judging by Dhar's account of the Emergency, good sense counted for little within the system. When the jailed Jayaprakash Narayan threatened to go on a fast in October 1975 to press for the lifting of the Emergency,Indira's reply was very non-Haksaresque. "If he fasts, I think we should deport him to the UK or USA. Let his 'friends' look after him." Simultaneously her flatterers were exploring possibilities of changing the Constitution and declaring her prime minster for life! Dhar calls the Emergency a "systemic crisis". From his narrative, it emerges that the real crisis was not the system but the eminently civilised people who ran it and wilfully subverted it. Read him with Raj Thapar's autobiography and the conclusion is inescapable. NEW RELEASES Read This First: Indian Bread Basket India from Curzon to Nehru & After India's Labour Standards and the WTO
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Anyone
reading through the 405 pages of P.N. Dhar's riveting memoirs will be left
with one fundamental unanswered question: why did he join Indira Gandhi's
secretariat and rise to such great prominence? The question is legitimate
because there is precious little in the book to suggest that Dhar was
either a fawning groupie like R.K. Dhawan or a leftist manipulator like
P.N. Haksar.