India after the smoke and sorrow

Press, 9 November 1984, Page 12

India after the smoke and sorrow

From ‘The Economist,” London.

His murdered mother’s crown has been passed io Mr Rajiv Gandhi but there will be no replacing the Empress of India. Dynast, goddess-figure, warrior-queen, Mrs Gandhi defined and dominated the politics of her country for nearly two decades. She took big risks, some wise, some foolish. In 1969 she split the Congress party, thereby eliminating all rivals for the next 15 years. In 1971 she broke up Pakistan, thereby making India the unquestioned superpower of the subcontinent. In 1975 she imposed an “emergency” which saved her own job at the cost of suspending Indian democracy for 2% years. And in 1984 she tackled Sikh terrorism, too late, by invading the Golden Temple in Punjab. It was this last act which led to her death at the hands of Sikh policemen in her own bodyguard. The first challenge for Rajiv Gandhi will be to do for India what his grandfather Nehru did when another (unrelated) Gandhi was assassinated in 1948: to defeat the forces of hate by promoting reason, not revenge. This mean s using all necessary force to prevent a new round of bloodletting between Hindus and Sikhs; and it means doing what his mother neglected to do in Punjab, which is to deal with the causes as well as the symptoms of Sikh violence.

His second immediate task must be to assure India that democracy will not be intimidated. This means confirming that the General Election, due by January, will go on. A third priority for India’s youngest and greenest Prime Minister yet must be to seek out seasoned advisers to guide him and India through this most trying of times. In recent years Mrs Gandhi had retreated into self-imposed isolation, surrounded by a coterie of cronies and sycophants. Rajiv was a reluctant partner in this system, which was designed to fulfil his mother’s dynastic dream. His own instincts are said to be less imperious than those of his late brother Sanjay, who was his mother’s first choice as heir. But as Mrs Gandhi’s closest adviser, Rajiv himself must share responsibility for the mishandling of the Sikh troubles as well as the coup that backfired in Andhra Pradesh. He will need wiser minds, now that he is in office, to hone his judgment on. Partly because of her isolation, Mrs Gandhi’s later years were not her best ones. By turning the Congress Party into a personal tool, she short-circuited the country’s best grassroots communications network. Along with the over-concentration of Government power in Delhi, this produced the

intelligence vacuum in which local grievances spiralled into insurgencies in Punjab and in the northeastern hill state of Assam.

One fortunate spin-off of having a weaker ruler in Delhi — and any successor would be weaker than Mrs Gandhi — may be a righting of the distorted balance between centre and states. Other balances that need correcting are those between India and its neighbours, including the Soviet Union.

The relationship Mrs Gandhi built with the Russians was based not on any affection for them, but on a sound appraisal of India’s economic and strategic interests. The Janata government discovered as much when it tried backing away from the Russians in 1977-79 and ended up embracing them. But good relations with the local superpower need not exclude a reversion .to genuine nonalignment as practised by Mrs Gandhi’s father. Nehru would not have condoned Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan.

The greatest missed opportunity of the Gandhi years was the Bangladesh war. Here was the chance for India to hold out a generous hand of friendship to a neighbour that could never again pose a serious military threat to India. But Mrs Gandhi, schooled in decades of hostility, could not extend that hand and continued to act the overweening big sister, not only to Pakistan but to all the

surrounding States.

Such a role would sit uncomfortably on Rajiv or his successor who would anyway need all the neighbourly support he could get to deal with the unrest around India’s edges. It is a second chance that should be seized. Mrs Gandhi’s main claims to greatness, not belied by Pakistan, Punjab, or even the emergency, are the cohesion and confidence she lent to India in 15 years of mostly stable, mostly democratic rule. Ever the pragmatist, she continued to speak the language of socialism while following the advice of her late son, Sanjay, to lift the bureaucratic shackles from

India’s private-sector economy. The result over the last five years, since Sanjay weaned Mrs Gandhi from the worst of her socialism, has been one of the fastest economic growth rates in the world. India is still as unequal as ever, but at least the cake is getting larger every day. The political legacy of Indira Gandhi is less savoury. She leave s behind a Congress Party so denuded of talent and backbone taht it sanctioned the swearing in of her 40-year-old son, 10 hours after the murder, without even going through the traditional motions of a Parliamentary vote. The opposition, chronically demoralised and divided, will be galvanised into some sort of unity now by what looks like a real chance of power. But it, too, needs to show that it stands for something besides power-lust and. Ga-ndhi-envy. • The most important thing for India is not who leads it during the next few years — it has been on autopilot before — but that the voter should make a. decision. Although democracy has many flaws it has an advantage over all alternatives in effecting peaceful transfers of power. The installation of Rajiv was a bad advertisement for the democratic way. Let him now prove he has the right stuff by calling an election as soon as the smoke and sorrow have cleared. Copyright — the Economist.