Patriots & Partisans

by Ramachandra Guha

  I have called Krishna Raj a ‘gentle colossus’. The appellation is, I think, apposite in itself. But I also consciously evoke here the title of a book on Jawaharlal Nehru by the Communist Hiren Mukherjee. Mukherjee disagreed, sometimes profoundly, with Nehru’s politics. But he saluted the man’s personal decency and integrity, and the fundamental role he played in nurturing the democratic traditions of independent India. Likewise, among the friends of the EPW, I was not alone in being at times exasperated with the journal’s obsession with intra-Marxist debate. Yet we all admired the editor for his charm and gentleness of manner and, more so, for producing, in such inhospitable circumstances, a journal that has almost single-handedly sustained an intellectual culture in India.

  Between them, Sachin Chaudhuri and Krishna Raj helped construct a community of the thinking Indian. It was through their weekly that one kept in touch with the work of one’s friends, as well as one’s enemies. It was lucky, if no accident, that the editors of this remarkable journal came from Bengal and Kerala respectively. For, these are, in an intellectual sense, the most vigorously active states in India—and also the most disputatious. In both states, the Communists have enjoyed long spells in government, placed there by the ballot box. They have been bitterly opposed by the extreme left, by those who think that the road to revolution lies through armed struggle. And they have been opposed from the other side, too, by liberals and conservatives dismayed by the attacks by Communists (of all kinds) on liberty, property, and tradition. The polemical nature of these debates in Kerala and West Bengal has spilled over into the rest of the country. A prime vehicle for this spread has been the EPW. Had its editors been from other parts of India, perhaps the journal would have been more genteel, but scarcely more readable.

  When the Economic Weekly began, India was ruled by Jawaharlal Nehru, a man who was socialist in his economic beliefs but liberal in his political outlook. Most times, his commitment to the procedures of democracy outweighed his commitment to the ideals of socialism. This was not to the liking of the younger Indian intellectuals. The EW inevitably became the vehicle for their views. If industry was still under monopoly control, they argued, or if the progress of land reforms was slow, it was owing to the class character of Nehru’s Congress party, a party dominated by rich peasants and funded by the bourgeoisie.

  As I have said, the journal has never been allied to a single party. But its orientation has always been politically charged. Under Sachin Chaudhuri’s editorship, the contributors divided themselves almost equally into two camps: the liberals and the leftists. Chaudhuri’s own credo may be summed up as: ‘We Admire Nehru, But Do Not Necessarily Follow Him.’ Revealing here is an editorial he wrote in August 1966, in the inaugural issue of what was now the Economic and Political Weekly. Nehru was dead, but his aura lingered on. ‘Many underdeveloped countries in the post-War period,’ said Chaudhuri, ‘have had a brief spell of elation or whatever we may call it, induced by the charisma of a leader and a concatenation of circumstances but how many have maintained their pace, and how many fallen by the way? Circumstances may throw up such leaders but it is thinking men and women who aspire and do not acquiesce who alone can mould a people into a nation and keep them going.’

  Within a few years Nehru’s liberalism had been seriously challenged by, as it happens, his own daughter. As prime minister of India, Indira Gandhi crushed dissent within and outside her own party, expanded the role of the state in the economy, and promoted partisanship in judges and civil servants. These developments culminated in the notorious Emergency of 1975–77.

  Among Mrs Gandhi’s critics were old-fashioned liberal democrats and right-wing Hindu conservatives. Under Krishna Raj, the EPW threw in its lot with a third class of dissenters: the Marxists. The editor himself was deeply impressed by the idealism of the young Naxalites, who, inspired by China, were challenging the parliamentary orientation of the established Communist parties. Among the gains of the journal’s leftward turn were the detailed reports on human rights excesses by the state. Among the losses was the excessive space devoted to doctrinal dispute: to exegeses of what Marx or Lenin or Mao really said or meant.

  When I first came to read it, in the early 1980s, the EPW gave space equally to the Old and New Lefts. Soon it was profiling the work of the Newer Left, as contained in the environmental and feminist movements. All this put off some previously loyal supporters. In 1991, the historian Dharma Kumar, who had been a friend of Sachin Chaudhuri, called for an end to Marxist hegemony and a return to the old catholicism. Her letter, printed in the EPW, brought forth a host of angry responses. Particularly noteworthy was a letter signed by about two dozen western academics, the product of some frenetic trans-Atlantic phone calls, which suggested that Professor Kumar’s protest was part of the larger IMF–World Bank conspiracy to destabilize India. But there were also some letters of support. These asked the Indian Left to take heed of the winds of liberalism then blowing through eastern Europe.

  As ever, the EPW was happy to give over its letters and discussion pages to inter-academic abuse. The debate continued for months, but its ultimate effect was salutary. For, Krishna Raj realized that it was not just Russia that had changed. So had China, and India. The twentieth century had demonstrated that, compared to the state, the market was a more efficient agent of economic change. Liberal economists once more began to find their voice in the EPW. At the same time, the journal also reached out to younger historians and sociologists, who unlike their teachers were unburdened by party dogma. But the EPW was careful not to go to the other extreme. Advocates of globalization had their say, but so too did its critics.

  The EPW remains a broad church of intellectual opinion in India. The contributors to its pages range from free-market liberals on one side to Naxalite sympathizers on the other. However, there is one kind of perspective that the journal has consistently excluded: that of religious extremism. In this sense it is not wholly representative of the political spectrum, since in contemporary India, Hindutva forces exercise much influence. But then, religious radicals are not especially keen to have their say in the EPW either. In this they are much like their counterparts elsewhere. (The Nation will not commission an essay by Rush Limbaugh, but then Rick Santorum doesn’t want to write for the Nation either.) In any case, in spreading their word, Hindu chauvinists would much rather use the medium of oral gossip and innuendo than a journal printed in the language of the élite, English.

  After Krishna Raj died, the trustees appointed as his replacement the economist Rammanohar Reddy. The son of a Socialist who had been jailed during the Emergency, Reddy had studied in Chennai, Kolkata and Thiruvananthapuram. Under his stewardship, the EPW has maintained its standards and its catholicism. The new editor has introduced some important innovations, two of which honour his predecessors. One is a column that excerpts an article or editorial from the archives of the Economic Weekly; the second, a paragraph that appears every week under the masthead and reads: ‘Ever since the first issue in 1966, EPW has been India’s premier journal for comment on current affairs and research in the social sciences. It succeeded Economic Weekly (1949–1965) which was launched and shepherded by SACHIN CHAUDHURI, who was also the founder–editor of EPW. As editor for thirty-five years (1969–2004), KRISHNA RAJ gave EPW the reputation it now enjoys.’

  To me, Krishna Raj was both friend and mentor; but in the two decades (and more) of our association, there were two extended periods when we were not in communication. For, in 1991, and again in 1999, I fought with the journal on matters which I thought were of high principle but others would think were of mere ideology. Much later, Krishna Raj was kind enough to write to me that ‘the fights, as you called them, were very good for the EPW’. But it is noteworthy that each time it was I who sued for peace. The EPW could do without me; I could not do without the EPW.

  Sources

  ~

  The original provocation for, and/or publication of, each of the various essays in Patriots and Partisans
is listed below:

  ‘Redeeming the Republic’ is based on two essays commissioned by Outlook magazine, the first published as an Outlook Nano booklet in 2008, the second published as the cover story in the magazine’s Republic Day issue of 2011.

  ‘A Short History of Congress Chamchagiri’ is a greatly expanded version of an essay first published (under a different title) in Seminar.

  ‘Hindutva Hate Mail’ was specially written for this book.

  ‘The Past and Future of the Indian Left’ was originally published (under a different title) in Caravan.

  ‘The Professor and the Protester’ draws in part on columns previously published in the Telegraph, here expanded (and rid of topical references) to form an integrated essay.

  ‘Gandhi’s Faith and Ours’ is a revised version of an essay written as the introduction to the Indian edition of J.T.F. Jordens’s Gandhi’s Religion: A Home-Spun Shawl (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012).

  ‘Verdicts on Nehru: The Rise and Fall of a Reputation’ is a revised and expanded version of the V.K.R.V. Rao Lecture, delivered at the Institute of Social and Economic Change, Bangalore, in May 2005. Shorter versions of the present text were published in Prospect and in the Economic and Political Weekly.

  ‘An Asian Clash of Civilizations? The Sino-Indian Conflict Revisited’ is based on the Ingalls Lecture, delivered at the Harvard-Yenching Institute, in March 2011. It was later published in full in the Economic and Political Weekly and, in abbreviated form, in the National Interest.

  ‘The Beauty of Compromise’ is based on the inaugural Himal Lecture, delivered at the India International Centre, New Delhi, in December 2007. A shorter version was published in Himal Southasia.

  ‘The Rise and Fall of the Bilingual Intellectual’ was delivered as a lecture at the India International Centre, New Delhi, on 15th May 2009, to mark the birth centenary of the librarian B.S. Kesavan. It was later published in the Economic and Political Weekly, where it attracted several printed responses, the main points of which have been incorporated in the present version.

  ‘Pluralism in the Indian University’ is based on the inaugural address to the symposium on ‘The Quest for Excellence: Great Universities and their Cities, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai’, organized by the Department of History, Mumbai University, in January 2007. An earlier version was published in the Economic and Political Weekly.

  ‘In Nehru’s House: A Story of Scholarship and Sycophancy’ was specially written for this book.

  ‘Life with a Duchess: A Personal History of the Oxford University Press’ was published (under a different title) in Caravan.

  ‘Turning Crimson in Premier’s’ is a lightly revised version of an essay first published in Aditi De, editor, Multiple City: Writings on Bangalore (New Delhi: Penguin India, 2008).

  ‘The Gentle Colossus: Krishna Raj and the EPW’ is a substantially expanded version of a tribute to Krishna Raj first published in Himal Southasia.

  Acknowledgements

  ~

  I would like to thank, for variously provoking, commissioning, facilitating, or commenting on the essays that make up Patriots and Partisans, the following individuals: Aditya Bhattacharjea, Swapan Chakravorty, Gill Coleridge, Aditi De, Sudhanva Deshpande, Kanak Mani Dixit, Mariam Dossal, Gopalkrishna Gandhi, the late Anjan Ghosh, David Goodhart, Keshava Guha, David Hardiman, Diya Kar Hazra, Peter Heehs, Cara Jones, Vinod K. Jose, Mukul Kesavan, Sunil Khilnani, Nayanjot Lahiri, Charles Lewis, Vinayak Lohani, Shajahan Madampat, Swapan Majumdar, Sharan Mamidipudi, J. Martinez-Alier, Vinod Mehta, Shiv Shankar Menon, Rudrangshu Mukherjee, Anil Nauriya, Mohandas Pai, Jonathan Parry, Elizabeth Perry, Anjali Puri, Srinath Raghavan, Alok Rai, Niranjan Rajadyaksha, V. Ramani, Mahesh Rangarajan, S.L. Rao, Rammanohar Reddy, Justine Rosenthal, Chiki Sarkar, Jonathan Shainin, Shanuj V.C., Geetanjali Shree, Dilip Simeon, Malvika Singh, K. Sivaramakrishnan, Rupert Snell, Sugata Srinivasaraju, Nandini Sundar and Akhila Yechury. A special word of thanks is due to Nandini Mehta (of Penguin India) and Rukun Advani (of Ranikhet), for their patience in listening to long harangues on the phone, and for reading (and most valuably commenting on) multiple drafts of more or less all the essays in this book.

  ALLEN LANE

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 707 Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3008, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, Block D, Rosebank Office Park, 181 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown North, Gauteng 2193, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England First published in Allen Lane by Penguin Books India 2012

  Copyright © Ramachandra Guha 2012

  Cover photograph © Getty Images All rights reserved

  www.penguin.co.in

  The views and opinions expressed in this book are the author’s own and the facts are as reported by him which have been verified to the extent possible, and the publishers are not in any way liable for the same.

  ISBN: 978-06-7008-386-2

  e-ISBN: 978-81-8475-753-8

  For sale in the Indian Subcontinent only

  Chapter One: Redeeming the Republic

  * This theme, the reconciling of little nationalisms with the larger idea of India, is explored more fully in the last essay of Part I, ‘The Beauty of Compromise’.

  * The national debate on corruption, provoked and promoted in the latter half of 2011 by the Anna Hazare movement, is the theme of a later essay, ‘The Professor and the Protester’.

  Chapter Three: Hindutva Hate Mail

  *In quoting these letters, I have retained errors of spelling, grammar, and punctuation, as well as capitals and emphases, only indicating by the conventional three dots where words or sentences have been deleted.

  Chapter Eight: An Asian Clash of Civilizations? The Sino-Indian Conflict Revisited

  *Apart from Nehru’s major books, cited in the text, the essay draws upon his letters to chief ministers, his interventions in Parliament, and his correspondence with the Chinese government. The quotes from Rajagopalachari come from his articles in the journal Swarajya; those from Deen Dayal Upadhyaya from the journal Organiser; those from Lohia from collections of his speeches and articles. The account of Zhou Enlai’s visit to India draws on contemporary newspapers and on a file in the P.N. Haksar Papers in the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. The account of Rajiv Gandhi’s trip to China draws on reports in the Indian press.

  Chapter Nine: The Beauty of Compromise

  *Substitute ‘Hindu’ for ‘Buddhist’ and ‘India’ for ‘Sri Lanka’, and this could be the narrative of Hindutva. Make it ‘Jews’ and ‘Israel’, or ‘Christians’ and the ‘United States’, or ‘the Khalsa’ and ‘Khalistan’, or ‘Shias’ and ‘Iran’, and you get other variants of faith-based nationalism, which despite their claims to exceptionalism and singularity are all so strikingly alike in their chauvinism and paranoia.

  Chapter Twelve: In Nehru’s House: A Story of Scholarship and Sycophancy

  * This story was told to me by the journalist, soon after his lunch with Mr Natwar Singh.

  * At the time, I lodged a formal complaint against this policy of restricted access. In a letter dated 26th April 2008 to the chairman of the NMML’s Executive Council, Dr Karan Singh, I wrote: ‘My own self-interest might lie in curbs being placed on these materials on Kashmir, China, the Emer
gency, etc. For then I could aspire to India after Gandhi becoming the authoritative and uncontested version of these events. However, I was trained by Ravinder Kumar to welcome disagreement. I deplore the fact that the access granted to me under a previous dispensation is now being denied to other and often younger scholars. For I wish them to explore, more fully and more rigorously than I could, the riches of the NMML, even if in so doing they were to challenge or overthrow my own explanations and arguments.’

  * The signatories to the note were Sumit Sarkar, Neera Chandhoke, Madhavan Palat, Mahesh Rangarajan, Prabhu Mohapatra, Ramachandra Guha and Dilip Simeon.

  * The letter was published in its entirety in the Economic and Political Weekly, issue dated June 27–July 4, 2009.

  * The day after I wrote this paragraph, The Hindu published an article by Siddharth Varadarajan which compared the pogroms of 1984 and 2002 in the following words: ‘The reality is that the Delhi and Gujarat massacres are part of the same excavated site, an integral part of the archaeology of the Indian state … In an act of conception which lasted four bloody days, something inhuman was spawned in the streets of Delhi in 1984; by 2002, it had fully matured. Paternity for the “riot system” belongs to both the Congress and the BJP, even if the sangh parivar managed to improve upon the technologies of mass violence. Both knew how to mobilise mobs. Both knew how to get the police to turn the other way. Both knew how to fix criminal cases. Both knew what language to speak, even if one set of leaders spoke of a “big tree falling” and the other paraphrased Newton. Both had the luxury of not being asked difficult questions by criminal investigators.’ On the interrogation of the Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi in March 2010, by a team appointed by the Supreme Court, Mr Varadarajan remarked that ‘the reality is that the call for a leader to render account for mass crimes committed on his watch comes 18 years too late. Veteran journalist Tavleen Singh said recently that if Rajiv Gandhi had been interrogated in 1984 about what happened to the Sikhs [in 1984], Gujarat would not have happened [in 2002]. She is right.’