by Mark Tully
‘I personally feel’, remarked Digvijay, ‘that big meetings are not as useful as getting people together and discussing things with them.’
‘Did you always talk to the village headman, the sarpanch?’ I asked.
‘No. I know that most people believe that if you get the sarpanch on your side you get the whole village to vote for you. I disagree. Just talking to the sarpanch doesn't look good: the people think that you are trying to bribe their leader. There are some good sarpanches, but others are rascals. If you talk to the people themselves, they say, “He has taken the trouble to talk to us. He is a good man.” That pays off, and is the right way to go about canvassing.’
Mahesh and Digvijay, who were squashed into the front seat alongside the driver, started an urgent conversation which I could not hear above the roaring and rattling of the car. Digvijay then turned to me and asked, ‘Would you like to have a cup of tea?’ We were only about an hour out of Patna, but I knew this meant there was some reason for us to stop and so I agreed.
When we pulled up in the next village, the reason became clear. A young man who had been waiting by his motor cycle came up to the car, opened the front door and touched the feet of Digvijay and Mahesh. He was a cousin of Mahesh and had obviously been sent to meet us. Mahesh went off to get the tea, and Digvijay called after him, ‘Bring me a packet of cigarettes.’ Mahesh turned, frowned and wiggled his finger at Digvijay, who was not allowed to smoke because his doctors had warned it would kill him. Mahesh returned with the tea but no cigarettes. Digvijay pouted like a spoilt child, and so Mahesh relented and went off to buy a packet of Wills. After that, discipline collapsed and Digvijay puffed away happily until we got back to Patna.
By a not-so-strange coincidence, Mahesh's village happened to be just a few miles off the main road, and of course I agreed that we should go there. The village turned out to be a model of rural development, proving that even in Bihar such things are possible. The roads were tarmacked and well maintained. There was a school, a bank and a public telephone which worked. Even the Harijans had concrete houses and electricity.
Mahesh's family home had been built 100 years ago. It was a large house with a well-maintained lawn in front of it – a rare sight in an Indian village. The lawn was surrounded by roses and mogra bushes, a form of jasmine, with sweet-smelling white flowers. Fifty members of the family lived in that house. The men sat on the lawn and talked to us while the women watched a test match on colour television.
The head of the family – or at least its effective leader – was a middle-aged man, Yugal Kishore Sahi, who was a local politician. He was largely responsible for the progress that had been made in the village but was as bitter as Digvijay about the general state of affairs in Bihar. When I told him that I was writing a story about Digvijay, he said, ‘You don't get men like him any more. It's goonda raj [hooligan rule] now in Bihar. Do you know that there are criminal charges against thirty-three members of the Bihar assembly? The criminals helped the politicians to get elected then they saw that the politicians couldn't do without them, so the politicians were taken over by the criminals. Democracy has become a farce, and politics a business. You need to spend at least five to ten lakhs to become a member of the state assembly, and so you invest that money and expect to get a return on it. Recently they had the municipal elections in Hajipur. Each person paid a lakh [100,000 rupees] to get elected, although the councillors have no power.’
‘So what's the point of being elected?’ I asked.
‘It's just to say, “I have arrived. I am a big man.”’
I then asked what was the secret of the success of his village.
‘It's really due to L. P. Shahi, who was born here and who is now a minister in the central government. I actually got him the ticket first, and he has helped us. You have to have the support of a prominent politician, otherwise the officials do nothing – they can delay a scheme for ever.’
L. P. Shahi was the man who many years ago had served spinach to the less distinguished guests at the wedding in Digvijay's family mansion. He was also the man who eventually took away Digvijay's seat in parliament.
As we left the village, I noticed that the villagers were building a new temple for the monkey-god Hanuman. He is one of the most popular gods now, because he is believed to be particularly effective at answering prayers. I supposed the villagers were honouring him because he had answered so many of theirs.
Nearer to Muzaffarpur we passed fields of tobacco. Muzaffarpur is famous for its zarda or chewing-tobacco. Vines of pan leaf, India's other favourite chew, sprawled over bamboo frames. Men standing up to their waists in water were fishing in ponds. We crossed over a canal which was dry. Mahesh said, ‘They make a canal but there's no water. They will only open the gates when the floods come.’ Then we drove under the national highway which bypassed Muzaffarpur, into the town itself. Digvijay's family house stood behind a ten-foot-high wall. Small shops abutted the wall. One boasted of being a medical hall, but was in fact a cramped chemist's shop. Next to it was an equally cramped surgery. The doctor advertised injections for tetanus, polio and diphtheria – all of which should have been available free from the government if the public-service advertisements on the television were anything to go by. Motor cars and two-wheelers in need of care were also provided for, by a battery shop, a spare-parts dealer and a small workshop.
As we entered Digvijay's compound, a man and a boy asleep on the verandah sprung to life. The man was Mohan, another faithful follower of Digvijay, who lived in this house and looked after it when Digvijay's elder son was away. He had a job in a minor irrigation department of the government of Bihar. The department was so minor that the government had forgotten to pay its staff for six months. That, Mohan said, was nothing unusual for Bihar. He was retaliating by not going to work.
It was to this house that Digvijay returned after the end of the state of emergency to fight his own election and the election of one of the heroes thrown up by it, George Fernandes. George was a charismatic trade-union leader – brash, self-confident and an excellent orator – the very opposite of Digvijay. He was one of the few opposition politicians Indira Gandhi did not release when she announced the election – he had been accused of attempting to blow up railway lines, and so was being held on criminal, not political, charges.
Shortly after the release of the political prisoners, the main opposition parties except for the communists merged. The new Janata Party which they formed was a hotchpotch of former Congressmen like Digvijay and Morarji Desai, members of the right-wing Hindu Jan Sangh, politicians whose politics were based on caste interests, and socialists like George. The socialists were very anxious to get George elected, because they were a small party and had few well-known leaders. Digvijay agreed to stand down from Muzaffarpur and to organize George's campaign from there. He himself moved to another constituency in northern Bihar. In Muzaffarpur, Digvijay's supporters – including his son – took a cart with a life-size model of George, handcuffed and in jail, from village to village. The campaign was an outstanding success. In March 1977, George in absentia won one of the largest majorities in the Janata Party's sweeping victory.
After much unseemly wrangling, Morarji was chosen to head India's first non-Congress government. He wanted his old friend Digvijay to be his senior parliamentary secretary – a position of enormous influence, because all the files would have gone through him. Most Indian politicians would have been overjoyed; Digvijay was dismayed.
‘I heard about this on the evening before Morarji was going to announce the appointment. By that time I had already had three or four whiskies. I washed my mouth, smoked a cigarette, took a pan [betel-leaf] and then went to Morarji and told him not to make me a minister. I managed to persuade him by telling him that it would not look good if too many members of what had been his party got plum jobs.’
Digvijay was elected Secretary of the Janata parliamentary party, which gave considerable scope to his talent for lobbying. He
used to see Morarji most evenings for ten minutes or so and report on the latest plots against him – the two rival claimants to the premiership started plotting against Morarji from the moment he got the job. In fact Digvijay had more access to the prime minister than his cabinet colleagues, and he was regarded by most members of the Janata Party as the one man who could influence the inflexible Morarji. But no one ever accused Digvijay of using his influence to advance his own cause.
One of Morarji's weaknesses was his son, Kanti. The prime minister prided himself on his honesty, but he knew that Kanti was making money by interfering in decisions on industrial licensing and government contracts. This gave Morarji's opponents a stick to beat him with, but, when Digvijay suggested that Kanti should be restrained, Morarji just said, ‘You tell him.’ Digvijay explained to me, ‘You see, there had been a history of suicide in Morarji's family. His own daughter killed herself, and I believe that Kanti was blackmailing his father by threatening that he would commit suicide too.’
Morarji's government lasted only about two years. He was pulled down by one of his two rivals in the Janata Party. George Fernandes defended Morarji's government vigorously in the debate on the crucial vote of confidence in Parliament, but the next day he voted against the government. Digvijay had rung him at midnight and George had given an assurance that he was still on Morarji's side. Digvijay never forgave George and vowed to fight him wherever he stood from in the next election. That election followed very soon, because the plotters who overthrew Morarji failed miserably. Their government fell after six months, paving the way for the return of their arch-enemy Indira Gandhi in January 1980.
During my stay in Muzaffarpur, I met many of those involved in the battle between Digvijay and George which followed the brief, inglorious rule of Morarji's successor. Many of Digvijay's friends tried to persuade him not to fight George directly but to continue to contest from the constituency that Digvijay was then representing. That constituency was very anxious to have him as a candidate again, but Digvijay had pledged his word and he refused to go back on it. A battle royal ensued.
Digvijay's supporters allege that George spent money like water to bribe the local leaders. I put that allegation to George's agent in that campaign, Vinay Bushan – a lean and intense man with a long face, large spectacles and a grey beard. He was one of the old school of Indian socialists, utterly dedicated to his cause and prepared to suffer for it. He introduced himself to me as a ‘jailbird’, saying, ‘Don't ask how many times I have been to jail because of my politics. Whenever I am locked up, I tell the jail supervisor, “I am senior in service to you. I know more about the jail manual than you do.”’
I asked, ‘How much money did George spend in that election?’
‘George didn't open his purse in front of me, so what can I say about what I don't know? George was never short of money, but all those stories about him bribing people with scooters and bicycles are rubbish.’
Mohan strongly disagreed: ‘I don't know how you can say that. You could see with your own eyes that all George's workers were riding scooters. Where did they come from? Not from the workers' pockets.’
‘Well, I don't know about that,’ Vinay Bushan said. ‘As I have told you, George never opened his purse in front of me.’
‘He wouldn't have dared to, because you would have walked out on him.’
‘I dare say so.’
The other allegation made by Digvijay's camp is that George's men captured a large number of polling-booths and stamped the ballot papers with his symbol. His agent admitted that reluctantly.
‘You know that this booth-capturing has become a feature of Bihar elections. Both sides captured booths in that election.’
‘What exactly do you mean by “booth-capturing”?’
‘Well, musclemen of one of the candidates occupy a booth before the polling-day. Then they will explode bombs and maybe fire guns to let everyone know that they are in charge of the booth and to frighten them away. On polling-day itself there will be more explosions, just to make sure no one comes to vote and to frighten the polling-officers. Then they threaten or bribe the officials to allow them to stamp the ballot-papers with their candidate's name.’
‘We could have used bombs too,’ said Mohan. ‘Four hundred or so people came to us and said, “We have bombs. Wherever you are weak we will put the situation right. We don't want money, just some food, somewhere to sleep and transport.” They actually brought the bombs and put them in my room, but Digvijay would not let them out of there.’
‘But how many booths did you capture?’ I asked George's agent.
‘I didn't capture any.’
‘No, I know – but you know what I mean. How many did George's men capture?’
‘How can I tell you that? It was a long time ago. I can tell you that Digvijay was not defeated by money or muscle-power but because the whole election in Bihar was turned into a forward–backward battle.’
That piece of back-to-front political jargon meant that the election had been turned into a fight between the newly prosperous farming castes, the backwards, and the landowning castes who had dominated Bihar before independence, like the bhumihars.
Vinay Bhushan explained, ‘George was not very popular. He had not established any connection with the area. Digvijay was very big. But then people thought that Digvijay was bhumihar and that George was a member of a backward caste.’
Whether through forward–backward, bombs or money, George did narrowly defeat Digvijay, who went into the wilderness. Morarji was out of politics and the Janata Party was riven by internecine warfare. The party had done so badly in the general election that there didn't seem to be much to fight over; nevertheless, the leaders fought. Digvijay kept right out of it. This was the first time for twenty-eight years that he was not an MP. The lobbying, the gossip, the friendships of parliament had been his life. Now, because he had to surrender his MP's house, he didn't even have anywhere to stay in Delhi.
Digvijay spent nearly five years in limbo. By the time that preparations for the 1984 general election started, he was thoroughly disillusioned with the Janata Party. Where else could he go? None of the other opposition parties would suit his politics. He could return to Mrs Gandhi. Several of his former Janata colleagues who did not have his old friendship with the prime minister had already done so, but then he had never practised what he called ‘opportunistic politics’ before. An approach to Indira Gandhi just before she started selecting candidates for the general election would be blatantly opportunist. Many Indian politicians would not have worried about that, but Digvijay did. His family saw it differently: they saw the head of the family declining because he had no other interest in life than politics. So the family put pressure on Digvijay to overcome his scruples and approach the prime minister. Eventually he gave in and wrote her a letter.
It was a long letter in which he said he had been doing ‘some detached thinking on the political situation that obtains or is likely to face the country after the next general election if certain issues are not kept in perspective’. After writing off the opposition as at best being able to provide only ‘a government of heterogeneous forces based more on personal ambitions and predilections than on principles and programme’, Digvijay went on to say, ‘I am quite clear in my mind that our polity cannot bear any more the strains of such political experiments’ – a reference to the disaster which had befallen the Janata government. He then expressed concern about the nation: ‘The dangerous situation that has developed in the country is enough to make us all lose a bit of our sleep. Nothing less than the unity and integrity of the country is at stake.’ That was the cry that Indira Gandhi used to rally the nation behind her, although she was most displeased when any foreign journal or broadcasting organization suggested that India's unity was fragile. Digvijay then told the prime minister, ‘The only way to run democracy in this vast country is to revive and strengthen the Congress culture which Gandhi nurtured and which you are striving to pres
erve against heavy odds.’ He forgot the years he had spent opposing Indira because he believed that the true custodian of the Congress culture was Morarji Desai and that Indira Gandhi was promoting a personality cult, not Congress culture. After that lengthy justification, Digvijay eventually got round to writing, ‘I am therefore convinced that if I want to serve the paramount national interest the only organization that I can look to or give my loyalty to is the Congress (I) under your leadership.’ The ‘(I)’ stood for ‘Indira’, to distinguish that Congress from the other factions which had broken away or been thrown out; but of course many saw it as signifying, ‘I, Indira, am the Congress.’ Then came the last and hardest paragraph of all for Digvijay. ‘I knew it would be difficult to disabuse many minds of the suspicion about my electoral interest due to the proximity of the general elections. But I can assure you… that it is part of my groping towards something higher than the promotion of my personal self.’ In his heart of hearts, Digvijay was not really convinced of this.
After writing that letter, Digvijay made an appointment to see the prime minister. According to Digvijay, she just said, ‘It will be all right so long as I am alive. If I die, I can't guarantee what will happen.’ That was on 12 October 1984. On 31 October 1984 Indira Gandhi was shot dead by two Sikh members of her bodyguard. Her comment to Digvijay was not the only premonition of death: in her last public speech she said, ‘I do not worry whether I live or not. As long as there is any breath in me, I will go on serving you. When I die, every single drop of my blood will give strength to India and sustain united India.’
Digvijay applied for the Congress Party ticket in the election which followed Indira Gandhi's death and went to Delhi to press his cause. He appeared to have been successful when a leading member of the Bihar Congress rang him and said that he should leave by the next day's flight to file his nomination for Muzaffarpur. That night the Congress Party published his name as its candidate, but the next morning, just as he was packing, he received another call to say there had been a last-minute change. The party had decided that L. P. Shahi – the man who had served spinach at the wedding and who had been dependent on Digvijay for money in the early days of his political career – had been selected for Muzaffarpur. The residents of that town say that Shahi arranged for hundreds of telephone calls and cables to be sent to the Congress Party headquarters saying that Digvijay had suffered a heart attack and was not fit enough to be the candidate. Digvijay believes that Shahi ‘managed it’ by lobbying the prime minister's influential cousin, Arun Nehru. He said, ‘Shahi told Arun Nehru that I thought I was too senior to do sifarish to [ask for favours from] a comparative newcomer to politics like him.’
