NITISH’S PRINCIPLED STAND ON V-P RARE

Nitish Kumar, styled as the new poster boy for political opportunism, has declared that he will honour his commitment to support Gopalkrishna Devdas Gandhi as the Opposition’s vice-presidential nominee, although the JD(U) is now a member of the ruling NDA. Such a principled stand is rare in Indian politics and all the more welcome for it.

Of the two candidates on offer, there’s no doubt that Gandhi is the more appealing choice. One does not have to scroll through a plethora of WhatsApp posts to arrive at that conclusion. He would grace the office of vice-president and chairman of the Rajya Sabha with dignity and impartiality. He cannot be coerced, co-opted or coaxed, which makes him a bad fit from the perspective of any ruling party. With several Bills stuck in the Upper House, the government can ill afford a vice-president who will take an independent line.

Gandhi’s eminence has less to do with his genealogy than his exemplary career as bureaucrat, diplomat, governor, thinker and commentator. Indeed, with few exceptions, the Mahatama’s descendants have not sought to parley their genes into a political career. They have been journalists, academics and scientists, for the most part. Rajmohan Gandhi has flirted unsuccessfully with politics since 1989, but was already an established academic at the time and that remains his primary metier.

It is tempting to contrast the Gandhis with the other Gandhis, who turned the Congress into a family-owned enterprise. In the process, they legitimised dynasty. Lalu Prasad Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Prakash Singh Badal, M Karunanidhi, Rajnath Singh, Raman Singh, the late Gopinath Munde, Prem Kumar Dhumal, etc had no compunction in foisting their progeny on the voting public. A very few of the leaders who had heirs, like Nitish, escaped the temptation. This is not to argue that geneaology should exclude anyone from public service, but they must prove worthy of leading a party, or a government. None of the Generation Y politicians have shown any signs of talent, with the possible exception of Akhilesh Yadav.

Ideologically, Gandhi may well be positioned dead centre, but he has never been subjective. As governor of West Bengal, Gandhi strongly criticised the ruling CPI(M) government for its stance on the Nandigram, going so far as to say that the government’s attempts to acquire land for industry (resulting in the death of 14 people) filled him with ‘cold horror’. In April, 2014, shortly before the UPA was ousted, he castigated the CBI for functioning as a handmaiden of whatever government happened to be in power. In 2015, he strongly condemned the attacks on members of the minority community by gau-rakshaks. No national party has escaped criticism, expressed in speeches and articles.

The only charge that has ever been levelled against Gopal Gandhi is that he had asked the then President of India, Pranab Mukherjee, to reconsider his rejection of Yakub Memon’s mercy petition. It is well known that he is opposed to capital punishment, since he has written a book on the subject. To condemn him on these grounds is silly; one might as well condemn a commitment to non-violence, or vegetarianism.

Gandhi’s nephew, Srikrishna Kulkarni, has criticized his uncle for having accepted the nomination from a Congress-led Opposition. This again, is inappropriate. Agreeing to stand for vice-president is not tantamount to endorsing the Congress’ many evils, such as corruption and dynasty. In any case, Gandhi is as much a candidate of the BSP or JD(U), as he is that of the Congress.

It must be mentioned here that when Nitish proposed his name for President of India, the Congress proved reluctant and preferred Meria Kumar, who had the advantages of being a dalit and a woman and was thus deemed a politically correct choice. However, she suffered by comparison to Ram Nath Kovind, although the contrast is not as stark as that between M Venkaiah Naidu and Gopal Gandhi.

For all these reasons, Gopal Gandhi’s lived message (of integrity, justice and non-partisanship) is more relevant today than the other Gandhi’s. The Congress is in trouble and they are floundering. This is not the time to fear being upstaged by a Gandhi. Far better to draw inspiration from his civil but firm open letters to Narendra Modi, in which he gently urges the prime minister to avoid the pitfalls of personal supremacism. His message to Modi actually applies to Congressmen as well: “Better bearing a pyala to many than being a chamcha of one”.

GOPALKRISHNA GANDHI’S eminence has less to do with his genealogy than his exemplary career as bureaucrat, diplomat, governor, thinker and commentator. Indeed, with few exceptions, the Mahatama’s descendants have not sought to parley their genes into a political career. They have been journalists, academics and scientists, for the most part. Rajmohan Gandhi has flirted unsuccessfully with politics since 1989, but was already an established academic at the time and that remains his primary metier

The writer is a senior journalist with 35 years of experience in working with major newspapers and magazines. She is now an independent writer and author