Politics, Morality, Identity: An Intimate Quest

Sometime in 1968 a young, impressive economics lecturer at the school of correspondence in Delhi University, Vinod Prasad Singh, gave an impassioned speech to a group of youngsters to plunge into revolutionary socialist politics. As a member of that rapt audience. I clearly recall one of his central points: ‘If you want to do any good in society then joining politics is the only way followed logically by his next exhortation: ‘Socialist politics is the only option’.

I was then a student of class X, an avid reader of newspapers and saw myself as a sensitive soul, a patriot who wanted to work for the good of society but with no idea of how to serve the motherland. I often visited a classmate. Anmol Ratan, whose father was a card-holder of the Communist party of India. Although I was deeply impressed by his father’s commitment to the idea of revolution and to the poor, what disturbed me was the way he viewed nationalism, non-violence and democracy as depicting a ‘false consciousness.

While still in school my parents, particularly my mother, had instilled in me a tremendous respect for Gandhiji. My father was then a goods clerk in the railways, who got a ‘neat’ cut on all goods hooked at the station which was then distributed among all employees according to certain ‘principles’. My father used to deny himself ‘his’ share. Our family gurus were the Bedis, the clan to which Guru Nanak belonged. We called ourselves Sahajdhari Sikhs - those who follow the teachings of Sikhism. They were also dedicated Arya Samajists, who in spite of losing several close relatives during the partition riots, actively defended the ideal of religious tolerance.

Once, when in class V, I saw a group of youngsters, all of them in khaki shorts and sitting in a circle, listening to a senior. I looked at them curiously, whereupon the senior invited me to join in. He was explaining that nationalism is the greatest value and that Jawaharlal Nehru was not adequately nationalistic. To substantiate his argument, he narrated the parliamentary debate between Mahaveer Tyagi and Nehru regarding Indian land under Chinese occupation. My mind did not question the veracity of the story and found the idea of propagating nationalism interesting although I was quite uncomfortable at the absoluteness with which Nehru’s patriotism was being questioned. When my father discovered where I had gone, he forbade me from going there again.

Thus, although my family imbued me with a sense of patriotism it did not let me get metamorphosed to the narrow communalist idea of Hindutva. Looking back, the values and world-view my parents bred in me had foreclosed most political options, except that of joining the democratic socialist movement. Neither could I accept the idea of a communist revolution. Even those communists who were honest and sincere in their personal lives believed that the ‘ends justified the means’, whereas what I had learnt was that what is ideal is also practical. These were the virtues I found in my new-found socialist mentors, the most important of whom was Banwari Vinod Prasad Singh.

Since class V, I was a regular reader of Hindi newspapers.  had fairly developed political interests and used to be an impressive public speaker. But 1 had no political contacts. I owe a sense of gratitude to a close school friend, Rama Shankar, later an important leader in Madhya Pradesh politics, who introduced me to my socialist teachers. Later, when I came into contact with Vinod Prasad Singh, ‘visiting professor’ of socialism on the faculty of Samajvadi Yuvajan Sabha (a youth organisation of the socialist movement) and Banwari my ‘resident tutor’ of socialism, I found them sincere and persuasive. They still are sincere and Vinod Prasad Singh continues to believe in everything that he said in the backyard of that small room which Banwari had sub-let from a class IV railway employee. This room functioned as an informal recruitment and training centre for young socialists. Banwari, who in 1985 was in the founder editorial team of Jansatta, worked as a booking clerk in the Railway, pursued his studies in philosophy and spend a considerable amount of tune in explaining to me and others the need, importance and urgency of pursuing socialist politics to build a society based on the principles of equality, yet still democratic. I was fascinated by all this.

Today the democratic socialist movement faces a grave crisis in this country. The whole organisation of the Lohia sub-stream of the movement has evaporated into nothingness. Legendary figures of the movement appear now tired and fatigued. Yet, despite this, there are thousands of workers, regardless of when they were recruited — whether in the ’42 revolution, the J.P. movement or the Emergency — who are proud, like me, to be known as socialists. The socialist ideology and organisation.

A careful looking back makes one feel that the organisational make-up of the Lohiya-socialist movement was such that you either belonged to it or you did not. Everyone was expected to be an iconoclast and a leader in his own right in his or her milieu. Baptism to socialist movement required going to jail through protest action— satyagraha. The Congress party, in the heyday of Lohia’s non-Congressism, was viewed as the source of every social evil — whether communalism, corruption, poverty, exploitation or the apathy of the people. If you were recruited at a young age, as I was, then you were deprived of other perspectives because the principal source of one’s learning was the political peer group.

One’s perception of the Congress of the mid-’ 60s was overwhelmingly coloured by the Lohiaite political line of that time. The saving grace was that the commitment to Truth was absolute with the proviso that grasping it was the ideal. As Truth was multi-dimensional, Socialists were expected to strive for Truth, not the truth of the socialist idea or organisation. In fact, the organisation was a dispensable instrument if it hindered the pursuit of Truth. A famous Lohia slogan was: ‘Follow the principles and not the leader’. (Neta ke nahin neeti ke peechhe chalo)

The Lohiaite neeti (policy) package was both comprehensive and rigorous. All workers had to be atheists, active campaigners for the abolition of caste, behave in a secular manner irrespective of personal origin of birth, abjure the use of English in public activities, educate their children in common/government schools, adopt an austere lifestyle, advocate gender equality, demolishing the image of Savitri as an ideal of Indian womanhood and instead propound the intellectual, moral and political qualities of Draupadi as a replacement, and so on. Each of us was not only expected to practise these ideals but to become individual satyagrahis, so that our presence became a source of discomfort and fear for the social and political establishment of the time.

This gave Lohiaite socialists a distinctive personality. They knew no fear; their body reflexes prepared for defiance as soon as they smelt status quoist authority asserting its ‘anti-people’ existence. This need to defy was not restricted to the authority of the state alone. Satyagraha in any walk of life or institution was used to remind the apathetic masses or morally indulgent rulers of the Lohia package of Total Revolution.

All this naturally made socialists a breed apart and different from the other political workers. Ironically, this distinctiveness and ‘strength’ also became the Single most important cause of the demise of the socialist organisation. All those who came in contact with the socialist proselytizers were baptised in a manner that they were unable to relate to the ordinary, common and frail human beings around them, to their families or anyone in the larger society. I dare to go even further and state that many of us were so conditioned that we could not relate to the ordinary, fearful, lustful or cowardly even within us.

I don’t believe that all socialists are supermen or women, yet they behaved as superhuman beings. The degree of super-humanness varied according to the degree to which one followed the Lohia policy package in the eyes of the peer group. The feeling of distinctiveness was always accompanied with a kind of contempt for the ordinary and the ability to appreciate and assess other people generously declined. Using sharply defined moralistic-political codes inherent in the Lohia package in an absolutist manner did not easily allow us, the bhaktas, followers of Lohia, to see another perspective.

The Lohiaite mind-set believed in the unique ‘historical’ role which each one of us had to play: this made it very difficult to work with equals. Even those who were/are close personal friends, more often than not, have secret contempt and a lurking distrust of each other. So, the first stage was to ‘achieve’ alienation from society at large: the second was to get alienated from friends within the movement itself.

I can recount a list of exceptionally warm people, often close friends, who do not consider it necessary to consult each other on important political decisions: none of us is trained to own each other’s work or take joint initiatives. We can be good followers of a leader of charismatic qualities or can mobilise a small team of younger people around our personal initiatives, which we believe are very strategic to the larger good of the movement. But this strategic and larger good is not defined through a collective organisational process.

It may be of interest to know how socialist leaders relate to each other. In 1977, when the Janata Party was in power I was nominated president of Delhi’s unit of the Yuva Janata. The Janata Party’s organisation had no disciplining role and we were our own masters. In the socialist movement, as mentioned earlier, we are answerable to ‘principles and policies’ and not leaders. The socialist assumption was that younger people and youth organisations must act as a check against the possible compromises of the leaders. I found that this notion of self-discipline through the ideological code had degenerated to a situation where every Yuva Janata office-bearer became identified with one or the other national leader of the Janata Party. Since the Yuva Janata was supposed to act as a moral check on the older generation, this principle was misused to issue critical public statements against leaders of the opposing faction.

I was uncomfortable in a situation where a principle of moral control was. being misused for petty factional struggles. One way to check it was to form an informal collective high-command of the socialists in the Janata Party who would monitor our adherence to the socialistic principles and allocate work among socialist workers. So I approached Kishan Patnaik, (a close associate of Lohia and an articulate member of the Lok Sabha from 1962 to 67), Raj Narayan, (who defeated Indira Gandhi in the 1977 Lok Sabha polls and was responsible for creating the political crisis on 12 June ’75 through a successful election petition against Indira Gandhi), Madhu Limaye (a freedom fighter, hero of the struggle for Goa’s independence and also the man who was among the only two who resigned their Lok Sabha seats in 1976 during the Emergency when its term extended by Indira Gandhi for her own benefit), George Fernandes (fire-brand hero of the resistance against the Emergency and whom Indira Gandhi dreaded most), Karpoori Thakur (a respected and popular leader of Bihar) and Surendra Mohan (socialite idealogue, who led the media campaign of the Janata Party during the ’77 elections, the only election held under internal emergency in the socialist movement.

As a worker, I was very proud of my leadership and still believe that I had good reasons to feel that way. This is because, since independence, there has not been even one issue regarding how to build this nation when our leadership had to eat their words or feel sorry about a stand. They were the first group of leftists who understood that the Stalinist Leninist version of Marxism was a faulty understanding of the process of revolution. The inseparability of means with ends, the role of satyagraha in a democracy, decentralisation of Indian state, issues of annihilation of caste including reservation for OBC castes, issues of gender equality, English language as a tool of exploitation of Indian masses, lowering the voting age to 18, irrelevance of cold-warist camps, aggressive pursuit of third world solidarity movement and issues of finding/developing technologies which could counter or be an alternative to the capitalistic-imperialistic technologies, are some issues which the socialist movement vigorously raised. The Indian left, right or centre initially sneered at them. But today, everyone has come around to the positions which the socialist leadership formulated in the mid-’ 60s.

Once a comprehensive view was evolved under the leadership of Lohia, there was an impatience to acquire power to implement that understanding. Although the understanding of the process of revolution was non-statist, Lohia-followers got stuck on issues of power centred around the Indian state. No other institutions of popular power were built. Even the political party was not built in any substantial way. It remained an instrument of perpetual protest.

The socialist movement was a cadre party till 1950 and was changed to a mass party after a fierce debate. Getting 10% votes at the general elections was far below the expectations of the socialist leadership. At this juncture, Lohia wrote and gave several landmark speeches on ‘Organising for Revolution’. But his impatience with poverty, exploitation and misery was so intense that he could not inspire the workers to do the donkey work necessary for building an organisation. Ceaseless agitation was an exciting idea and he transferred his impatience with exploitation and militancy and urge to struggle for change to his followers. Lohia’s impatience with the slow and arduous course of revolution made him part company with a majority of his colleagues such as Ashok Mehta, Acharya Narendra Dev, N.G. Gore, Prem Bhasin and S.M. Joshi who were some of the tallest leaders of the socialist movement, as well as with some of the present stalwarts like Madhu Dandavate, Chandra Shekhar and Surendra Mohan.

By 1955, Lohia was left leading a small band of extremely dedicated but relatively young workers. The smallness in terms of size and numbers and the need to compete with the other faction of the socialist movement forced Lohia to translate his impatience for egalitarian transformation into a distinctive radical politics. In terms of freshness and insight into the complex process of holistic revolution through democratic means, 1955-1967 was the most creative time in Lohia’ s life and resulted in a major breakthrough in 1967, when non-Congress governments were formed in nine states. But, paradoxically, 1955-67 was also the period when the seeds of a deep anarchist mind-set were sown.

This was the milieu and context in 1977, when I started lobbying for the informal high command of the socialist galaxy. All of them rejected the idea. Some even sneered at it. But three honest and straight—forward rejections are worth analysing. Kishan Patnaik was no longer confident of the socialist commitment of the other national leaders. To be fair to him, he had taken this stance since 1971 when he had founded a separate ideological club called Lohia Vichar Manch. Madlhu Limaye’ s response amounted to saying that idealism was in abeyance since the time of adopting non—Congressism as the tactical line of the socialist movement, and a socialist high command cannot be created without socialist idealism. What remarkable similarity in the responses of two nationally acknowledged idealists of the socialist movement!

Another of the reflective and brutally honest answers was given by George Fernandes. According to him, the names I had mentioned did not constitute a group that could work together. His response was frightening as far as saving or reviving the collective identity of the socialist movement was concerned. He stated that while we could have frank bilateral discussions, we could never be sure why anyone among us was taking a particular line in a group situation.

The first conversation on this aspect took place sometime in the last week of August 1977. In September 1977, I pursued this issue of bringing the socialist leaders closer with suggestions like writing an open letter to all socialists regarding the challenge and experience of using state power for social change or convening a convention of the socialist workers or at least organising a ‘business’ dinner of a small group of senior leaders on the death anniversary of Ram Manohar Lohia. However, George Fernandes rejected these suggestions on the ground that anything of the sort would be misunderstood. And that we must not behave like a faction within the Janata Party.

The entire spectrum of Indian political parties had come to a dead end when the Emergency was clamped. A veteran freedom fighter from Delhi, Deshraj Chaudhury of the Congress (O) told me during his detention in Tihar hospital, that the Congress (0) was unable to mobilize their quota of volunteers for courting arrest in the pre-emergency days. The BJS (Bharatiya Jan Sangh) was unable to make headway among the scheduled and other backward castes and in rural areas. The communists were also in a similar state of disarray.

Once students and workers from such parties joined hands with the J.P. movement, they tried to capture power. All competing organisations were seen as usurpers of the credit of building and participating in the J.P. movement. Many a time it appeared as if the agenda or the joint struggle committees of students and people was not to regenerate the polity, but only to regenerate one’s own political stream and prevent rivals from appropriating the credit for the J.P. movement. The dead end faced by the entire spectrum of Indian political parties had not forced them to honestly reconsider their ideological problems, organizational limitations or exhaustion of political morality. In short, many of them participated in the J.P. movement driven by their subjective crisis, not by a search for larger politico-moral principles of social reconstruction.

All mass movements have two intrinsic functions. One, they replace the older, fatigued leadership with younger people and second, usher in new ideas. During the J.P. movement, the processes of renewal were given an added boost by the Emergency. Detention gave many of us time to rethink our own political tradition and interact with other political ideologies, ranging from Marxist-Leninist to the RSS and Sarvodaya. Before my detention, I honestly believed that socialists have an open mind. This myth was exploded as, to my embarrassment, 1 realised that we all had a part which belonged to the realm of faith, even sacrosanct faith. The critical faculties of our mind did not have access to that part of our belief system. To reach it, one had to use human bonds and emotions, not reason. The bhakta/faithful in us can be approached only if we have a deep trust or a strong human bond with the person who questions the basics of our faith. But this human dimension of political work is ignored when a rationalist-fundamentalism is consciously practised.

Despite Lohia’s efforts to publicly raise these issues, I observed a hesitation among Lohia socialists in discussing the human aspect of our individual and collective self. This was regarded as exposing one’s weaknesses, fatal in a revolutionary organisation. I have earlier described how a Lohiaite socialist becomes increasingly incapable of relating to the ordinary human life. A belief in one’s courage, bravery and unique historical role gives one a different kind of self-image. I do not remember even a single case of a socialist who did not enjoy jail detention thoroughly or who was demoralized by it.

On the other hand, the RSS had many workers who were demoralized in jail and others attempted to avoid it by giving public statements in praise of Indira Gandhi, Sanjay Gandhi and their fascist programs. Yet what then appeared to be the weakness of the RSS, was also its strength. What we socialists did not recognise was that despite their ambivalent commitment to the J.P. movement, a number of RSS workers courted arrest and bore detention with dignity. That they had so many scared people in jail was not only their weakness but also proof of the fact that they had structures which could mobilise so many ordinary middle class people.

That our charismatic socialist leaders were unable to create structures for mobilisation of ordinary people, despite their goodwill among the masses, did not lead them to reconsider their o)organizational style. George Fernandes, who led an extensive network of trade unions, used this for militant resistance against the Emergency. Rather than building an extensive network of ordinary citizens, willing to come forward for Satyagraha, this created a select group of popular heroes in 1977.

Some socialists, however, reacted against this radical elitism of socialist action and its anarchism. Soon after the Emergency, the socialists were clearly divided into various strands. Those. who thought that a greater share of state power to socialist radicals would deliver results to match revolutionary expectations sought unquestioning support from all socialists in their struggle for power vis-à-vis other constituent factions of the Janata Party. Any criticism o r questioning by other socialists of the tactics of the front-rant leaders was seen as part of sub-factional intra-socialist power struggle..

This absolutist expectation of solidarity was reciprocated by another group of socialists with an absolutist moralistic critique of the socialist leaders in power. Such critiques attempted to analyse every –thing in terms of the personal failings of those wielding power. A comprehensive socialist view on organisation, building systemic power of the organisation and ideas on how to use state-power, however partial, effectively were never developed. In fact those making a moralistic critique did not appreciate the essence of non-Congressism which was a counter-strategy on behalf of the oppressed majority to defeat the designs of the ruling classes who had converted the Congress into a powerful status-quoist agent.

The Lohiaites, instead of carrying further the debate of the Lohia tradition, sought to destroy each other, because none appeared as pure as they ‘ought to have been’. There was an absence of political sagacity to take the struggle forward in a politically prudent fashion. Kishan Patnaik, Keshav .Iadhava and Indumati Kelkar, widely respected purists, were in the forefront of criticising senior socialists like Karpoori Thakur, George Fernandes, Madhu Limaye and Raj Narayan for not fulfilling the expectations of the Lohiaite policy package. Such action gave an upper hand to the Status—quoist and communal forces.

Apart from the responses to the fascination of power and fear of power, there were other responses to the limitations of the socialist movement. But this self—reflection and search for new direction was not through the collective instrument of the organization. Some socialists took up the issues of cultural and social empowerment, caste annihilation, dignity of the socialist movement. Lohia’s position of simultaneity of social revolution with was modified to the primacy of social revolution over political revolution. Narendra Dhabolkar and Baba Adhava are examples of this strand. Others like them ale working in close cooperation with the Ambedkarite movement. Still others focussed their energies on ‘decolonising’ the Indian consciousness through issues of science, technology and development.

Another group of socialists formed voluntary organisations or movement groups with Sarvodayaites and other quasi-political or anti-political single-issue organisations. In 1985, a federation of such groups called Sampoorna Kranti Manch (Forum for Total Revolution) was formed but its vigorous form lasted only for five years. Some joined other political parties, ranging from the BJP to Marxist—Leninist groups, depending on their newly acquired ideological inclination and reading of the available political spaces.

Today, no one can deny the tremendous explosion of democratic energies at the grassroots. An acceptance of the Mandal recommendations have significantly contributed to this new awakening. Neither can one deny the total fragmentation of the Lohia-socialist movement. Paradoxically, the socialist movement had a strategic contribution in shaping the democratic awakening. The failure was at the level of consolidation of popular energies. The existing leadership and organisation cannot revive the socialist movement today. The only way is to accept this setback with humility, which may force us to re-frame our organizational vision and innovate ways and means of regenerating the democratic-socialist movement.

The biggest failure of the socialist movement was its inability to resolve its dilemma regarding the relative importance of constructive work and ability to relate to the ‘ordinary’ person. This could have been a reaction to the other faction of the socialist movement. Lohia was not a native internationalist. He was acutely aware how European communists and socialists had used the idea of international solidarity of the working class for protecting the interests of the ruling classes in Europe. He was also not enthusiastic about the idea of western funding of the constructive work in India whereas J.P. played an important role in linking the Sarvodaya movement with European radicals. Thus what appeared to be a clear formulation at the level of ideas (constructive work being an integral part of socialist politics), did not translate itself into praxis because of unresolved dilemmas, depriving it of constructive workers as a moderating influence over those sections who were pursuing the goal of state-power.

Until the beginning of the 1980s, it was possible to keep some semblance of togetherness among the other two dimensions of socialist tasks—peaceful militant struggles and participation in elections. Today elections have virtually succeeded in driving out or marginalising ideologically oriented politicians from their respective parties and a schism between elections and ideologies is nearly complete. In order to save democracy the two must again be made compatible. The various Constituents of our marginalised society —scheduled castes, QBCs, minorities, women and peripheral identities of Kashmir and the North East — must form the principal components of this progressive alliance.

Many gods of my youth have died or gone astray. Yet I have a sense of great satisfaction at having grown up as a socialist. Sadness, bitterness, breaking down and sorrows are an essential part of the human predicament and are as important and integral as a sense of joy, happiness, meaningfulness and a feeling of fulfillment in one’s life. But ideologies and beliefs, whether they are religious, cultural or political, give one a framework to see oneself in perspective. I am a socialist because to me it is simultaneously a dream and a reality.