Last week saw a heated political debate across media and social media about two stalwarts from India’s political history. Whether one of them was greater than the other, whether one of them was sidelined by the other’s legacy, whether one become dictatorial in every sense and brought in dynastic politics in India? All these points were discussed because one of these two leaders Indira Gandhi was assassinated on the same day as the Iron man of India Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was born.
It is very obvious that the present BJP led government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants India to remember 31 st October as Sardar Patel’s birth anniversary and not as Indira’s death anniversary. The BJP and government were seen working overtime on advertising this day as Patel’s birth anniversary. Historian Ramchandra Guha while speaking to a private news channel said that this was very ironical because Sardar Patel was himself a Congressman and was opposed to the RSS, the mother organisation of BJP. However almost in the same breath Guha said that this opportunity was given to the BJP by none-other than the Congress itself! The reason according to him was that the Congress always disowned every big leader apart from Mahatma Gandhi and also Nehru family. This gave the BJP scope to project leaders like Sardar Patel and Lal Bahadur Shastri as their leaders (whereas the fact is both these and many such leaders were actually Congressmen) and present a case about how Congress was always only about Gandhi and Nehru. Thinker and historian Gopalkrishna Gandhi says “The Congress always disowned and the BJP always mis-owned Sardar Patel” .
The irony of present time however is that while Narendra Modi is working hard towards projecting Sardar Patel as the real hero of India and in the process is also wanting India to look away from Indira Gandhi, the fact is that he is in every way following Indira Gandhi’s foot-steps.
The larger than life persona of the Prime Minister, the party and the government completely dictated by the Prime Minister, the cabinet and parliament only being run by the Prime Minister and the political campaign in every state election as well as general elections for the ruling party also being run only by the Prime Minster. This was the hallmark of Indira Gandhi’s regime and what you see in the present government is exactly the same! The RSS was always opposed to the Gandhi family because they described the Gandhi family as dictatorial and many believe that this description is right. But the RSS also opposed Indira and Rajiv on the issue of personality worship (vyakti pooja) and now all we have in the present dispensation is personality worship. The RSS does not seem to mind it now!
There is no doubt about the fact that Indira Gandhi was very dictatorial and she dictated and dominated the democratic institutions, many say that she actually destroyed democratic values in the party and she did not trust anybody except her own sons. But are we witnessing anything much different now either in the Congress party or in the BJP? 33 years after Indira Gandhi’s death we have almost the same kind of personality centric politics in today’s India!
- ROHIT CHANDAVARKAR
