About the Book
Gandhi's conscience keeper hailed by mahatma Gandhi as his conscience
keeper, chakravarti Rajagopalachari (1878-1972;
better known as Rajaji) epitomized the practical
wisdom, religious, tolerance and statesmanship that Gandhi brought to the
nationalist movement. He articulated how Gandhi's ideas and practices could be
reconciled with the needs and aspirations of a modern nation-state. His
political and philosophical positions were argued in a manner, and with an
ideological orientation, strikingly different from that of Jawaharlal Nehru.
And yet rajaji remains virtually unknown today. Vasanthi Srivasan presents Rajaji's vision as that of a theocentric
liberal. She argues that he tried to temper majoritarian
democracy with statesmanship, a free economy with civic virtue, realistic
patriotism with genuine internationalism, and secularism with genuine
internationalism and secularism with a religiosity derived from the Hindu
epics.
Examining his political ideas and actions alongside his literary works,
as well as in relation to statesmen ideologues such as Nehru and Periyar, she shows how Rajaji
steered clear of ideological dogma and charted an ethic of responsibility. This
book will interest general readers as much as scholars of Gandhi, political
theory, and Indian politics.
About the Author
Vasanthi Srinivasan is a reader in
political science at the University of Hyderabad. She has taught at the college
of humanities, Carleton University, Canada. She has been a commonwealth scholar
as well as the recipient of a new India foundation fellowship.
Introduction
Contemporary Indian
politics has come to be thought of exclusively as a domain of colliding
interests, expedient bargaining, and self-serving manipulation. It is, most
certainly, all of these things. It is also, however (and always has been), a
domain of ideas-visions and counter-visions, arguments, values, and even ideals-rooted
in moral and ethical conceptions of the world, and in understandings about how
to act in and through the world. We need only think of some of the central
staging grounds of our politics-the viability of our democracy, the
sustainability (practical and moral) of our economic ambitions, the place of
religion in our public life, our own role in the world today-to see just how
constitutive are ideas to each of these debates.
Yet, we function with
a very narrow, limited conception of our intellectual inheritance: limited both
in our sense of the range of ideas and worldviews which are
in play in our present politics, and limited too in the depth and degree of
detail through which we are willing to explore this inheritance. Not the least
damaging result of this is the deceptive sense of the intellectual aridity of
politics in India. The fact is, our practical public men, though believing
themselves free of intellectual burdens, are more often than not in thrall to
the ideas of the past-and always in ways they don't quite comprehend. We need
an intellectual history of modern Indian politics-and yes, a usable one. As part of that still distant ambition,
much painstaking work will be necessary to recover the political styles, ideas,
and arguments of the past decades.
It is in this context
that we are particularly pleased to be able to publish this remarkably original
study of C. Rajagopalachari, by a fine young scholar, Vasanthi
Srinivasan. To have chosen Rajaji
as the subject of one's first book was a brave choice. He is a figure now very
much out of fashion, and one hard to make sense of within the procrustean
frames that pass as tools for making sense of our politics: Left and Right,
secular and religious, national and anti-national, liberal and socialist,
conservative and progressive. As we see again and again in the pages of this
book, Rajaji is precisely a figure who defies
insertion into these elegant if misleading pairings. Some will see him as an
economic and political liberal, others as a social conservative, still others
as a cultural cosmopolitan. Yet, as we come to see through Vasanthi
Srinivasan's able placing of Rajaji
in a variety of different contexts-the economic arguments of his time,
religious debates, and the deep question of justice for India's women and dalitshis views and actions demand more complex
characterization. He was by turns, subversive, conservative, and radical.
Through a series of fascinating studies of his writings as well as his
practice, Dr Srinivasan elicits for us the
fundamental coherence of Rajaji's intellect and
action. And she ably shows how, throughout, he sought to be a practitioner of
that classically most prized and elusive of all political virtues prudence,
practical wisdom.
This is a book that
anyone interested in our intellectual and political history will be eagerly
grateful for. It is also a book full of insights, oblique and explicit, about
our current political predicament. In chapters that present Rajaji's
views on the tensions between constitutional rights and majoritarian
democracy, his efforts to balance his advocacy of the market and private
property with a sense of the state's role in securing justice for the most
deprived, his conception of social difference-linguistic, caste, and religious-his
ideas on India's international relations, his views about religion and the
Hindu epics, and also the severe limitations to his understanding of the family
and the rights of women, Dr Srinivasan has written
the first extended study that allows us to see Rajaji
as an intellectual and political thinker.
Rajaji was an intellectual because he sought always to articulate an idea of
an Indian public good. In that task, today, we need all the help we can get,
and, though we are usually forgetful of the fact, we are fortunate in being
heirs to one of the more remarkable set of debates in twentieth-century world
history over what the public good for a nation like India might and could be.
This book is not the last word on Rajaji's often rebarbative complexities. But our hope is that Vasanthi Srinivasan's provocative
text will return Rajaji's voice to current
discussion, and so help build the possibility of a richer conversation about
the ideas through which we want to create our future. We also hope it may
stimulate other such studies of other remarkable, if now mostly forgotten,
figures in our modern political history, such as Gopal
Krishna Gokhale, Y.S. Srinivasa
Sastri, J.B. Kripalani, Ram
Manohar Lohia, and, not
least, Rajaji's long-time friend-cum-political
adversary, E.Y. Ramasami 'Periyar'.
Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, popularly referred to as Rajaji,
is best known for his renderings of the Ramayana and Mahabharata. As the first Indian governor
general, Rajaji commanded much respect for the
simplicity, dignity, and wisdom that he brought to his office. While in power-as the premier of Madras from 1937 to 1939 and as
chief minister of Madras from 1952 to 1954, he was a darling of the
administrators but unpopular among politicians. He was repeatedly
suspected of being opportunistic, inconsistent, and cunning. This did not deter
Rajaji from thinking and speaking about the just and
the unjust, the good and the bad, in the public sphere. He commented on almost
every major political event from 1956 till his death in 1972 in Swarajya (a
news weekly started by his good friend and fearless critic Khasa
Subba Rao), his last piece
calling for a summit meeting between India and Pakistan to further the Simla Accord. Published in four volumes, his articles in Swarajya cover
a wide range of topics, from Congress's socialism and India's foreign policy on
the one hand to contraceptives and classic books on the other. He was always
arguing, persuading, negotiating, cajoling, praising, criticizing, and acting
on behalf of what he thought was the public good and the national interest,
even though some of his views elicited only hostility and derision among his
colleagues and intellectuals of the time.
Drawing
upon his voluminous political writings, this book analyses Rajaji's
views on democracy, free enterprise, the market economy, foreign policy, and
social diversity. It argues that a principled
statesmanship which balanced individual freedom and civic virtues lay at the
root of Rajaji's political vision. Courage and
moderation were the hallmarks of his approach to politics. He reasoned not from
abstract principles but from concrete and particular circumstances about what
is feasible and what might contribute to all-round advantage. At the same time,
he was categorical that expediency cannot be the sole criterion when judging
what is feasible. Foresight in relation to how things will turn out and a firm
commitment to enhancing liberal virtues-such as hard work, liberality, and
abiding by the law-had a critical role to play. Since these virtues were rooted
in ethics and religion, I will delve into his retellings of the Hindu epics and
some Hindu doctrines in order to reveal the 'theocentric
liberalism' that lies at the heart of Rajaji's
political theory and action.
Exploring the revival
of political theory in our time, Dante Germino used
the phrase 'theocentric liberalism' to describe a
liberal vision that recognizes, alongside freedom and justice, the human quest
for transcendence.r He argued that 'the source of
modern liberalism's belief in the dignity of man rests ultimately on
experiencing our being as existing out of the transcendental ground. Far from
introducing new gods or priests, Germino counselled openness to extant myths and symbols of right
order across different traditions. His aim was to demythologize the liberal
dogmas of freedom and progress, to moderate them. Writing against the
background of the Cold War and the arms race, he thought it essential to unmask
these symbols of a developed society as being inadequate in articulating the
final end of the human search for order and well being. Even though Rajaji spoke within a slightly different context, his
overall vision resonates with Germino's notion of theocentric liberalism.
More generally, Rajaji has been both admired and maligned as a conservative;
indeed he often described himself as a conservative. Yet, like his broadly
liberal vision, Rajaji's conservatism too needs
inflection. His arguments for free enterprise and minimal state intervention
were directed at Nehru's statism; they were context-specific
and did not stem from any ideological dogmatic conservatism. Indeed in the
context of the socialist hegemony within which they were articulated, it could
be said they were subversive and radical in their time rather than
conservative. Nor did Rajaji display conservative
sentiments against social or political mobilization by new groups, party
politics, , ethnic and cultural pluralism, economic development, international
trade and co-operation, and nuclear non-proliferation, Theocentric
liberalism, rather than dogmatic conservatism, therefore seems to come closest
as a handy label for the body of political ideas articulated by Rajaji.
While presenting his rheocentric liberal vision, this book aspires also to
provide a taste of the generosity of temperament, imaginativeness, and
principled flexibility that shaped it. Above all, 'since politics is often talk
and political skill requires wit', as Kenneth Minogue
has observed it highlights Rajaji's exceptional
felicity in conveying complex ideas through simple but often memorable similes
and phrases. For instance, when introducing Hindi as an optional subject in
high schools in 1938 while he was premier of the Madras Presidency, Rajaji described it as 'Chutney on a Leaf-to be tasted or
left alone Since his political contributions have been pretty much treated like
chutney on a leaf and left alone by scholars of Indian political thought, it
seems imperative to recover some of that neglected flavour
and assess its position and impact within the larger leaf of ideas about
politics and life in India.
The number of
scholars who have seriously engaged with Rajaji's
work is meagre. Among these, A.R.H. Copley is
noteworthy for having extensively discussed Rajaji's
pre-Independence political career as well as his chief minister ship of Madras
after Independence Copley uncovers Rajaji's mixed
success with the politics of power, communalism, and principle. He argues that Rajaji's unpopular policies and ideas are best understood
in terms of his retreat from a modern, non-casteist
outlook (characteristic of his pre-Independence politics) to a more traditional
and Gandhian emphasis on morality and material self-restraint
anchored in jati dharma (in the post-Independence
period). This shift is said to have resulted in a truncated liberalism that
stressed individual initiative and free enterprise over economic and social
justice. Presenting Rajaji as a conservative who
stressed 'gradualism and efficiency', Copley argues that Rajaji
was inclined to expediency in politics in the interest of public good rather
than of self-interest. Since he confines himself to Rajaji's
premiership of the Madras Presidency during 1937-39 and later his chief rninistership over 1952-34, Copley concludes that Rajaji's 'stubborn, lonely and courageous struggle' against
Congress rule and statist policies must be reassessed in the light of subsequent
developments.
K.T. Narasimhachar illuminates the 'statesman, scholar and sage'
that Rajaji was by charting his friendship with the
Mahatma, his role as Gandhi's 'conscience keeper', his efforts against untouchability and 'drink evil', his independent positions
on Pakistan, Quit India, and Nehru's statism, his
crusade against nuclear arms, his compassion for the poor, and his literary and
philosophical contributions." While being a comprehensive exposition of Rajaji's views, Narasimhachar's
work does not examine them critically. Similarly, B.K. Ahluwalia
and Shashi Ahluwalia focus
on the friendship between Gandhi and Rajaji,
highlighting their mutual affection and respect of Monica Felton provides a
charming profile and conveys Rajaji's energetic efforts
to launch an opposition party and ban nuclear tests." Rajmohan
Gandhi's path breaking biography contains many insights into Rajaji's political skills and courageous actions (that work
has in fact partly inspired my book);'? Joanne Waghorne
explores his style of political leadership as evident in his renderings of the
epics, and argues that he was trying to legitimize the modern Indian state in
the light of the ancient ideal of 'Ram Rajya'. Ramachandra Guha's essays draw
attention to Rajaji's 'statesmanship of
reconciliation'. While the literature cited above contains much merit, the fact
remains that there is no systematic critical analysis of Rajaji's
political vision and statesmanship; the complex and contradictory nature of his
liberal and democratic commitments remains unexplored. The diverse sources that
nourished his political thought and practice, be they Western or Indian
classics, have not been closely examined. And Rajaji's
attempt to anchor liberal citizenship and statesmanship in existing religious
and moral norms and practices has not been probed at all within the grand
Indian debates around secularism.
While exploring all
these aspects, I draw upon some abiding concepts and themes of political
philosophy, especially the notions of practical wisdom or prudence,
statesmanship, and the role of virtue in politics. Admittedly, Rajaji was not a political philosopher in any systematic
sense. Like a great many thinkers within the liberal tradition, his views on
human nature and ideal political order appear spasmodically, via an engagement
with specific issues and situations, rather than within any coherently outlined
philosophy. He had a theoretical bent of mind but espoused no single theory,
quoting Plato, Socrates, Burke, Cicero and other thinkers selectively and for
the purposes at hand. So I do not try to layout the influence of any specific
system of philosophy or any particular philosopher on Rajaji.
Rather, I try to illuminate the coherence underlying his political thought and
practice through some classical as well as certain contemporary writings in
political theory.
Rajaji was more a publicist who dealt with the practical problems of India's
liberal democracy. However, his writings reveal that he understood the
distinctive nature of political activity, related it to a wider social and
economic context, and evolved criteria for judging political institutions and
processes. 13 Whether it was about statist socialism or electoral systems or
political defections or communalism or foreign policy, he balanced his concern
for freedom with a concern for specific civic virtues such as liberality,
industriousness, friendship, and respect for the law. He resisted drastic
remedies, always preferring the lesser evil; for instance, straightforward
adult franchise is in his view better than proportional representation because
the latter is more likely to lead to cliques and instability; many
countervailing oligarchies of diverse interests are better than a single all-powerful
oligarchy of planners or party bosses; inter-party defections are a lesser evil
than a legal ban on all defections because that could restrict freedom, and so
on. Though vilified as opportunistic and inconsistent, such opinions show a man
who was always attentive to the alchemical nature of politics in India, and the
judicious need to adapt sane ideas and moral principles to particular and
changing circumstances.
Practical wisdom
within the political realm has been amplified by, among others, political
philosophers such as Aristotle, Cicero, and Burke, all of whom Rajaji read and admired. Usually, this variety of practical
wisdom is conflated with Machiavellian cunning or villainy or opportunism.
Practical people are admired for not setting their goals too high and
succeeding somehow in what they do. This common sense understanding stems from
the fact that practical wisdom essentially consists in being responsive to
circumstances. Analysing the history of prudence,
Eugene Garver observes that one of the perennial
problems of prudence involves distinguishing such responsiveness from mere
cleverness or plain opportunism so that adaptability and flexibility do not
entail abandoning principles altogether. Aristotle was among the first to
theorize practical wisdom or prudence and distinguish it from the theoretical
sciences on the one hand and the productive arts on the other. The theoretical
sciences investigate realities which are eternal and indestructible.
Metaphysics, mathematics, and physics, which study existence in general and
physical nature in particular, seek to understand the principles underlying
these realities. Prudence, in contrast, is about the variable and the
contingent. While scientific knowledge involves a demonstration from first
principles, prudence involves deliberating on how to act under changing
circumstances. In contrast, the productive arts or techne
concern producing things which fulfill a need: crafts and other arts employ
skills which are oriented to efficient production. Prudence, unlike these, is
oriented to excellent and virtuous actions that have no end outside themselves.
For Aristotle, prudence is a function of character and good actions gain value
from the excellence of the doer, whereas theoretical excellence or technical
virtuosity need not refer to a person's character. Politics and ethics provide
many opportunities for reflecting upon and practising
what Aristotle regarded as prudence, or phronesis.
Focusing specifically
on the reasoning process, Garver argues that
prudential reasoning is halfway between an ethics of principles and an ethics
of consequences. But does halfway mean a compromise between principles and
consequences? Or does prudence involve principles, but of a different kind? Garver distinguishes prudential reasoning from algorithmic
reasoning on the one hand, and heuristic reasoning on the other in algorithmic
reasoning, correct results happen if the specified method is followed. In moral
terms, this means that if an action follows from a good and true principle,
then it is right and good. Kant's categorical imperative,
which says that one must always act in such a way that the maxim of one's
action can be made into a law, is a typical example of an algorithmic rule.
In practice, algorithmic reason ensues in an ethics of conscience and a politics
of conviction. As Max Weber clarified it, the man who pursues an ethics of
absolute principles directs the whole of his political conduct towards the
securing of an ideal without rational calculation of the means. Is the
individual actor is only concerned with the puriry of
intentions. Usually, utopian projects to achieve perfect freedom or justice or
material prosperity or religious salvation qualify as being within this domain.
By contrast, in
heuristic thinking results justify the method; if something works, then it is
good. Everything may be tried at least once to see what works. Conventionally,
this ensues in an ethics and Politics where ends justify the means. This
approach is synonymous with what is usually called Machiavellianism. Certain crude
forms of communism, which affirm the dictatorship of the proletariat, fit this.
More recently, policy sciences which emphasize technical methods for problem-solving
also exemplify this mode of thinking. What is common is an emphasis on the
efficiency of certain means to achieve a goal. What could be halfway between
these? Max Weber argued for an ethic of responsibility wherein the political
actor is aware of the unintended consequences that mark the world of action.
Such an actor governs and justifies his actions not solely by the integrity of
intentions but also by thinking through the probable consequences of his
conduct and actions. He also assesses whether certain ends are desirable or
possible at all. To do this, a person may resort to either empirical facts or
historical data. In addition, such actors may also go a step further and assess
the metaphysical and moral implications involved in affirming certain ideals.
Practical
understanding or phronesis is not completely intuitive or esoteric. Garver
argues that there are rules and methods of prudential reasoning which are
neither algorithmic nor heuristic. For instance, Machiavelli's advice to the
prince to rely on one's own troops rather than mercenaries is a rule of
prudence. Unlike an algorithmic rule, it does not guarantee rightness. Unlike a
heuristic rule, it does not guarantee success either. Or, Socrates' maxim that
an unexamined life is not worth living is similarly best understood as a
prudential rule for it requires adapting to circumstances and does not
guarantee felicity either. Both cases require interpretation and judicious
application and guarantee neither popular success nor abstract rightness: Garver notes that prudential rules do not guarantee
results, nor does their validity arise from their success. And yet they are
indispensable in moral and political contexts in which rightness does not flow
from good principles or success alone. They show that political and moral
reasoning and actions are always open to debate and judgment.
Rajaji articulated many prudential maxims too. Consider his view that 'what we
must keep in mind as an inflexible rule is not to be the first to do the wrong
or dangerous thing. As we will see, he often appealed to a rule about avoiding
extremes and choosing the lesser evil. Following his hero Samuel Johnson, he
urged that one must not resist doing immediate good for fear of a remote evil.
Similarly, his advice to pursue 'not peace at any cost but friendship at any
price' qualifies as a prudential rule. All these rules require judicious
weighing of the possible courses of action in a given context. They are right
not in an abstract sense, but only when attuned to concrete circumstances. And
yet they do not counsel expediency or elevate success; often, being the first
to do the wrong or dangerous thing, such as making a pre-emptive strike or
pursuing peace at any cost, may be a surer route to success; in urging the
opposite, Rajaji displays the Weberian
ethic of responsibility. He was unequivocal in his view that practical wisdom,
while being tuned to changing circumstances, must be grounded and justified in
terms of the public good. As he put it, 'if men were condemned to demonstrate
rigid consistency on what they stand for, through half a entury,
dogmatism would be the rule in public life which would be a reduction and
absurdum.. I venture to confess
and claim that I have an accommodating mind, but one that does not forget truth
or the public weal at any point.
Because practical
wisdom or phronesis involves reasoning about proper means in particular and
contingent contexts of action, it is fine-tuned through the experience of
actually acting in such situations and reflecting upon them. Through repeated
performance and reflection, one becomes skilled at judging the relevant
particulars and figuring out how things will turn out within different courses
of action. The usual expression of this, as Michael Oakeshort
noted, is a normal or customary way of doing things. Even though prudence
appears imprecise or uncertain or only a matter of opinion, it is in fact
knowledge manifest as taste or connoisseurship. Isaiah Berlin puts it
differently when he says that practical reason involves a capacity for
synthesis rather than analysis, for it is knowledge in the sense in which
trainers know their animals or parents their children or conductors their
orchestras, as opposed to that in which chemists know the contents of their
test tubes or mathematicians know the rules that their symbols obey.
As a crucial site of
practical reason, political thought and action in relation to a regime, as well
as in relation to specific laws and policies, require statesmen. Statesmen are
those who combine moral virtue with practical intelligence, experience, and
knowledge of the particular circumstances of their city and people. Aristotle
emphasized the role of statesmen in founding, preserving, and improving a
regime. Burke stressed the more modest task of preserving and improving an
existing one; he argued that the statesman is one who can perform the amazing
feat of being always guided by circumstances while never losing sight of
principles. To be a leader, Weber said similarly, a politician must combine the
opposites of passion and distanced judgment.
Though statesmanship
is not a concept much discussed or popular among contemporary democratic
theorists, it is worth recalling that classical liberal thinkers often admitted
its political necessity. Rousseau, the patron saint of radical democrats, noted
the necessity for legislators and of great men to guide others. Realizing that
statesmanship must be made compatible with democracy; the founding fathers of
America tried to constitutionalize it by creating
legitimate political spaces where it could shine. They also realized that
statesmen must be open, diffused among many, ready to effect compromise, and
patient with democracy to be of utility. Thus, while statesmen may have a
founding role in forging regimes and constitutions, it is their role in
discerning and educating public opinion that is distinctly liberal.
Instead of relying on
superior claims to wisdom or status, they must claim authority through their
merit and effort, work through democratic institutions, and continuously explain
themselves to the people. Whether by discerning the common good lurking in
popular debates or by judging the right course of action in the absence of
complete knowledge, statesmen aid democratic citizenship. Rajaji
explicitly recognized the need for democracy to be guided by statesmen towards
good government. He realized also the need to balance liberty with civic
virtues, courage with moderation, and expediency with forethought when shaping
laws and policies. This is why he argued both for freedom of trade and
trusteeship. While building on self-interest, it was also necessary to
enlighten it. He often hinted that promoting friendship between citizens was as
important as promoting social justice. Indo-Pakistan relations and Kashmir were
only two instances wherein he was far ahead of his contemporaries in discerning
the common good.
But did he always
manage to get the balance right between liberty and virtue, expediency and
foresight, courage and moderation? What do his successes and failures reveal
about the risks and dilemmas of statesmanship in a democracy? Rajaji refused to write an autobiography on the grounds
that 'one cannot help trying to show oneself in a good light'. Comparing
himself to a matchstick, he described his smallness as his strength and argued
that one must realize the insignificance of one's own life in the vastness of
space. But this humility was tempered by the idea that man with his mind and
spirit may be the universe's link to God, and that the 'human species can and
ought to function as if they were the ultimate blossom of the tree of the
universe. This is perhaps why he was drawn to both contemplation and action,
taking religion and politics equally seriously.
Born in 1878 in Thorapalli village, near Hosur,
to Chakravarti Venkatarya,
a Tamil Brahmin Iyengar who was the munsif-a headman who mainly collected land tax and wrote
reports to district officialsRajaji was schooled in Hosur's government school. Though he complained of an
impaired vision, his father refused to buy him spectacles because he believed
no one under forty-five needed glasses. At the age of 11, Rajaji
was packed off to Bangalore's Central College, from where he matriculated at
13. Here he was introduced to English literature by John Guthrie Tait, a Scotsman. He also sought out and befriended Navaratna Rama Rao, a friendship
that would last seventy years. Rajaji later traced
his love of English literature to his teacher and best friend.
After graduating from
Madras University (despite failing in Tamil), he began to study law in 1896 and
passed the Bachelor of Law exam in 1900. In between, he married Alarmelu Mangammal or Manga, a girl of 10 that his mother had chosen for him,
with whom he had five children. He set up practice in Salem and soon gained
repute as a good lawyer. At the time of the Bengal partition, Rajaji went to Calcutta for the 1906 December session of
the Indian National Congress, following this up by going to Surat,
where he was disappointed to see his hero, Tilak,
marginalized. In Salem, Rajaji came to be involved in
social reform efforts, founding the Salem lodge of the Freemasons and
continuing his successful law practice which consisted mostly in defending
small-time criminals. He read Gandhi's Hind Swaraj
and Thoreau's tract on civil disobedience over this period. Moved by news about
Gandhi's wife and sons being arrested for peacefully opposing a racial tax in
South Africa, he reprinted Gandhi's fail Experiences at his own expense. In its
Introduction he ranked Gandhi with the 'avatars', a description that he would
repeat several times afterwards. Joining the Home Rule League in 1916, he began
organizing public meetings and stood for Tilak's
position of conditional support to the war, against Annie Besant's and Gandhi's
unconditional support. He also became the chairman of Salem's Municipal
Council, where he discovered a talent for managing public finances.
His hosting of Gandhi
in 1919 and Gandhi's conceiving of a nationwide satyagraha
against the RowlattActs via a dream that he had in Rajaji's Madras house was the first and most decisive
turning point in what would turn out into a long and eventful political
journey. After organizing a successful Satyagraha in the South in April 1919, Rajaji gave up his law practice and became 'Gandhi's warrior
from the South'-as Rajmohan Gandhi puts it. He
enthusiastically took up the cause of khadi, pushed
for prohibition, and fought against untouchability.
Over his first term in jail in December 1921 (for his participation in
noncooperation), he carried, besides tooth powder, cloves, paper, and a pen, a
brass cup and kooja (water jug), asthma mixture, some bedding and clothes, the
Bible, Shakespeare, Tayumanavar, the Tamil
Mahabharata, R.C.Roy's Mahabharata in English, and Robimon Crusoe.? Apart from catching up with reading and
the Gandhian routine of spinning, he wrestled with
his soul while in jail, trying to purify himself and praying for a vision of
the Supreme One, but found his mind wandering to his deceased wife, and to his
family and friends outside. In his jail diary he observed that even those
convicted of grave moral offences were well-enough behaved and showed little
lewdness of spirit, that the Brahmin cooks in jail were as bad as their
counterparts in the world outside, that eating was the chief event in prison,
and that there was much that could be written about the behavior of flies in
Vellore jail. He also rendered Plato's 'Trial and Death of Socrates' and 'Crito' into Tamil.
After his release he edited-since
Gandhi was still in jail-Young India and spiritedly opposed 'council entry' at
the Gaya Congress in December 1922 against Congressmen like C.R. Das and Motilal Nehru. was here that
Gandhi's secretary called him 'Rajaji', a name that
would stick. After opposing council entry for one more year, he gave up in May
1923, following a compromise that allowed Swarajists
within the Congress to enter councils-'? Following Gandhi's view that those who
opposed council entry must engage in constructive work, he opened an ashram in
a small village near Salem and busied himself with spreading spinning and
prohibition. In 1925 he violated his decision to boycott courts in order to
defend a Harijan devotee who had been convicted
because he had entered a temple in a 'fit of devotion'. In April 1930 he led
the Salt Satyagraha in the South, marching from Trichy
to Vedaranyam on the Tanjore
seaboard. He was arrested there for holding prayer meetings, was released
briefly, and jailed again because he would not agree to a bond specifying
peaceful behavior? He was released in 1931, only to be sent back to jail in
1932 for distributing Satyagraha leaflets. During Gandhi's epic fast against
separate electorates for untouchables, Rajaji played
a crucial role in getting an agreement between Gandhi and B.R. Ambedkar. In June 1933 Rajaji's
younger daughter Lakshmi was married to one of
Gandhi's four sons, Devdas Gandhi, the couple having
had to wait for six years at the Mahatma's behest.
By August 1933 it was
back to jail again for Rajaji. In 1934 he canvassed
for the Congress for the provincial elections and became the premier of Madras
Presidency in 1937. This tenure saw him pushing forth with Hindi and
prohibition, introducing an innovative sales tax, an act to protect tenant-peasants
against zamindars, and a cautious Temple Entry
Indemnity Bill. He also contended with the nonBrahmin
movement and Andhra separatism, prudently though somewhat harshly, In 1939 he resigned due to the British Raj's intransigence
to respond to Congress' demands for Independence in return for wartime
cooperation.
From 1940 he began to
steer away from the Mahatma, striving for a national government in return for a
politically satisfactory declaration at the end of the war. Failing to elicit
'greatness of conduct' from Britain, he joined the Mahatma's civil disobedience
in 1940 and went to jail again, for the sixth time. By 1942 his distance from
the Mahatma became more pronounced in that Rajaji
opposed the Quit India Movement, pressed for a settlement with the Muslim
League, and counselled-given the looming threat of a
Japanese invasion-accepting Stafford Cripps' proposal Even though some Congress
leaders sympathized with his positions, he alienated many more and lost the
confidence of the Congress, especially in Tamil Nadu. But the formula he worked
out for autonomy and plebiscite in Muslim-majority provinces in 1943 was to be
acclaimed for its foresight, though M.A. Jinnah had rejected it.
When Independence
came, Rajaji was reclaimed by Nehru and others for
the governorship of West Bengal in 1947, and then for governor generalship from
1948 till 1950. He then accepted minister ship without a portfolio, became home
minister after Patel's death, and retired to Madras in 1951. In these positions
Rajaji piloted the controversial Press (Objectionable
Matters) Bill in 1951 and extended the Preventive Detention Act. After the
Congress's shaky performance at the elections in Madras, Rajaji
was persuaded to lead the party as chief minister of Madras from 1952 to 1954.
In this tenure he presided over the formation of Andhra Pradesh and launched a
controversial educational scheme that would seal his political career in
office.
Retiring at, he
proceeded relentlessly to criticize Nehru's socialism, resigned from the
Congress Party in 1956, launched the Swatantra Party
in 1959, and canvassed for it in the 1962 and 1967 elections. He roused Tamils
against the imposition of Hindi, campaigned for banning nuclear tests, visited
America to persuade Kennedy in 1962 to ban tests, attacked Indira
Gandhi's socialist opportunism and authoritarianism, and advocated freeing the
economy from the licence permit quota raj for over a
decade. It might appear that with the opening up of the Indian economy and the
erosion of Congress dominance, Rajaji's thought has
become redundant since some of what he envisioned has been realized. But his
many insights about democracy, electoral politics, and foreign policy are far
from outdated, quite apart from being important within any serious historical
understanding of Indian political thought and culture. The tension between
constitutional freedoms and majoritarian democracy
that he addressed is still a live issue. He believed that a robust democracy
must not only draw in new groups but also sustain and deepen the rule of law
and minority rights.
Recalling his views
on India's democracy, the first chapter explores his vision of a healthy
democracy anchored in a vigorous parliament, a strong opposition, vigilant
citizenry, and spirited statesmen. It lays out the political context in which
he launched his critique of one-party democracy represented by the Congress. He
combined boldness and moderation in his proposals to reinvigorate parliament,
build a con-servative party, and make elections more
efficient. His emphasis on the need for statesmanship to guide democracy
towards good government is more problematic and is critically examined here.
What do statesmen do towards this end? What are some of the difficulties
inherent in pursuing statesmanship?
While Rajaji's tirades against the permit licence
raj make him a hero of the nee-liberals, the ethical basis of his economic
views is usually neglected. Through an analysis of his assessments of agrarian
and industrial policies, the second chapter argues that he was no mere
ideologue of private property and free trade but only harkened to prudence in
economic policy. He believed that the profit motive and open competition were
better means for achieving general economic well being than bureaucratic control
and protectionism. Focusing on his economic initiatives, I show that he
combined caution and courage in figuring out the proper role of state
intervention and market forces in varying contexts. While attending to his
abiding concern for the poorest, I probe how he wanted to promote justice
without aggravating conflict and, to the extent possible, by fostering
friendship and liberality between classes.
The third chapter
traces the evolution of Rajaji's views on India's
official language, communal and caste politics, and linguistic reorganization.
It argues that, confronted with the powerful and passionate claims of different
linguistic and religious communities, his practical wisdom counselled
managing differences rather than mastering or suppressing them. He argued that
imposing uniformity is always the greater evil in a multilingual and multi-ethnic
context. He was unequivocal in his view that the tyranny of the majority,
either in the name of religion or language, was unjust. He held that majority
rule can be democratic only when it emerges from 'even mixtures' of majorities
and minorities of different kinds. The task of democratic statesmanship was to
strike a mean between forced homogeneity and separatist diversity. But did he
always succeed in balancing the expediency, fairness, and all-round advantage
that he suggested? Or, as Ambedkar pointed out, was
he magnanimous towards some groups and not others?
The fourth chapter
picks up his bold proposals on Kashmir, IndiaPakistan
relations, and the nuclear test ban, among other issues. It highlights the way
he combined mature patriotism with wise internationalism. His capacity for
independent thinking, willingness to choose the lesser evil, and capacity for
unilateral acts of magnanimity and friendship are very evident in the area of
international relations. Given the outstanding continuity of issues between his
time and ours, did he overestimate the scope for statesmanship in foreign
policy, or is there a deficit of courage and farsightedness in general? One
area in which Rajaji fell short of his own practical
wisdom is the private realm of the family. His positions on contraception,
population control, and the gendered division of labour
are all based on a conservative notion of woman's difference and show that even
the most judicious and fair-minded of statesmen may be in the thrall of sexual
convention and prejudice. He failed to get the balance right between liberty
and virtue in this context.
Chapters six and
seven deal with Rajaji's appeal to Hindu epics and
religion as the main sources of his practical and spiritual wisdom. Translating
the epics into Tamil during moments of political wilderness, he displayed much
wisdom in relation to human emotion and moral virtue. How do the epics educate
us in practical wisdom? How does this education contribute to liberal politics?
Rajaji's openness towards devotional Hinduism sets
him apart from those who were deeply embarrassed by idol worship. He argued
that religion provided the foundation for moral virtues and must be fostered.
But, unlike Gandhi, Rajaji saw religion as providing
only the form, not the content, of practical action. This raises fascinating
questions about whether Rajaji was guilty of an
instrumental view of religion. Was he raising fundamental questions but
retracting from radical answers, as the non-Brahmin Dravida
Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK)
leader C.N. Annadurai alleged? What was the role he
envisaged for religion in energizing politics?
The thematic
treatment of Rajaji's ideas followed within this book
reflects the fact that he repeatedly dealt with many persistent political and
moral issues over a long period of time. Whether it was democracy or decontrol
or Hindi or the formation of linguistic states or India Pakistan relations, his
views matured with experience and reflection. Secondly, though Rajaji quoted select Western thinkers (Cicero, Burke,
Aristotle, Socrates) and authorities (the Bible), when he discussed free
government or private property or moral virtues or human nature he did not
reflect upon or adopt the larger metaphysics or historical assumptions
underlying these sources. His central concern was with the Indian epics and the
Hindu religion; these are what he wrote about most extensively, and they,
rather than any larger systems of philosophy or religion, are therefore the
subject of focus here.
Contents
Series editors preface |
||
Authors preface and acknowledgements |
xiv |
|
Introduction |
1 |
|
My smallness is my strength |
11 |
|
1. |
Guiding
India's 'one footed democracy |
19 |
Democracy and trust |
20 |
|
One-footed democracy? |
25 |
|
Oligarchy: of greater and lesser evils |
32 |
|
Fire bell at midnight: the nuisance of
an opposition |
38 |
|
A brake party: the Swatantra
interlude |
42 |
|
The constitution as a looking glass |
48 |
|
Freedom and virtues |
53 |
|
Nationalize elections |
56 |
|
People must exercise the will to be
free |
59 |
|
Chandramati's invisible jewel? |
63 |
|
Statesmen guiding democracy |
67 |
|
2. |
Freeing
the economy from slogan socialism |
76 |
Beyond slogan socialism |
78 |
|
The licence permit quota raj |
84 |
|
Public interest and private enterprise |
92 |
|
Cordial relations between classes |
99 |
|
Ideas about taxation |
103 |
|
Libido dominandi
and prosperophobia |
111 |
|
Enlightened self interest |
116 |
|
Injustice without appeal? |
120 |
|
3. |
Majorities
and minorities: language and caste politics |
123 |
Hindi as the national language |
124 |
|
Communal identities and separatism |
139 |
|
The tribal idea of linguistic states |
146 |
|
The path of least resistance: caste
reform and the scheduled castes |
156 |
|
4. |
Courage
and foresight in foreign policy |
163 |
Kashmir and the liquid truths of
politics |
164 |
|
Beyond the miserable misanthropy of
Anti-pakistanism |
169 |
|
The road to relations with china |
174 |
|
The west and international relations |
180 |
|
Nuclear weapons and the arms race |
183 |
|
Rajaji as statesman |
186 |
|
5. |
The
eternal urge to dependence? Women and the family |
190 |
On sex distinctions |
191 |
|
The plight of women |
195 |
|
Women: either kerosene lamps or the
morning sun |
199 |
|
6. |
The
epics and practical wisdom |
203 |
The Mahabharata and the Ramayana |
205 |
|
of great and true heroes |
207 |
|
The vanity of human wishes |
209 |
|
The subtleties of dharma |
213 |
|
Women of India will not give up the sita story |
219 |
|
The sanctity of friendship |
222 |
|
7. |
Rajaji's theocentric liberalism |
227 |
Idol worship |
228 |
|
Rajaji, annadurai, and periyar
on everyday Hinduism |
232 |
|
On science and religion |
237 |
|
The gita as
a railway guide |
239 |
|
Morality and religion |
244 |
|
Gandhi's conscience keeper? |
246 |
|
Teocentric liberalism |
249 |
|
Conclusion |
255 |
|
Bibliography |
258 |
|
Index |
271 |
About the Book
Gandhi's conscience keeper hailed by mahatma Gandhi as his conscience
keeper, chakravarti Rajagopalachari (1878-1972;
better known as Rajaji) epitomized the practical
wisdom, religious, tolerance and statesmanship that Gandhi brought to the
nationalist movement. He articulated how Gandhi's ideas and practices could be
reconciled with the needs and aspirations of a modern nation-state. His
political and philosophical positions were argued in a manner, and with an
ideological orientation, strikingly different from that of Jawaharlal Nehru.
And yet rajaji remains virtually unknown today. Vasanthi Srivasan presents Rajaji's vision as that of a theocentric
liberal. She argues that he tried to temper majoritarian
democracy with statesmanship, a free economy with civic virtue, realistic
patriotism with genuine internationalism, and secularism with genuine
internationalism and secularism with a religiosity derived from the Hindu
epics.
Examining his political ideas and actions alongside his literary works,
as well as in relation to statesmen ideologues such as Nehru and Periyar, she shows how Rajaji
steered clear of ideological dogma and charted an ethic of responsibility. This
book will interest general readers as much as scholars of Gandhi, political
theory, and Indian politics.
About the Author
Vasanthi Srinivasan is a reader in
political science at the University of Hyderabad. She has taught at the college
of humanities, Carleton University, Canada. She has been a commonwealth scholar
as well as the recipient of a new India foundation fellowship.
Introduction
Contemporary Indian
politics has come to be thought of exclusively as a domain of colliding
interests, expedient bargaining, and self-serving manipulation. It is, most
certainly, all of these things. It is also, however (and always has been), a
domain of ideas-visions and counter-visions, arguments, values, and even ideals-rooted
in moral and ethical conceptions of the world, and in understandings about how
to act in and through the world. We need only think of some of the central
staging grounds of our politics-the viability of our democracy, the
sustainability (practical and moral) of our economic ambitions, the place of
religion in our public life, our own role in the world today-to see just how
constitutive are ideas to each of these debates.
Yet, we function with
a very narrow, limited conception of our intellectual inheritance: limited both
in our sense of the range of ideas and worldviews which are
in play in our present politics, and limited too in the depth and degree of
detail through which we are willing to explore this inheritance. Not the least
damaging result of this is the deceptive sense of the intellectual aridity of
politics in India. The fact is, our practical public men, though believing
themselves free of intellectual burdens, are more often than not in thrall to
the ideas of the past-and always in ways they don't quite comprehend. We need
an intellectual history of modern Indian politics-and yes, a usable one. As part of that still distant ambition,
much painstaking work will be necessary to recover the political styles, ideas,
and arguments of the past decades.
It is in this context
that we are particularly pleased to be able to publish this remarkably original
study of C. Rajagopalachari, by a fine young scholar, Vasanthi
Srinivasan. To have chosen Rajaji
as the subject of one's first book was a brave choice. He is a figure now very
much out of fashion, and one hard to make sense of within the procrustean
frames that pass as tools for making sense of our politics: Left and Right,
secular and religious, national and anti-national, liberal and socialist,
conservative and progressive. As we see again and again in the pages of this
book, Rajaji is precisely a figure who defies
insertion into these elegant if misleading pairings. Some will see him as an
economic and political liberal, others as a social conservative, still others
as a cultural cosmopolitan. Yet, as we come to see through Vasanthi
Srinivasan's able placing of Rajaji
in a variety of different contexts-the economic arguments of his time,
religious debates, and the deep question of justice for India's women and dalitshis views and actions demand more complex
characterization. He was by turns, subversive, conservative, and radical.
Through a series of fascinating studies of his writings as well as his
practice, Dr Srinivasan elicits for us the
fundamental coherence of Rajaji's intellect and
action. And she ably shows how, throughout, he sought to be a practitioner of
that classically most prized and elusive of all political virtues prudence,
practical wisdom.
This is a book that
anyone interested in our intellectual and political history will be eagerly
grateful for. It is also a book full of insights, oblique and explicit, about
our current political predicament. In chapters that present Rajaji's
views on the tensions between constitutional rights and majoritarian
democracy, his efforts to balance his advocacy of the market and private
property with a sense of the state's role in securing justice for the most
deprived, his conception of social difference-linguistic, caste, and religious-his
ideas on India's international relations, his views about religion and the
Hindu epics, and also the severe limitations to his understanding of the family
and the rights of women, Dr Srinivasan has written
the first extended study that allows us to see Rajaji
as an intellectual and political thinker.
Rajaji was an intellectual because he sought always to articulate an idea of
an Indian public good. In that task, today, we need all the help we can get,
and, though we are usually forgetful of the fact, we are fortunate in being
heirs to one of the more remarkable set of debates in twentieth-century world
history over what the public good for a nation like India might and could be.
This book is not the last word on Rajaji's often rebarbative complexities. But our hope is that Vasanthi Srinivasan's provocative
text will return Rajaji's voice to current
discussion, and so help build the possibility of a richer conversation about
the ideas through which we want to create our future. We also hope it may
stimulate other such studies of other remarkable, if now mostly forgotten,
figures in our modern political history, such as Gopal
Krishna Gokhale, Y.S. Srinivasa
Sastri, J.B. Kripalani, Ram
Manohar Lohia, and, not
least, Rajaji's long-time friend-cum-political
adversary, E.Y. Ramasami 'Periyar'.
Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, popularly referred to as Rajaji,
is best known for his renderings of the Ramayana and Mahabharata. As the first Indian governor
general, Rajaji commanded much respect for the
simplicity, dignity, and wisdom that he brought to his office. While in power-as the premier of Madras from 1937 to 1939 and as
chief minister of Madras from 1952 to 1954, he was a darling of the
administrators but unpopular among politicians. He was repeatedly
suspected of being opportunistic, inconsistent, and cunning. This did not deter
Rajaji from thinking and speaking about the just and
the unjust, the good and the bad, in the public sphere. He commented on almost
every major political event from 1956 till his death in 1972 in Swarajya (a
news weekly started by his good friend and fearless critic Khasa
Subba Rao), his last piece
calling for a summit meeting between India and Pakistan to further the Simla Accord. Published in four volumes, his articles in Swarajya cover
a wide range of topics, from Congress's socialism and India's foreign policy on
the one hand to contraceptives and classic books on the other. He was always
arguing, persuading, negotiating, cajoling, praising, criticizing, and acting
on behalf of what he thought was the public good and the national interest,
even though some of his views elicited only hostility and derision among his
colleagues and intellectuals of the time.
Drawing
upon his voluminous political writings, this book analyses Rajaji's
views on democracy, free enterprise, the market economy, foreign policy, and
social diversity. It argues that a principled
statesmanship which balanced individual freedom and civic virtues lay at the
root of Rajaji's political vision. Courage and
moderation were the hallmarks of his approach to politics. He reasoned not from
abstract principles but from concrete and particular circumstances about what
is feasible and what might contribute to all-round advantage. At the same time,
he was categorical that expediency cannot be the sole criterion when judging
what is feasible. Foresight in relation to how things will turn out and a firm
commitment to enhancing liberal virtues-such as hard work, liberality, and
abiding by the law-had a critical role to play. Since these virtues were rooted
in ethics and religion, I will delve into his retellings of the Hindu epics and
some Hindu doctrines in order to reveal the 'theocentric
liberalism' that lies at the heart of Rajaji's
political theory and action.
Exploring the revival
of political theory in our time, Dante Germino used
the phrase 'theocentric liberalism' to describe a
liberal vision that recognizes, alongside freedom and justice, the human quest
for transcendence.r He argued that 'the source of
modern liberalism's belief in the dignity of man rests ultimately on
experiencing our being as existing out of the transcendental ground. Far from
introducing new gods or priests, Germino counselled openness to extant myths and symbols of right
order across different traditions. His aim was to demythologize the liberal
dogmas of freedom and progress, to moderate them. Writing against the
background of the Cold War and the arms race, he thought it essential to unmask
these symbols of a developed society as being inadequate in articulating the
final end of the human search for order and well being. Even though Rajaji spoke within a slightly different context, his
overall vision resonates with Germino's notion of theocentric liberalism.
More generally, Rajaji has been both admired and maligned as a conservative;
indeed he often described himself as a conservative. Yet, like his broadly
liberal vision, Rajaji's conservatism too needs
inflection. His arguments for free enterprise and minimal state intervention
were directed at Nehru's statism; they were context-specific
and did not stem from any ideological dogmatic conservatism. Indeed in the
context of the socialist hegemony within which they were articulated, it could
be said they were subversive and radical in their time rather than
conservative. Nor did Rajaji display conservative
sentiments against social or political mobilization by new groups, party
politics, , ethnic and cultural pluralism, economic development, international
trade and co-operation, and nuclear non-proliferation, Theocentric
liberalism, rather than dogmatic conservatism, therefore seems to come closest
as a handy label for the body of political ideas articulated by Rajaji.
While presenting his rheocentric liberal vision, this book aspires also to
provide a taste of the generosity of temperament, imaginativeness, and
principled flexibility that shaped it. Above all, 'since politics is often talk
and political skill requires wit', as Kenneth Minogue
has observed it highlights Rajaji's exceptional
felicity in conveying complex ideas through simple but often memorable similes
and phrases. For instance, when introducing Hindi as an optional subject in
high schools in 1938 while he was premier of the Madras Presidency, Rajaji described it as 'Chutney on a Leaf-to be tasted or
left alone Since his political contributions have been pretty much treated like
chutney on a leaf and left alone by scholars of Indian political thought, it
seems imperative to recover some of that neglected flavour
and assess its position and impact within the larger leaf of ideas about
politics and life in India.
The number of
scholars who have seriously engaged with Rajaji's
work is meagre. Among these, A.R.H. Copley is
noteworthy for having extensively discussed Rajaji's
pre-Independence political career as well as his chief minister ship of Madras
after Independence Copley uncovers Rajaji's mixed
success with the politics of power, communalism, and principle. He argues that Rajaji's unpopular policies and ideas are best understood
in terms of his retreat from a modern, non-casteist
outlook (characteristic of his pre-Independence politics) to a more traditional
and Gandhian emphasis on morality and material self-restraint
anchored in jati dharma (in the post-Independence
period). This shift is said to have resulted in a truncated liberalism that
stressed individual initiative and free enterprise over economic and social
justice. Presenting Rajaji as a conservative who
stressed 'gradualism and efficiency', Copley argues that Rajaji
was inclined to expediency in politics in the interest of public good rather
than of self-interest. Since he confines himself to Rajaji's
premiership of the Madras Presidency during 1937-39 and later his chief rninistership over 1952-34, Copley concludes that Rajaji's 'stubborn, lonely and courageous struggle' against
Congress rule and statist policies must be reassessed in the light of subsequent
developments.
K.T. Narasimhachar illuminates the 'statesman, scholar and sage'
that Rajaji was by charting his friendship with the
Mahatma, his role as Gandhi's 'conscience keeper', his efforts against untouchability and 'drink evil', his independent positions
on Pakistan, Quit India, and Nehru's statism, his
crusade against nuclear arms, his compassion for the poor, and his literary and
philosophical contributions." While being a comprehensive exposition of Rajaji's views, Narasimhachar's
work does not examine them critically. Similarly, B.K. Ahluwalia
and Shashi Ahluwalia focus
on the friendship between Gandhi and Rajaji,
highlighting their mutual affection and respect of Monica Felton provides a
charming profile and conveys Rajaji's energetic efforts
to launch an opposition party and ban nuclear tests." Rajmohan
Gandhi's path breaking biography contains many insights into Rajaji's political skills and courageous actions (that work
has in fact partly inspired my book);'? Joanne Waghorne
explores his style of political leadership as evident in his renderings of the
epics, and argues that he was trying to legitimize the modern Indian state in
the light of the ancient ideal of 'Ram Rajya'. Ramachandra Guha's essays draw
attention to Rajaji's 'statesmanship of
reconciliation'. While the literature cited above contains much merit, the fact
remains that there is no systematic critical analysis of Rajaji's
political vision and statesmanship; the complex and contradictory nature of his
liberal and democratic commitments remains unexplored. The diverse sources that
nourished his political thought and practice, be they Western or Indian
classics, have not been closely examined. And Rajaji's
attempt to anchor liberal citizenship and statesmanship in existing religious
and moral norms and practices has not been probed at all within the grand
Indian debates around secularism.
While exploring all
these aspects, I draw upon some abiding concepts and themes of political
philosophy, especially the notions of practical wisdom or prudence,
statesmanship, and the role of virtue in politics. Admittedly, Rajaji was not a political philosopher in any systematic
sense. Like a great many thinkers within the liberal tradition, his views on
human nature and ideal political order appear spasmodically, via an engagement
with specific issues and situations, rather than within any coherently outlined
philosophy. He had a theoretical bent of mind but espoused no single theory,
quoting Plato, Socrates, Burke, Cicero and other thinkers selectively and for
the purposes at hand. So I do not try to layout the influence of any specific
system of philosophy or any particular philosopher on Rajaji.
Rather, I try to illuminate the coherence underlying his political thought and
practice through some classical as well as certain contemporary writings in
political theory.
Rajaji was more a publicist who dealt with the practical problems of India's
liberal democracy. However, his writings reveal that he understood the
distinctive nature of political activity, related it to a wider social and
economic context, and evolved criteria for judging political institutions and
processes. 13 Whether it was about statist socialism or electoral systems or
political defections or communalism or foreign policy, he balanced his concern
for freedom with a concern for specific civic virtues such as liberality,
industriousness, friendship, and respect for the law. He resisted drastic
remedies, always preferring the lesser evil; for instance, straightforward
adult franchise is in his view better than proportional representation because
the latter is more likely to lead to cliques and instability; many
countervailing oligarchies of diverse interests are better than a single all-powerful
oligarchy of planners or party bosses; inter-party defections are a lesser evil
than a legal ban on all defections because that could restrict freedom, and so
on. Though vilified as opportunistic and inconsistent, such opinions show a man
who was always attentive to the alchemical nature of politics in India, and the
judicious need to adapt sane ideas and moral principles to particular and
changing circumstances.
Practical wisdom
within the political realm has been amplified by, among others, political
philosophers such as Aristotle, Cicero, and Burke, all of whom Rajaji read and admired. Usually, this variety of practical
wisdom is conflated with Machiavellian cunning or villainy or opportunism.
Practical people are admired for not setting their goals too high and
succeeding somehow in what they do. This common sense understanding stems from
the fact that practical wisdom essentially consists in being responsive to
circumstances. Analysing the history of prudence,
Eugene Garver observes that one of the perennial
problems of prudence involves distinguishing such responsiveness from mere
cleverness or plain opportunism so that adaptability and flexibility do not
entail abandoning principles altogether. Aristotle was among the first to
theorize practical wisdom or prudence and distinguish it from the theoretical
sciences on the one hand and the productive arts on the other. The theoretical
sciences investigate realities which are eternal and indestructible.
Metaphysics, mathematics, and physics, which study existence in general and
physical nature in particular, seek to understand the principles underlying
these realities. Prudence, in contrast, is about the variable and the
contingent. While scientific knowledge involves a demonstration from first
principles, prudence involves deliberating on how to act under changing
circumstances. In contrast, the productive arts or techne
concern producing things which fulfill a need: crafts and other arts employ
skills which are oriented to efficient production. Prudence, unlike these, is
oriented to excellent and virtuous actions that have no end outside themselves.
For Aristotle, prudence is a function of character and good actions gain value
from the excellence of the doer, whereas theoretical excellence or technical
virtuosity need not refer to a person's character. Politics and ethics provide
many opportunities for reflecting upon and practising
what Aristotle regarded as prudence, or phronesis.
Focusing specifically
on the reasoning process, Garver argues that
prudential reasoning is halfway between an ethics of principles and an ethics
of consequences. But does halfway mean a compromise between principles and
consequences? Or does prudence involve principles, but of a different kind? Garver distinguishes prudential reasoning from algorithmic
reasoning on the one hand, and heuristic reasoning on the other in algorithmic
reasoning, correct results happen if the specified method is followed. In moral
terms, this means that if an action follows from a good and true principle,
then it is right and good. Kant's categorical imperative,
which says that one must always act in such a way that the maxim of one's
action can be made into a law, is a typical example of an algorithmic rule.
In practice, algorithmic reason ensues in an ethics of conscience and a politics
of conviction. As Max Weber clarified it, the man who pursues an ethics of
absolute principles directs the whole of his political conduct towards the
securing of an ideal without rational calculation of the means. Is the
individual actor is only concerned with the puriry of
intentions. Usually, utopian projects to achieve perfect freedom or justice or
material prosperity or religious salvation qualify as being within this domain.
By contrast, in
heuristic thinking results justify the method; if something works, then it is
good. Everything may be tried at least once to see what works. Conventionally,
this ensues in an ethics and Politics where ends justify the means. This
approach is synonymous with what is usually called Machiavellianism. Certain crude
forms of communism, which affirm the dictatorship of the proletariat, fit this.
More recently, policy sciences which emphasize technical methods for problem-solving
also exemplify this mode of thinking. What is common is an emphasis on the
efficiency of certain means to achieve a goal. What could be halfway between
these? Max Weber argued for an ethic of responsibility wherein the political
actor is aware of the unintended consequences that mark the world of action.
Such an actor governs and justifies his actions not solely by the integrity of
intentions but also by thinking through the probable consequences of his
conduct and actions. He also assesses whether certain ends are desirable or
possible at all. To do this, a person may resort to either empirical facts or
historical data. In addition, such actors may also go a step further and assess
the metaphysical and moral implications involved in affirming certain ideals.
Practical
understanding or phronesis is not completely intuitive or esoteric. Garver
argues that there are rules and methods of prudential reasoning which are
neither algorithmic nor heuristic. For instance, Machiavelli's advice to the
prince to rely on one's own troops rather than mercenaries is a rule of
prudence. Unlike an algorithmic rule, it does not guarantee rightness. Unlike a
heuristic rule, it does not guarantee success either. Or, Socrates' maxim that
an unexamined life is not worth living is similarly best understood as a
prudential rule for it requires adapting to circumstances and does not
guarantee felicity either. Both cases require interpretation and judicious
application and guarantee neither popular success nor abstract rightness: Garver notes that prudential rules do not guarantee
results, nor does their validity arise from their success. And yet they are
indispensable in moral and political contexts in which rightness does not flow
from good principles or success alone. They show that political and moral
reasoning and actions are always open to debate and judgment.
Rajaji articulated many prudential maxims too. Consider his view that 'what we
must keep in mind as an inflexible rule is not to be the first to do the wrong
or dangerous thing. As we will see, he often appealed to a rule about avoiding
extremes and choosing the lesser evil. Following his hero Samuel Johnson, he
urged that one must not resist doing immediate good for fear of a remote evil.
Similarly, his advice to pursue 'not peace at any cost but friendship at any
price' qualifies as a prudential rule. All these rules require judicious
weighing of the possible courses of action in a given context. They are right
not in an abstract sense, but only when attuned to concrete circumstances. And
yet they do not counsel expediency or elevate success; often, being the first
to do the wrong or dangerous thing, such as making a pre-emptive strike or
pursuing peace at any cost, may be a surer route to success; in urging the
opposite, Rajaji displays the Weberian
ethic of responsibility. He was unequivocal in his view that practical wisdom,
while being tuned to changing circumstances, must be grounded and justified in
terms of the public good. As he put it, 'if men were condemned to demonstrate
rigid consistency on what they stand for, through half a entury,
dogmatism would be the rule in public life which would be a reduction and
absurdum.. I venture to confess
and claim that I have an accommodating mind, but one that does not forget truth
or the public weal at any point.
Because practical
wisdom or phronesis involves reasoning about proper means in particular and
contingent contexts of action, it is fine-tuned through the experience of
actually acting in such situations and reflecting upon them. Through repeated
performance and reflection, one becomes skilled at judging the relevant
particulars and figuring out how things will turn out within different courses
of action. The usual expression of this, as Michael Oakeshort
noted, is a normal or customary way of doing things. Even though prudence
appears imprecise or uncertain or only a matter of opinion, it is in fact
knowledge manifest as taste or connoisseurship. Isaiah Berlin puts it
differently when he says that practical reason involves a capacity for
synthesis rather than analysis, for it is knowledge in the sense in which
trainers know their animals or parents their children or conductors their
orchestras, as opposed to that in which chemists know the contents of their
test tubes or mathematicians know the rules that their symbols obey.
As a crucial site of
practical reason, political thought and action in relation to a regime, as well
as in relation to specific laws and policies, require statesmen. Statesmen are
those who combine moral virtue with practical intelligence, experience, and
knowledge of the particular circumstances of their city and people. Aristotle
emphasized the role of statesmen in founding, preserving, and improving a
regime. Burke stressed the more modest task of preserving and improving an
existing one; he argued that the statesman is one who can perform the amazing
feat of being always guided by circumstances while never losing sight of
principles. To be a leader, Weber said similarly, a politician must combine the
opposites of passion and distanced judgment.
Though statesmanship
is not a concept much discussed or popular among contemporary democratic
theorists, it is worth recalling that classical liberal thinkers often admitted
its political necessity. Rousseau, the patron saint of radical democrats, noted
the necessity for legislators and of great men to guide others. Realizing that
statesmanship must be made compatible with democracy; the founding fathers of
America tried to constitutionalize it by creating
legitimate political spaces where it could shine. They also realized that
statesmen must be open, diffused among many, ready to effect compromise, and
patient with democracy to be of utility. Thus, while statesmen may have a
founding role in forging regimes and constitutions, it is their role in
discerning and educating public opinion that is distinctly liberal.
Instead of relying on
superior claims to wisdom or status, they must claim authority through their
merit and effort, work through democratic institutions, and continuously explain
themselves to the people. Whether by discerning the common good lurking in
popular debates or by judging the right course of action in the absence of
complete knowledge, statesmen aid democratic citizenship. Rajaji
explicitly recognized the need for democracy to be guided by statesmen towards
good government. He realized also the need to balance liberty with civic
virtues, courage with moderation, and expediency with forethought when shaping
laws and policies. This is why he argued both for freedom of trade and
trusteeship. While building on self-interest, it was also necessary to
enlighten it. He often hinted that promoting friendship between citizens was as
important as promoting social justice. Indo-Pakistan relations and Kashmir were
only two instances wherein he was far ahead of his contemporaries in discerning
the common good.
But did he always
manage to get the balance right between liberty and virtue, expediency and
foresight, courage and moderation? What do his successes and failures reveal
about the risks and dilemmas of statesmanship in a democracy? Rajaji refused to write an autobiography on the grounds
that 'one cannot help trying to show oneself in a good light'. Comparing
himself to a matchstick, he described his smallness as his strength and argued
that one must realize the insignificance of one's own life in the vastness of
space. But this humility was tempered by the idea that man with his mind and
spirit may be the universe's link to God, and that the 'human species can and
ought to function as if they were the ultimate blossom of the tree of the
universe. This is perhaps why he was drawn to both contemplation and action,
taking religion and politics equally seriously.
Born in 1878 in Thorapalli village, near Hosur,
to Chakravarti Venkatarya,
a Tamil Brahmin Iyengar who was the munsif-a headman who mainly collected land tax and wrote
reports to district officialsRajaji was schooled in Hosur's government school. Though he complained of an
impaired vision, his father refused to buy him spectacles because he believed
no one under forty-five needed glasses. At the age of 11, Rajaji
was packed off to Bangalore's Central College, from where he matriculated at
13. Here he was introduced to English literature by John Guthrie Tait, a Scotsman. He also sought out and befriended Navaratna Rama Rao, a friendship
that would last seventy years. Rajaji later traced
his love of English literature to his teacher and best friend.
After graduating from
Madras University (despite failing in Tamil), he began to study law in 1896 and
passed the Bachelor of Law exam in 1900. In between, he married Alarmelu Mangammal or Manga, a girl of 10 that his mother had chosen for him,
with whom he had five children. He set up practice in Salem and soon gained
repute as a good lawyer. At the time of the Bengal partition, Rajaji went to Calcutta for the 1906 December session of
the Indian National Congress, following this up by going to Surat,
where he was disappointed to see his hero, Tilak,
marginalized. In Salem, Rajaji came to be involved in
social reform efforts, founding the Salem lodge of the Freemasons and
continuing his successful law practice which consisted mostly in defending
small-time criminals. He read Gandhi's Hind Swaraj
and Thoreau's tract on civil disobedience over this period. Moved by news about
Gandhi's wife and sons being arrested for peacefully opposing a racial tax in
South Africa, he reprinted Gandhi's fail Experiences at his own expense. In its
Introduction he ranked Gandhi with the 'avatars', a description that he would
repeat several times afterwards. Joining the Home Rule League in 1916, he began
organizing public meetings and stood for Tilak's
position of conditional support to the war, against Annie Besant's and Gandhi's
unconditional support. He also became the chairman of Salem's Municipal
Council, where he discovered a talent for managing public finances.
His hosting of Gandhi
in 1919 and Gandhi's conceiving of a nationwide satyagraha
against the RowlattActs via a dream that he had in Rajaji's Madras house was the first and most decisive
turning point in what would turn out into a long and eventful political
journey. After organizing a successful Satyagraha in the South in April 1919, Rajaji gave up his law practice and became 'Gandhi's warrior
from the South'-as Rajmohan Gandhi puts it. He
enthusiastically took up the cause of khadi, pushed
for prohibition, and fought against untouchability.
Over his first term in jail in December 1921 (for his participation in
noncooperation), he carried, besides tooth powder, cloves, paper, and a pen, a
brass cup and kooja (water jug), asthma mixture, some bedding and clothes, the
Bible, Shakespeare, Tayumanavar, the Tamil
Mahabharata, R.C.Roy's Mahabharata in English, and Robimon Crusoe.? Apart from catching up with reading and
the Gandhian routine of spinning, he wrestled with
his soul while in jail, trying to purify himself and praying for a vision of
the Supreme One, but found his mind wandering to his deceased wife, and to his
family and friends outside. In his jail diary he observed that even those
convicted of grave moral offences were well-enough behaved and showed little
lewdness of spirit, that the Brahmin cooks in jail were as bad as their
counterparts in the world outside, that eating was the chief event in prison,
and that there was much that could be written about the behavior of flies in
Vellore jail. He also rendered Plato's 'Trial and Death of Socrates' and 'Crito' into Tamil.
After his release he edited-since
Gandhi was still in jail-Young India and spiritedly opposed 'council entry' at
the Gaya Congress in December 1922 against Congressmen like C.R. Das and Motilal Nehru. was here that
Gandhi's secretary called him 'Rajaji', a name that
would stick. After opposing council entry for one more year, he gave up in May
1923, following a compromise that allowed Swarajists
within the Congress to enter councils-'? Following Gandhi's view that those who
opposed council entry must engage in constructive work, he opened an ashram in
a small village near Salem and busied himself with spreading spinning and
prohibition. In 1925 he violated his decision to boycott courts in order to
defend a Harijan devotee who had been convicted
because he had entered a temple in a 'fit of devotion'. In April 1930 he led
the Salt Satyagraha in the South, marching from Trichy
to Vedaranyam on the Tanjore
seaboard. He was arrested there for holding prayer meetings, was released
briefly, and jailed again because he would not agree to a bond specifying
peaceful behavior? He was released in 1931, only to be sent back to jail in
1932 for distributing Satyagraha leaflets. During Gandhi's epic fast against
separate electorates for untouchables, Rajaji played
a crucial role in getting an agreement between Gandhi and B.R. Ambedkar. In June 1933 Rajaji's
younger daughter Lakshmi was married to one of
Gandhi's four sons, Devdas Gandhi, the couple having
had to wait for six years at the Mahatma's behest.
By August 1933 it was
back to jail again for Rajaji. In 1934 he canvassed
for the Congress for the provincial elections and became the premier of Madras
Presidency in 1937. This tenure saw him pushing forth with Hindi and
prohibition, introducing an innovative sales tax, an act to protect tenant-peasants
against zamindars, and a cautious Temple Entry
Indemnity Bill. He also contended with the nonBrahmin
movement and Andhra separatism, prudently though somewhat harshly, In 1939 he resigned due to the British Raj's intransigence
to respond to Congress' demands for Independence in return for wartime
cooperation.
From 1940 he began to
steer away from the Mahatma, striving for a national government in return for a
politically satisfactory declaration at the end of the war. Failing to elicit
'greatness of conduct' from Britain, he joined the Mahatma's civil disobedience
in 1940 and went to jail again, for the sixth time. By 1942 his distance from
the Mahatma became more pronounced in that Rajaji
opposed the Quit India Movement, pressed for a settlement with the Muslim
League, and counselled-given the looming threat of a
Japanese invasion-accepting Stafford Cripps' proposal Even though some Congress
leaders sympathized with his positions, he alienated many more and lost the
confidence of the Congress, especially in Tamil Nadu. But the formula he worked
out for autonomy and plebiscite in Muslim-majority provinces in 1943 was to be
acclaimed for its foresight, though M.A. Jinnah had rejected it.
When Independence
came, Rajaji was reclaimed by Nehru and others for
the governorship of West Bengal in 1947, and then for governor generalship from
1948 till 1950. He then accepted minister ship without a portfolio, became home
minister after Patel's death, and retired to Madras in 1951. In these positions
Rajaji piloted the controversial Press (Objectionable
Matters) Bill in 1951 and extended the Preventive Detention Act. After the
Congress's shaky performance at the elections in Madras, Rajaji
was persuaded to lead the party as chief minister of Madras from 1952 to 1954.
In this tenure he presided over the formation of Andhra Pradesh and launched a
controversial educational scheme that would seal his political career in
office.
Retiring at, he
proceeded relentlessly to criticize Nehru's socialism, resigned from the
Congress Party in 1956, launched the Swatantra Party
in 1959, and canvassed for it in the 1962 and 1967 elections. He roused Tamils
against the imposition of Hindi, campaigned for banning nuclear tests, visited
America to persuade Kennedy in 1962 to ban tests, attacked Indira
Gandhi's socialist opportunism and authoritarianism, and advocated freeing the
economy from the licence permit quota raj for over a
decade. It might appear that with the opening up of the Indian economy and the
erosion of Congress dominance, Rajaji's thought has
become redundant since some of what he envisioned has been realized. But his
many insights about democracy, electoral politics, and foreign policy are far
from outdated, quite apart from being important within any serious historical
understanding of Indian political thought and culture. The tension between
constitutional freedoms and majoritarian democracy
that he addressed is still a live issue. He believed that a robust democracy
must not only draw in new groups but also sustain and deepen the rule of law
and minority rights.
Recalling his views
on India's democracy, the first chapter explores his vision of a healthy
democracy anchored in a vigorous parliament, a strong opposition, vigilant
citizenry, and spirited statesmen. It lays out the political context in which
he launched his critique of one-party democracy represented by the Congress. He
combined boldness and moderation in his proposals to reinvigorate parliament,
build a con-servative party, and make elections more
efficient. His emphasis on the need for statesmanship to guide democracy
towards good government is more problematic and is critically examined here.
What do statesmen do towards this end? What are some of the difficulties
inherent in pursuing statesmanship?
While Rajaji's tirades against the permit licence
raj make him a hero of the nee-liberals, the ethical basis of his economic
views is usually neglected. Through an analysis of his assessments of agrarian
and industrial policies, the second chapter argues that he was no mere
ideologue of private property and free trade but only harkened to prudence in
economic policy. He believed that the profit motive and open competition were
better means for achieving general economic well being than bureaucratic control
and protectionism. Focusing on his economic initiatives, I show that he
combined caution and courage in figuring out the proper role of state
intervention and market forces in varying contexts. While attending to his
abiding concern for the poorest, I probe how he wanted to promote justice
without aggravating conflict and, to the extent possible, by fostering
friendship and liberality between classes.
The third chapter
traces the evolution of Rajaji's views on India's
official language, communal and caste politics, and linguistic reorganization.
It argues that, confronted with the powerful and passionate claims of different
linguistic and religious communities, his practical wisdom counselled
managing differences rather than mastering or suppressing them. He argued that
imposing uniformity is always the greater evil in a multilingual and multi-ethnic
context. He was unequivocal in his view that the tyranny of the majority,
either in the name of religion or language, was unjust. He held that majority
rule can be democratic only when it emerges from 'even mixtures' of majorities
and minorities of different kinds. The task of democratic statesmanship was to
strike a mean between forced homogeneity and separatist diversity. But did he
always succeed in balancing the expediency, fairness, and all-round advantage
that he suggested? Or, as Ambedkar pointed out, was
he magnanimous towards some groups and not others?
The fourth chapter
picks up his bold proposals on Kashmir, IndiaPakistan
relations, and the nuclear test ban, among other issues. It highlights the way
he combined mature patriotism with wise internationalism. His capacity for
independent thinking, willingness to choose the lesser evil, and capacity for
unilateral acts of magnanimity and friendship are very evident in the area of
international relations. Given the outstanding continuity of issues between his
time and ours, did he overestimate the scope for statesmanship in foreign
policy, or is there a deficit of courage and farsightedness in general? One
area in which Rajaji fell short of his own practical
wisdom is the private realm of the family. His positions on contraception,
population control, and the gendered division of labour
are all based on a conservative notion of woman's difference and show that even
the most judicious and fair-minded of statesmen may be in the thrall of sexual
convention and prejudice. He failed to get the balance right between liberty
and virtue in this context.
Chapters six and
seven deal with Rajaji's appeal to Hindu epics and
religion as the main sources of his practical and spiritual wisdom. Translating
the epics into Tamil during moments of political wilderness, he displayed much
wisdom in relation to human emotion and moral virtue. How do the epics educate
us in practical wisdom? How does this education contribute to liberal politics?
Rajaji's openness towards devotional Hinduism sets
him apart from those who were deeply embarrassed by idol worship. He argued
that religion provided the foundation for moral virtues and must be fostered.
But, unlike Gandhi, Rajaji saw religion as providing
only the form, not the content, of practical action. This raises fascinating
questions about whether Rajaji was guilty of an
instrumental view of religion. Was he raising fundamental questions but
retracting from radical answers, as the non-Brahmin Dravida
Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK)
leader C.N. Annadurai alleged? What was the role he
envisaged for religion in energizing politics?
The thematic
treatment of Rajaji's ideas followed within this book
reflects the fact that he repeatedly dealt with many persistent political and
moral issues over a long period of time. Whether it was democracy or decontrol
or Hindi or the formation of linguistic states or India Pakistan relations, his
views matured with experience and reflection. Secondly, though Rajaji quoted select Western thinkers (Cicero, Burke,
Aristotle, Socrates) and authorities (the Bible), when he discussed free
government or private property or moral virtues or human nature he did not
reflect upon or adopt the larger metaphysics or historical assumptions
underlying these sources. His central concern was with the Indian epics and the
Hindu religion; these are what he wrote about most extensively, and they,
rather than any larger systems of philosophy or religion, are therefore the
subject of focus here.
Contents
Series editors preface |
||
Authors preface and acknowledgements |
xiv |
|
Introduction |
1 |
|
My smallness is my strength |
11 |
|
1. |
Guiding
India's 'one footed democracy |
19 |
Democracy and trust |
20 |
|
One-footed democracy? |
25 |
|
Oligarchy: of greater and lesser evils |
32 |
|
Fire bell at midnight: the nuisance of
an opposition |
38 |
|
A brake party: the Swatantra
interlude |
42 |
|
The constitution as a looking glass |
48 |
|
Freedom and virtues |
53 |
|
Nationalize elections |
56 |
|
People must exercise the will to be
free |
59 |
|
Chandramati's invisible jewel? |
63 |
|
Statesmen guiding democracy |
67 |
|
2. |
Freeing
the economy from slogan socialism |
76 |
Beyond slogan socialism |
78 |
|
The licence permit quota raj |
84 |
|
Public interest and private enterprise |
92 |
|
Cordial relations between classes |
99 |
|
Ideas about taxation |
103 |
|
Libido dominandi
and prosperophobia |
111 |
|
Enlightened self interest |
116 |
|
Injustice without appeal? |
120 |
|
3. |
Majorities
and minorities: language and caste politics |
123 |
Hindi as the national language |
124 |
|
Communal identities and separatism |
139 |
|
The tribal idea of linguistic states |
146 |
|
The path of least resistance: caste
reform and the scheduled castes |
156 |
|
4. |
Courage
and foresight in foreign policy |
163 |
Kashmir and the liquid truths of
politics |
164 |
|
Beyond the miserable misanthropy of
Anti-pakistanism |
169 |
|
The road to relations with china |
174 |
|
The west and international relations |
180 |
|
Nuclear weapons and the arms race |
183 |
|
Rajaji as statesman |
186 |
|
5. |
The
eternal urge to dependence? Women and the family |
190 |
On sex distinctions |
191 |
|
The plight of women |
195 |
|
Women: either kerosene lamps or the
morning sun |
199 |
|
6. |
The
epics and practical wisdom |
203 |
The Mahabharata and the Ramayana |
205 |
|
of great and true heroes |
207 |
|
The vanity of human wishes |
209 |
|
The subtleties of dharma |
213 |
|
Women of India will not give up the sita story |
219 |
|
The sanctity of friendship |
222 |
|
7. |
Rajaji's theocentric liberalism |
227 |
Idol worship |
228 |
|
Rajaji, annadurai, and periyar
on everyday Hinduism |
232 |
|
On science and religion |
237 |
|
The gita as
a railway guide |
239 |
|
Morality and religion |
244 |
|
Gandhi's conscience keeper? |
246 |
|
Teocentric liberalism |
249 |
|
Conclusion |
255 |
|
Bibliography |
258 |
|
Index |
271 |