The Shastri effect

I returned to India in the summer of 1965 after four years abroad. Panditji had passed away and Lal Bahadur Shastri was the PM.

I returned to India in the summer of 1965 after four years abroad. Panditji had passed away and Lal Bahadur Shastri was the PM. As I went to cinema quite often, I would see that anytime Shastri appeared in the weekly Newsreel, people would laugh. I was there for only 10 weeks between July and September. By the time I left, the India-Pakistan war had broken out. Shastri8217;s response stunned everyone. He became a popular PM almost overnight.

I recall this episode because there is something very similar between Dr Manmohan Singh and Lal Bahadur Shastri. There is a lot of snobbery in Delhi circles today as there was 40 years ago. Somehow no one thought Shastri was 8216;high class8217; enough to deserve to be PM, not after the towering figure of Panditji. He was so ordinary-looking and so humble! It is all right to feign humility but to be actually humble goes against the Indian Establishment8217;s grain. The Congress dadas8212;Kamraj, Atulya Ghosh, S.K.Patil8212;were much more powerful than the PM. Till he proved them wrong. I often wonder how different Indian history would have been had Shastri not died so soon after his triumph. The Congress may have never split and the Dynasty would not have flourished. But let bygones be bygones.

Manmohan Singh has similar qualities. Many in Delhi including his Cabinet colleagues think he has no right to be PM. A mere babu8212;they mutter and not even a proper IAS8212;how did he get to be above me when he was waiting outside my office with files. I have seen members of Delhi8217;s political class foaming at the mouth with the thought that Manmohan Singh has not only survived the entire term of the UPA government, but actually made it a success. They got even angrier when he proved to be a cunning politician and won the trust vote by managing to steal a dozen votes from the BJP and stitched up an alliance with SP. In their fury, they would not let him make his speech in reply to the debate. They shouted him down because it was not supposed to be like this. An Indian PM, they think, should be a Brahmin six out of 12 if you count Rajiv Gandhi not as half Parsee but as Brahmin or a Raja like V.P. Singh or even a Jat grandee like Charan Singh. Indian snobbery combines caste elitism with a British-inherited supercilious attitude about bureaucrats being beneath the political class, which for centuries was aristocratic.

This is why I believe, despite a stunning record on the economy with its 9 per cent growth rate for three years, success in Kashmir till the recent sabotage over Amarnath, and now finally the spectacular success with the Indo-US deal, Singh does not get what he deserves. It is sheer snobbery. So Advani used non-Parliamentary and indeed impolite language when he called Dr Singh napunsak. It is the sort of abuse you hurl at your cleaner, not at your Prime Minister. Within the Congress, they are muttering about Rahul Gandhi as a possible PM. We know that is inevitable but why bring it up now if not for drawing Singh down a peg or two in his moment of triumph?

I fear it may not help Dr Manmohan Singh if I assert that he may yet prove to be one of India8217;s best Prime Ministers. Given the odds against his ever being a PM, he has performed miracles. Of course Sonia Gandhi has helped by managing the tricky waters of coalition politics. I often think of Harry Truman who succeeded Roosevelt one year after being chosen as his Vice-President and whom no one paid any attention to. He was a mid-western haberdasher unlike the East Coast grandees. They laughed at him and he proved to be an exceptional President.

When history is written, no one would remember the endless wailing about 123 or the small print of the Hyde Act. It will be India8217;s emergence on the global scene as a power legitimately in the G8/G10 club, which will be the lasting result of what Manmohan Singh, along with India8217;s team of diplomats and nuclear experts has achieved. The snobs may cavil but Manmohan Singh has the last laugh.