The Presidents of the three Provincial Congress Committees
comprised in Madras Province were summoned to Delhi to confer the Congress
President and Sardar Patel over the furiously debated issue as to who should be
the leader of the Congress Legislature Party and became Premier. Mr. C.
Rajagopalachari and Dr. Pattabhi were also invited. Kala Venkata Rao and B.
Gopala Reddi were not invited, butthey seem to have telegraphed that they too
would wish to come. The permission sought was accorded, and was publicized,
with tactful omissions, in a manner most suitable for establishing the
recipients in public esteem as highly important personages for disposing of the
affairs of the province.
MEANWHILE it is understood that the premiership has been
offered—not by the Governor constitutionally empowered to do so, but by the
Tamil Nadu Congress clique of Harijan fame—to, by turns, V.V. Giri and Madhava
Menon. Giri sized up the situation nicely. The motive of the offer, it was
patent, was to exclude Prakasam who had served the purpose of the clique in the
anti-C.R. drive and had now ceased to be of any more use to it. Giri had wits
enough to recollect that the cords of contact with the people were not cut by
the status of premiership. Life continued even if one became premier, ande life
for so premier of a popular ministry could exist in isolation from the people.
He was prudent and realized in time the risks to himself from supplanting
Prakasam.
PRAKASAM is the most popular of Congress leaders in Andhra.
His intellectual contribution to contemporary public affairs has been
negligible. He went through a lot of privations most of which was unnecessary
but was forced on him by his undertaking tasks for which he was not well
fitted, in the period that followed the renunciation by him of a magnificent
practice at the bar in response to the Mahatma’s campaign of triple boycott.
But reason was swamped in sympathy for the trials he endured which was
reinforced by his indefatigable habit of touring. He has visited more villages
in Andhra Desa and knows more people by direct personal contact than any of the
other leaders. He has come to be reckoned as a figure of sacrifice, and is held
in love for it to such an extent that the feeling has become independent of any
need of being supported by his own exertion. He evokes emotion with his mere
presence. Whether this mass reverence will continue if he were to exchange
non-official status for administrative responsibility is doubtful. Perhaps not.
Absence of power saves leaders from the consequences of many shortcomings in
public judgment. But once they pass on to governing, the same judgment will
become less indulgent and more critical.
WHATEVER the future may have in store, for the present
Prakasam is the idol of the Andhra masses. They will not easily forgive the
author of any ousting movement planned for his undoing. Tamil legislators are
outside the range of the anger of the Andhras. But Giri is not located
favourably for escaping it. He was wise therefore in refusing to be tempted
when the crown of party leadership was dangled before him.
NOT so wise as Giri, Dr. Pattabhi and B. Gopala Reddi would
appear to have been blinded by the dazzling prize coveted by their ambition.
The doctor has been angling to be Premier with furtive moves intended to
sabotage Prakasam’s chances, while preserving a protective armour with
statements disclaiming any intention of being in the run. How to plunge from
the commitment of previous announcements into the first overt step of standing
out as a rival to Prakasam is Dr. Pattabhi’s problem at the moment. Should
Delhi cast no obstacles in his path, the public will perhaps be presently told
that under the pressure of entreaty by a large number of legislators he had
been reluctantly compelled to abandon his original intention, may be with a
flourish added that but for his sense of public duty he would not have yielded
to their importunities.
DR. PATTABHI is not popular with people. He has no mass
following of the kind that distinguishes Prakasam. But for the bolstering given to him from
above by the Congress High Command, comparative inconsequence in the political
sphere would have been his lot. When offices are in the offing, aspirants tend
to gather round likely bestowers of prospective patronage, and most of Dr.
Pattabhi’s present adherents are of this stamp. He enjoys a reputation for
being clever and good at making money, a gift which all know did not cease to
find scope even during his periods of duress as a prisoner. But he is not
credited with high public spirit. A certain spinelessness on occasions of peril
is attributed to him by the knowledgeable. He has many enemies and no ardent
devotees. His premiership, should he succeed in his designs, will be rated as a
triumph of intrigue and resented as such. It may lead him to an unenviable
plight that must prove to be the end of his exaggerated reputation.
GOPALA REDDI is a rich man that has used his opportunities
for political climbing with tireless zeal since C.R. picked him for
ministership to the chagrin of many better qualified competitors when he formed
the last Congress Ministry. Reddi’s administrative record was bleak and
undistinguished. His restless and ambitiousness is not conducive to a sense of
proportion, and will not suffice for further elevation even if by any freak of
chance he should get perched there.
MADHAVA MENON seems to have sensed that his destined role in
the scheme of the clique was to play the puppet while they wielded the power.
He may not oblige his patrons by becoming their tool for being passed off as
Premier.
THE invitation to Delhi given to C.R. opens a vista of new
possibilities. Not only was he invited, he was pressed not to decline. Ater the
dead set made by Kamaraj Nadar and company to see C.R. out of his natural
position of leadership, the Congress High Command would not have gone out of
the way to drag him out of his retirement just to treat him to an exhibition of
the installation of his opponents in power. C.R. would not and should not have
been invited if his inviters had not felt convinced of the indispensability of
his leadership in the present state of affairs in the province. The objections
raised against him, with all the airs of fiery revolutionary zest, that he is
moderate and not progressive enough, not sufficiently anti-imperialist, have
been blown to pieces by the unmasked game of his critics who have had no
compunction to throw overboard the only strong man among them with marked
preference for comparative weaklings and second-raters.
NO principles have been in evidence in these feats at
ministry-making that have been brought to an abortive end by the High Command’s
intervention. The only sound basis for democratic rule is that the real leaders
of the people should govern. C.R. in Tamil Nadu and Prakasam and Bulusu
Sambamurthi in Andhra are leaders of the people in a way not given to Pattabhi
or Gopala Reddi or Kala Venkat Rao or Kamaraj or Madhava Menon. While the former
are excluded and remain outside no alternative personnel, no Government
composed of lesser men, can hope to be stable or safe (SWATANTRA April 13,
1946) K H A S A.
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