THE scramble for ministerial jobs has
become pronounced since the annouoncement of the result of the elections.
Messrs. Bhaktavatsalam, Kala Venkat Rao, Madhava Menon and Gopala Reddi have
all rushed to Bombay to place their representations before Sardar Vallabhbhai
Patel, the premier-maker. Much hangs on the decision that the Sardar might be
eventually induced to take. There is, in public places, and a good few private
places too, a lot of controversy over the question of intervention from outside
being permitted to determine the shape of things to come inside the province.
Any affectation of attachment to the princip,le of provincial autonomy is now
sheer bunkum. If there had been any real attachment to it, so many Congress
leaders would not be found so ready to rush off to Bombay to court influence in
advancement of their ambitions. Let it be noted that the Bombay journeys are
for no purpose of inter-provincial collaboration. They are just by way of bids
for personal ends.
DEMOCRACY is on everybody’s lips, but
the cause of Democracy is gravely hurt by present goings-on. There is no
inevitability about any of the aspirants found in strenuous intrigue to-day to
work themselves up to the pinnacle of administrative power. They threw
leadership into commission when, on the withdrawal of C.R. from the Congress
Legislature Party, they elected to carry on without electing a successor to
take his place. That was the first fatal blunder of steep descent into the mess
of intrigue, of which we are now reaping the consequences. To make the party a
paradise for small men gambling with big things, they condemned it to a
rudderless existence, avoiding the sensible procedure of allowing the deputy leader
to act as leader.
Rudderless
HAD, at the time of the dissolution of
the Legislature, the party had a leader to boast of, we might have had
responsible direction instead of the play of petty minds, in the conduct of the
elections. The tremendous election victories of the Congress cannot in all
cases be construed as mass approval of the candidates set up by the
parliamentary boards. They represent the easy harvest of hard good work in the
past. Much too easy for any chance of a like result in the future. In Cheyyar,
for example, where there are some 9,000 odd voters, it is reported that a
practically empty ballot box was left at the end of the poll. That means that
people there were disgusted with the candidate foisted on them, but found
themselves helpless in the matter of making their resentment felt within the
boundaries of loyalty to the Congress as a national organization.
Dangerous Myth
IN the present scramble for power a
sort of myth is sought to be maintained that the three linguistic areas of
Andhra, Tamil Nadu and Kerala are being provided due representation in the
Ministry to be set up. It is a dangerous myth. I do not think Andhra Desa will
hail either Kala Venkat Rao or Gopala Reddi as its chosen representative, nor
Tamil Nadu Bhaktavatsalam or even Kamaraj Nadar. In Kerala there are far more
influential persons than Madhava Menon. If a plebiscite were to be taken,
Raghava Menon is likely to leave Madhava far behind. Of those in the running
for ministerial office now, only one can claim the distinction of being a
leader of the people entitled to represent them in the administration in the
area to which he belongs. Tht one, as any tryo can see, is Sri Prakasam.
PRAKASAM is the undoubted leader of
the Andhra. In Tamil Nadu, whatever miracles organizational manipulation might
have wrought for the time being, it would be no exaggeration to say that far
more people—counting people in the mass—are behind C.R. than any other leader
that may be named. At any mass meeting he would be able to carry public opinion
with him as against any challenger. The anti-C.R. controversy has no roots in
the sentiment of the common people who still regard him with esteem, trust and
affection, and with a certain unwavering faith in his rectitude and integrity
such as they have not perhaps given to anyone else in our time.
Sad Handicap
IF Democracy is to be a faithful
reflection of public opinion in the mass, it is Prakasam and C.R. that should
represent Andhra and Tamil Nadu in any popular Ministry truly worth the name to
be set up for the composite province of Madras. If any of them is excluded, the
resulting Ministry would start from birth onwards sadly handicapped by rickettiness.
It would not hold together. It would disintegrate under the strain of
dis-equilibrium between the problems to be faced and the requirements of mass
support for facing them promptly and efficiently. The most courageous spirit
must quail before a proper vision of the ordeals in store for any Government of
the future aspiring to earn the status of being truly popular and democratic
without sanction of the policeman’s baton and the bayonets of the military. The
seething discontents in the land are now held in check by terror of rough
handling by unsympathetic alien rulers in any eventual trial of strength. But
even this check would now seem to have reached the end of its tether. The
restraints of non-violence which, under Gandhiji’s unparalleled influence, have
so far I n practical effect, been actually policing the empire, are found at
last to be crumbling, partly in the uncontrollable anger of the discontented
hungry over existing conditions, partly out of the insurgence of violent
spirits both inside and outside the Congress against the discomforts and
discipline of Satyagrahic tutelage, and largely on account of the reactions
roused by harbourage to profiteering elements afforded by corrupt officials on
the one hand and weak leaders on the other. To the extent to which alien power
is removed, the onrush of violent clamour for immediate relief will be felt by
its successors from many pent-up forces hitherto suppressed with an iron hand
and awakening now for the first time to a sense of their own political power
and importance in making and unmaking Governments.
Rocks Ahead
THE unemployed, the demobilized,
retrenchment-threatened workers in defence of wages, idealists avid for a
better order, panic-mongers enviably elevated to vantage by the already highly publicized
advent of famine, the depressed and the suppressed moved by the temper of the
times to pay back for all they had suffered through the ages on all and sundry,
communalists of various denominations each bent on a new potential of power in
its own favour, sheer rowdies and mischief-makers, the more dangerous of them
masquerading as patriots and revolutionaries, all these will make a bee line
for the houses and offices of Ministers giving them no peace, tormenting them
with impossible demands and threatening them with strikes, picketing, black-flag
demonstrations, civil war, fasts unto death, and what not. Present aspirants
for power may before very long realize that they had been foolhardy and find
themselves in a pitiable plight in which their one urgency might well turn out
to be immediate flight to extricate themselves from the unforeseen consequences
of responsibilities too heavy for them to bear.
Germs Of Disintegration
ALL this has to be said because there is
little evidence in the present scramble for office of any thought being bestowed
on the programmes to be given effect to in the wake of assuming charge. There
is little or no attempt at mobilising talent for administrative tasks on the basis of agreement over ideas. A few intriguers have got hold of a valuable
machinery and are exploiting it without scruple in their own personal
interests, caring for no other criterion for leadership and ministry-making
except loyal service of such interests. This policy carries with it the germs of
its own disintegration. State equilibrium will be restored to the Ministry only
on the day when correspondence is re-established between premiership and
popular leadership. Till then the wearer of the title of Premier will, if it be
Prakasam, have to carry the burden of second-grade lieutenants; if any other,
he will fall into the humiliating position of a puppet with a grand title.—(SWATANTA
April 6, 1946) KHASA.
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