In the very first issue of Harijan (revived)
Gandhiji paid to C. Rajagopalachari a glowing tribute in these words: “He
(Rajaji) is a great social reformer, never afraid to act according to his
belief. His political wisdom and integrity are beyond question. I was therefore
pained to find a clique against him. It is a clique that evidently counts in
the official Congress in Madras. But the masses are devoted to Rajaji”.
*
* *
Kamaraj Nadar, President of the Tamil Nadu P.C.C., was
evidently piqued by the use of the word “clique” by Gandhiji. He assumed that
it could apply only to him and to his supporters in the Tamil Nadu Congress
Parliamentary Board. On that assumption he resigned from the board but advised
his followers not to follow his example, not to resign, but to act differently,
to remain on the board.
Why a leader, pursuing a line avowedly in the light of a
principle, should think the principle well served by his followers adopting an
exactly contrary line, is puzzling. But that is only a very minor part of the
puzzlement of Kamaraj’s reaction to Gandhiji’s Harijan article.
The Mahatma picks and chooses his words most carefully. It is
noteworthy that nowhere did he breathe a word about the parliamentary board.
The reference that he made was to “the official Congress in Madras.” If
resignation was the proper reply to be made to it by Kamaraj, it should have
been not of the chairmanship of the parliamentary board which is due to come to
an end shortly anyway, but the Presidentship of the P.C.C., the actual
embodiment of “the official Congress in Madras.”
*
* *
Careful study of what Gandhiji wrote makes it clear however
that the clique he had in mind was not the official Congress. It was a body
outside the official Congress, which counted in the official Congress. One
cannot count in oneself. The content of counting is exclusion, separate
existence. The sort of counting in the official Congress attributed by Gandhiji
to the clique concerned is in no way affected by Kamaraj’s resignation from the
parliamentary board, since his resignation makes no change whatsoever in the organizational
structure of the official Congress in Madras, which continues to be the same as
before.
The public is thus confronted with a queer situation. The
President of the Tamil Nadu P.C.C. makes a great furore abouthaving been
heart-struck by Gandhiji’s stricture. But the whole point of it is left uncared
for. An irrelevance is clothed with the portentous robes of a crisis marked
with the label, “Resignation”. The true heart of the matter is not touched at
all.
The true heart of the matter cannot be reached by any process
of continued tenderness to the clique named by Gandhiji. A severance of the
relationship between the clique and the official Congress is alone what would
have met the real point in Gandhiji’s comment, and assuaged the pain confessed
to by him.
*
* *
A leading press magnate is the moving spirit of the clique in
question. There have been, in fact, more than one Press magnate concerned in
publicity operations of an aggressive kind planned for the political undoing of
C.R. Strange stories have been going the rounds, of one having been offered a
ministership and another a Congress ticket, while the most toweringly ambitious
of them all would seem to have been led into thinking that the whole Government
would come into his pocket. Election-eve is a great time for stories not all of
which are credit-worthy and it is generally wise to ignore them. But when their
purport is ratified by advance payment in the form of engineered publicity,
then it would be equally unwise to refrain from taking note of them altogether.
I give below, for what it may be worth, a sample of instructions conceived in
the name of editing as part of the anti-C.R. Press campaign that is still going
on, not wholly. I make bold to state, without the privity of “the official
Congress in Madras.”
(1)
Drop
featuring C.R.’s speeches.
(2) Publish
only very brief reports, regarding C.R. as just an ordinary person “like anyone
of us”.
(3)
Use
prefix “Mr.” before C.R.’s name. Do not call him “Rajaji”.
(4)
Give
greater prominence to activities of Kamaraj Nadar in contrast to C.R.’s
It often happens that journalists and politicians work in
unison. Objective impartiality and scrupulous fairness to all the contending
sides in a controversy are perhaps unattainable to the generality of newspaper
proprietors to whom journalism is a step forward from the stock exchange, a
hectic dividend-earning venture. Taking sides may be objectionable if only
because, even considered as propaganda, it is inexpert, unartistic, ineffective
and eventually not very helpful to the side taken, (as it tends to create more
prejudice than conviction) but it can be condoned as a common frailty natural
to our imperfect human state. But what distinguishes error from offence is
double-dealing.
*
* *
The author of the instructions I have cited above approached
at about the same time a very distinguished citizen of considerable influence
and put before him a suggestion like this: “We all want C.R. But we want him as
the head of a strong Government uniting under his leadership all parties, and
not merely as the partisan chief of one section having continually to struggle
with another for maintaining his position. Unanimity is the thing. Now the
opponents of C.R. are prestige-ridden. They do not want to look small. If their
sense of importance is gratified, they themselves will be willing to make an
overture to re-instal C.R. I want you to use your influence to persuade C.R. to
retire for the time being from the political field so that a little later he
may come back with the support of all parties including those now opposing him.”
*
* *
The right to be in the wrong is not only a form of liberty,
it is also an essential of the process of learning by mistakes, which is by no
means negligible among the various methods of growth. But pursuing
contgradictory ends simultaneously with secretive piecemeal wooing of
dissimilar interests is the mark of the intriguer monkeying with politics
without any regard to public welfare. Collaboration with persons working as a
clique in this manner does not credit to the Congress. It is precisely such
collaboration on the part of the office-bearers in control that is involved
when the clique is said to count in the official Congress.
How inadequate is Kamaraj’s resignation from the
parliamentary board for meeting the situation referred to by Gandhiji in his Harijan article !
Khasa Subba Rau
Swatantra, February 23,
1946
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