THE Congress Working Committee has backed Mr. C.
Rajagopalachari for the Madras premiership. Sometime back, disgusted at the
unscrupulousness of the “clique” against him, C.R. retired from the political
field. It was only under pressing invitation from the Congress President that
he emerged from his retirement and proceeded to Delhi to participate in the
confabulations of Congress leaders there over the selection of a proper person
as Premier. At Delhi, C.R.’s attitude, according to all accounts, was one of
impersonal detachment. He did not put himself forward as a candidate for the
leadership. He wished to be let alone to occupy himself with such service as he
could still render, freed from the atmosphere of controversy in the retirement
of his choice, away from the rough and tumble of political strife. But being a
disciplinarian he did not make his inclination the paramount consideration. It
would appear that he was willing to be persuaded out of his original decision
of leaving the field, not however as a competitor, but as a servant of the
public interest called upon by the Congress High Command to shoulder
responsibility on a critical occasion.
A Desperate Bid
DR. Pattabhi, on the other hand, is reported to have made a
desparate bid for the premiership. The clamour of self-interest never looks so
cheap and ugly as when it is cast against the background of another’s dignified
equanimity. While C.R.’s unaggressive attitude of accommodation to the Congress
High Command’s wishes vulgarized Dr. Pattabhi’s eager suit for personal seizure
of a powerful position, the latter’s unashamed abandonment of the purport of
all his earlier pontifical announcements on the subject would seem to have
exposed him before them in a far from favourable light. What Dr. Pattabhi lost
C.R. must undoubtedly have gained in the esteem of the High Command.
CONFLICTING reports are in circulation about Mr. Prakasam’s
intentions. On his way back to Delhi he broke silence at Bezwada to state he
broke silence to state that the High Command’s direction in support of C.R. was
not mandatory but only recommendatory. The distinction between the two types of
direction may well be overdone. It is no part of statesmanship to carry
authority with subsidiary agencies to the point of exhibiting them in public in
a condition of tendering obedience under disciplinary pressure, with every
vestige of free choice plucked out. The whole force of the direction lies in
its having emanated from a quarter quite competent to give a mandate. The
restraint responsible for the non-assertion of the mandate deserves to be
welcomed for the opportunity it affords to all concerned to act with grace and
voluntary acquiescence in the spirit of the High Command’s wish. Exposition of
the supposed different between mandate and recommendation is therefore not
relevant by way of support for any flouting design. It has its place as a cover
for dignity when a retreat has to be made from doggedly held earlier
viewpoints.
Strange Somersault
The Working Committee’s direction has been the signal for a
strange somersault on the part of many supposed devotees of Congress
discipline. Till the other day they swore by discipline which they exalted to a
very high pinnacle of sacredness. But now that discipline enjoins on them a
course not palatable by urging the election of C.R. to leadership, its votaries
of yesterday are blossoming into incipient rebels to-day. In this situation the
archpriest of disruption is one who already has worked much mischief to the
ruin of peace and harmony in the province and was only recently sternly warned
by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel not to go on monkeying with local politics.
Discipline has thus become not only a blunted tool but a joke in the hands of
the anti-C.R. clique. Another principle against whose supposed violation hands
of horror are piously raised to canvass feeling against C.R. is that of
provincial independence. But its foremost proclaimers in theory to-day are its
greatest violators. Neither C.R. nor any of his supporters has rushed
frantically to and from between Bombay and Madras for the enlistment of
influence from on high for the advancement of personal political ambitions as
these traducers of his leadership have done in recent days. If the principle
were to be honoured in spirit the most active of them all should go packing to
his native desert in Marwar. We cite these arguments not in approbation but for
revelation of their ridiculousness. The Congress has, for over sixty years,
knit all-India affairs into the keeping and direction of a single central
national organization. When persons who owe 99 per cent of their present status
in public life of their present status in public life to the power, influence
and prestige of centrally exerted Congress leadership, put on all on a sudden
the role of champions of separatist integrity, they not only betray pitiable
inconsistency, but rank folly. Slogans like “an Andhra for the premiership”
etc., that are now inscribed on the banners of the anti-C.R. crusaders insult
the whole tradition and outlook of the Congress and sadly illustrate the tragic
fact that into the Congress organizations in the province and the ranks of
Congress legislators many have somehow crept in who have no business to be
there and whose proper moorings are in “Justice” and other similar communalist
political bodies.
WHETHER these words would reach in time the fateful men and
women—in whom rests to-day the power of determining the character of the
Government to be, is doubtful. If for petty personal ends they install in
supreme administrative power anyone not fit, not capable of bearing the burden
adequately, they would be guilty of a grossly unpatriotic act for which they
shall deserve at the bar of history the same fate that has overtaken the
world’s notorious traitors like Laval and Quisling who, fancying themselves
safe in the delusion of temporary power, betrayed at critical moments the
people they professed to serve. Who in his senses can fail to be impressed by
the overwhelming superiority, from every conceivable point of view, of Mr. C.
Rajagopalachari over every one of the rivals standing out in the public arena
to-day daring to dispute with him the right to the premiership? Mr. Prakasam,
though for his age amazingly young physically, has become mentally incoherent.
Of Dr. Pattabhi the less said the better. He cannot start even a small concern
with others’ share capital without planting his nearest relatives in the key
positions. He lacks the impartiality inseparable from political
trustworthiness. With his own utterances he has proved himself to be a
double-faceted being with non-violence reserved for imperialists and violence
held threateningly over the heads of political opponents inside the country.
All other possible candidates forleadership—Kamaraj, Madhava Menon, Gopal
Reddi,--lack apart from other personal disabilities, the knowledge, skill and
experience needed for converting political opportunity into the reality of
administrative power. It is a very grave responsibility at this moment for
anyone to be concerned in any step likely to deprive the province of C.R.’s
services as administrator, and presently it may prove to be an extremely
dangerous one when its after-effects begin to gather momentum in popular
wrath.—(SWATANTRA April 20, 1946) K H A
S A
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