The path to Race Course Road

If Manmohan Singh sees out the current Parliament, he will be the first person to serve consecutive, uninterrupted terms as Prime Minister since Indira Gandhi. It would be a considerable achievement, even if one has to add the obvious qualifier that Singh has not simultaneously been the leader of his party or of the governing coalition. Yet it is by no means obvious that the Congress/UPA would be more successful, electorally or legislatively, with Sonia Gandhi as PM.

Manmohan Singh is a mild man who, in India at least (the Western media usually depicts him as a wise scholar-statesman), tends to inspire mild opinions ranging from cautious approval to moderate scepticism. Whatever you think of him- and I lean narrowly to the sceptical side- it is evident that he has no viable political future beyond 2014. After that year's election, if not sooner, Singh will retire as PM, for the simple reason of age (he will turn 82 that year; Morarji Desai at 80 is the oldest incoming PM of all time). One of the most fascinating processes of the next few years, then, will be the rat race to succeed him within the Congress (more on this soon, in another post). Thinking of the many prime ministerial hopefuls, however- of whom the present Home Minister is certainly the most openly ambitious- led me to think about the path to the top job that Singh and his predecessors have followed. If one is not a member of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, is it necessary to have been a senior cabinet minister (for instance, in the key portfolios of Finance, Home or External Affairs)? To what extent does India have the notion of a political "career" with incremental promotion?

Let us examine, briefly, the path that each previous Prime Minister took:

1) Jawaharlal Nehru: As the first PM, of course, Nehru did not get to the top on the basis of previous ministerial service. Instead, his rise was based on two main factors: closeness to Gandhi and personal charisma. Clearly, this was not a path future leaders could really hope to emulate.
2) Lal Bahadur Shastri: Shastri, on the other hand, was an exemplar of a successful political "career": a consistent rise through the ranks, culminating in his appointment as Home Minister in 1961. It is worth noting that Shastri's main rival for the top job was Finance Minister Morarji Desai: showing that at the time, a void in leadership was resolved between senior members of the Cabinet, rather than by bringing in someone from outside.
3) Indira Gandhi: Like Shastri, the original Mrs. Gandhi came to power by defeating Desai, although this time in a formal rather than informal contest. It would be easy but misguided to see this as the introduction of dynastic politics to India: if Nehru had truly wanted his daughter to succeed him, he would have installed her as his successor before his death. Indira had never served in a senior Cabinet job, although she had been Congress President and Minister of Information & Broadcasting. Her appointment was a political (mis)calculation by the Congress Syndicate: exploit the personal popularity of Nehru while retaining control of the party. Mrs Gandhi's electoral victories in 1971 and 1980 can be attributed in part to her political skill, but her initial appointment was little more than a historical fluke.
4) Morarji Desai- Desai emerged as the leader of the Janata Party both as a consequence of seniority as well as his symbol as one of the two most prominent opponents of Indira Gandhi (the other being Jayaprakash Narayan). It is inconceivable, however, for Morarji to become PM without his long term as Finance Minister, where he established his reputation.
5) Charan Singh- Charan Singh was Home Minister under Desai- until he brought down Desai's government in late 1979- thus establishing a trend whereby, in a situation where the PM did not have the full command of his party/alliance, the Home Ministry was given to his biggest rival/guarantor (think Devi Lal or LK Advani. Rather than seeing the Home Ministry as Charan Singh's path to the top, it is better to see his position as Home Minister (and Deputy Prime Minister) as a reflection of the power that he already held. The source of his power: his status as India's first mass-successful agrarian politician.
6) Rajiv Gandhi- Till date, Rajiv Gandhi is the only case of a purely dynastic rise to the position of Prime Minister. He entered politics and Parliament less than four years before he took office as PM, and held no posts of any consequence (his only official post was Youth Congress President). Indeed, his most visible political achievement was piddling at best- the organization of the 1982 Asian Games. Unlike in 1966, his appointment was no political calculation, nor was it ever in question. It was merely proof that under Indira Gandhi the dynastic principle had become the Congress' governing one (Indira Gandhi remains the last member of the family to face an electoral challenge to her leadership from within the party).
7) VP Singh- VP Singh, in terms of his path to the top, was Morarji Desai Mark II: a well-known Finance Minister who was forced out of his post, first to the Ministry of Defence and then, as a result of his suspicion of the Bofors scandal, out of the Congress altogether. Like Desai, Singh triumphantly returned to office as the leader of an unwieldy coalition with little in common beyond opposition to the Gandhis and the desire for power. Like Desai, he installed his political guarantor- Devi Lal- as Home Minister and Deputy PM, although Tauji, unlike Charan Singh, had little desire for the top job. Like Desai, Singh lost his majority in less than half a term.
8) Chandra Shekhar- But while Charan Singh stabbed Desai in the back, VP Singh was stabbed in the front- by Chandra Shekhar, surely a competitor for the biggest nonentity ever to become PM (his competition is No. 11 on this list). The "Young Turk" intrigued his way to his life's ambition of becoming Prime Minister: something that was only possible in the Indian political climate of 1990, when all major parties were essentially buying time.
9) PV Narasimha Rao- But for their remarkably different characters (especially in terms of integrity) Rao could be seen as the Andhra Shastri. He had served in three of the four most important Cabinet positions (Home, Defence, External Affairs) and had never sought to challenge Gandhi family leadership. With Sonia Gandhi, like Indira Gandhi in 1964, refusing to challenge for the top job, Rao's long record of service made him the best candidate for promotion.
10) While best-known as the "acceptable" half of the BJP leadership in the 1980s and 1990s, Vajpayee had served Cabinet time as Minister of External Affairs in the first Janata government, which meant that by 1996 he had already been in the frontline of national politics for two decades. Yet Vajpayee's path is distinct from any other PM in that (in partnership with Advani) he came to power by leading a coherent, unified and viable single-party opposition to the Congress: even if the actual government was a coalition, the big three cabinet portfolios were retained by the BJP throughout Vajpayee's six years as PM. A more challenging and impressive path, then, than perhaps any other.
11) HD Deve Gowda- These days it is increasingly common to hear Deve Gowda lament that the fact that he is "not accorded the respect due to a former Prime Minister of the country." This has a lot to do with the fact that the rest of us are still confused as to how Deve Gowda became Prime Minister in the first place. Bigger and more distinguished names- such as Jyoti Basu- did the rounds for United Front PM before the little-known Vokkaliga engineered his way from Hassan to Delhi. Deve Gowda benefited from being the only sitting Janata Dal Chief Minister; experienced observers in Karnataka were shocked that the brazenly corrupt and provincial Gowda was elevated above, for instance, his long-time rival Ramakrishna Hegde. Hegde himself was devastated and never recovered, politically or personally.
12) IK Gujral- Once Information & Broadcasting minister under Mrs Gandhi, the widely respected- in some circles at least- Gujral left the Congress in the 1980s and was Minister of External Affairs in both Janata Dal governments. When Deve Gowda's government was brought down by the capricious Sitaram Kesri, Gujral was installed essentially at Kesri's mercy and brought down less than a year later.
13) Manmohan Singh- If Rajiv Gandhi was the first pure dynast, Manmohan Singh is the first pure loyalist to be appointed PM. To be sure, he has other qualifications- a long career of government service, from the RBI to Finance Secretary to the Planning Commission to, most famously, his excessively lionized, but undoubtedly solid stint as Finance Minister under Narasimha Rao (who himself doesn't usually receive enough credit for economic reforms). When Singh was chosen in 2004, however, it was clearly his loyalty to family and party (which come to the same thing) that was his greatest asset. Because Manmohan had never been a politician per se before 2004, he was reliable and unthreatening. That said, it is likely that without his time as Finance Minister he would not have been a prominent or credible enough figure for the job.

13 prime ministers, then, in just over sixty years. What lessons can we draw from their diverse careers, for the various aspirants of 2014? Here are some general conclusions

1) Unless you are a Gandhi or a "fluke" PM (Chandra Shekhar, Deve Gowda), you are likely to need experience in the key positions of Finance, External Affairs or Home. Every single PM that did not fit one of the above two categories served in one of these cabinet posts.
2) The Congress is a good place to start. Vajpayee is the only Prime Minister to have never been a member of the Indian National Congress, and Deve Gowda the only other to not contest an election on a Congress ticket. With the Congress once again in the ascendancy, it is the only safe place to be for a PM aspirant. If things change: never fear, there is a great tradition of Congress-rebel PMs, comprising Desai, Charan Singh, VP Singh, Chandra Shekhar and Gujral.
3) Unless you are a dynast or the leader of a major party, avoid signalling your intentions years ahead. Desai failed in 1964 and 1966 partly because of his overweening ambition, a quality that later felled Ramakrishna Hegde, Sharad Pawar and Mulayam Singh Yadav, all of whom could have been PMs had they shown more discretion. Conversely, the "accidental" PMs Gowda and Gujral benefited from being seen as non-threatening. The present Home Minister would do well to keep this in mind.

Indian politics changes in such quick and unexpected ways that it is often foolish to make predictions on the basis of past events, no matter how accurate the historical analysis (and getting this right is hard enough). If anything, I will be curious to see the extent to which the process by which the next Prime Minister emerges fits in to past patterns.

Things Have Changed...For the Better

In response to Keshava's post: 'Things Have Changed' (1/9/09)

It is indeed sad that the media and members of the Hindu right are calling for India to launch an Israeli-like strike on Pakistan. Not only are such calls highly irresponsible-(to put it simply, Pakistan is not Gaza), they also betray a shocking admiration for strong arm tactics that are in brazen defiance of international law and basic human morality.

However, to suggest that India should return to a foreign policy that is 'defined by humanity and idealism' and thus 'flawed in the noblest of ways' is a mistake. Indeed, harking back to the past in this case is a mistake on not one but two counts:

Firstly, while the scale of the Israeli action on Gaza is indefensible, but we should not allow this action to disguise the fact that Hamas is not exactly an innocent organization. Military action of any kind, be it the bombing and invasion of Gaza or the rocket attacks on Israel are wrong and must be condemned. Certainly if Hamas had the capability of inflicting more casualties on Israel, they would. However one suspects that the India of the past would not have condemned, or certainly not condemned with equal severity, the actions of both Hamas and Israel. One suspects that the India of old would have taken the line that Hamas is acting as a 'resistance movement, fighting to win back the land of its people'. Such a stand is counter-productive on many counts-it's human nature to cheer the underdog, but the underdog in this case (Hamas) could easily metamorphosise into a repressive regime in its own right, if given the chance. The current governments more guarded response to the conflict must be applauded.

Secondly, I dispute the claim that there was a time 'when the Indian approach to distant global events was defined by humanity and idealism' at all. Indian support for the Palestinian cause may have had some root in genuine sympathy for the Palestinian people, but I believe it originated as a result not of idealism but of self-interest. Indeed I believe that self-interest has been a part of India’s foreign policy towards the Israel-Palestine issue since and indeed before independence. I would argue that India’s support for the Palestinian cause was based on at least two major assumptions:
1) That this support would win over Muslim countries around the world, and particularly in the Arab lands, to Indias side in the UN, the NAM and as a counterweight to Pakistan. Indian support for the Palestinian cause had a lot to do with Indias desire to be a leader of the third world. There are 51 nations with largely Muslim populations, and all of them fell at one time under the banner of the third world.
2) That Indian support for the Palestinian's would win over large portions of the country's own Muslim population. The Hindu right would describe it as appeasement; those in charge of India's foreign policy at the time would view it as a chance to build much needed bridges between an alienated community wondering if it made the right choice to remain in India, and the rest of the country. It doesn’t matter what you call it-in this case, 'appeasement' and 'building bridges' are different names for the same thing. Foreign policy in India has for the longest time been viewed as an extension of domestic policy-one need look back at various events, including Mahatma Gandhi’s unequivocal support for the Khilafat movement (1919), and his decision to define the 'Khilafat wrong' as one of the three central reasons for the launching of the non-cooperation movement, to vindicate this statement. One is forced to question whether Gandhi’s support for the Khilafatis was idealistic-one in fact wonders whether Gandhi personally believed in the Khilafat cause at all. What is certainly true is that he saw the Khilafat movement as an opportunity to include the Muslim community in the wider independence movement. Similarly, one of the reasons for India's support to Palestine was to convince Indian Muslims that India was prepared to stand up for Muslims even in a distant land, and thus reassure them that they were truly safe in India itself.

India’s current stand on the Israel-Palestine issue, which balances a condemnation of the disproportionate use of force by the Israelis as well as the use of violence as a political tool by Hamas on the one hand, and a support for the PLO and a two state solution on the other, is more evolved, responsible and mature than its hypocritical, pedantic past.

Things have changed

The ongoing atrocities in Gaza, and the cloying admiration of Sangh Parivar right-wingers for Israel's military machine (as expressed in the recent New Indian Express front-page headline: "Israel Strikes While India Dithers") led to me recall a time when Indian attitudes to Israelis and Palestinians were radically different to what they are today.

The Indian response to the Jewish Question was led by Gandhi, in a famous article in Harijan in 1938. The Mahatma, while asserting his deep sympathies for the Jews (his disgust at Hitler partly explains his pro-British stance during World War II), took issue with the principles behind Zionism. The Biblical land of Palestine, he contended, was "not a geographical tract"; when other religious groups did not have states based on scriptural promises, why should the Jews? To "partly or wholly" create a Jewish national home in Palestine would be to do a grave injustice to the Arabs. Gandhi asserted that Palestine was as integrally a home to the Arabs as England was to the English and France to the French. Territorial claims and aspirations, he wrote, were to be made on the basis of residence (a literal rather than figurative "home"), not religion.

In the first four decades after independence, the series of Congress governments took their cues on this issue from the Mahatma. On 29 November 1947, India (along with Pakistan) was one of only 13 countries that voted against the UN Partition Plan to create two states and a UN-administered "zone" out of Palestine. India's opposition to the plan was deeply grounded in an opposition to the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine. India, indeed, did not even extend diplomatic recognition to the state of Israel until the early 1990s.

In retrospect, the attitudes of Gandhi and Nehru towards the issue of Palestine were significantly mistaken. By 1947, a third of the population of the region was Jewish, and there were thus territorial claims to a national state that ran deeper than mere textuality. Additionally, the Mahatma gave insufficient consideration to the role that creating a Jewish state would play in redressing the horrors of the Holocaust- after all, Jews had never received humane treatment in Europe, being best treated in, of all places, the Muslim world (prior to the 1920s). Gandhi would, one suspects, have advocated a one-state solution, the creation of an India-type secular state in the region. But I think it is fair to say that since no side was ever acceptable to this idea, it is an unviable one. And in any case, to revisit today the notion that Israel has no right to exist is counterproductive, to say the least.

Nevertheless, the Indian attitude was flawed in the noblest of ways. It showcased a deeply felt concern for the Palestinian Arabs that is a fitting riposte, if any were needed, to the silly claims of those who accuse the founders of the Indian state of being covertly anti-Muslim. Gandhi's distaste for state creation and the dispossession of people on the basis of religion is one that I entirely share. And when the angry middle class and their spokespeople in the media- the irresponsibly shrill Arnab Goswami and Barkha Dutt- demand Israeli-style "retribution"; a demand that is a mere cloak for Islamophobia of the worst kind; it is impossible not to be wistful for a time when the Indian approach to distant global events was defined by humanity and idealism.