Remembering Madhavrao Scindia

By Malini Parthasarathy

I grieve at the passing of Madhavrao Scindia. Not just because I have lost a dear personal friend but because as the spontaneous outpouring of grief all over the country testifies, our civil society, increasingly engulfed as it is by the politics of hate and sectarianism, has just been robbed of a truly promising national leader who had the potential to steer India out of the increasing darkness and to recover the receding dreams of a vibrant future. It is not just the Congress party which has been deprived of a political icon who could have been persuasive and modern enough to lure back to it the middle classes who have so eagerly bought the spurious promises peddled by the vendors of sectarian Hindu nationalism. The national political discourse has lost one of the fewer and fewer voices who are committed to preserving the basic pluralism and forward-looking liberalism of the Indian nation state as originally conceived of when India became independent and it was decided to run it as a democratic and secular state.

There were few who had the impeccable credentials of Scindia to lead India. An Oxford-educated modern maharaja who lost his title when democratic India decided to abolish the regime of privy purses and princes, he entered the democratic game with real earnestness, plunging into the politics of the republic with every intention of winning the right to be a people's representative and leader through the ballot box. He wore his historical inheritance very lightly and was in fact amused by the stereotype of `stuffiness' that invariably accompanies impressions of Indian princes. While other former maharajas were inclined to dwell in the yesteryears of the princely era, in their dilapidated and damp palaces, Scindia was reluctant to cling to imagined privileges, preferring to roll up his sleeves and getting to work as a latter day technocrat. He was in fact stung by allusions to his maharaja origins. A decade ago, when a mutual friend had suggested that I meet him as a promising political leader, I had resisted the suggestion, faintly prejudiced against his princely origins, convinced that he was not capable of transacting the serious business of democratic politics and executing a democratic agenda. When I did finally meet him, his first words with a disarming smile: ``So you think I am feudal and therefore you don't want to meet me?'' He never forgot that initial reservation and through the years since, was wont to joke about my having branded him ``feudal''.

But he was also genuinely riled by attempts by his political rivals within the Congress party to edge him out of the leadership reckoning citing his princely origins as a factor militating against his potential to lead a democratic party and country. He believed that he had proven enough that he was a worthy citizen of India's secular republic. Resisting his family's well entrenched ties with the Jan Sangh and the BJP, at the cost of his own personal relationship with his mother and sisters, Scindia's transition to a Congressman was authentic and committed. While he did not believe in wearing his patriotism on his sleeve, nor did he seem at all drawn to the Gandhian traditions in the Congress party, he was instinctively secular and unhesitatingly anchored to the belief that India must have a pluralist polity. It was possibly because of his own instinctive liberal persuasion and Western-style modernity that he had little trouble negotiating ideas such as secularism and human rights. He had no trace of the ambivalence in his attitude that many in the Congress party had towards the politically loaded campaign spearheaded by the Hindutva groups against ``secular governance''. Never did he buy the fallacious argument that has tempted many a non-BJP politician that secularism is tantamount to ``appeasement of the minorities''. In private conversation, he often contested the pejorative associations of the word ``Hindutva'', arguing that it was not the BJP's or the RSS's right to hijack the concept of Hindutva which, he insisted, in its purist sense and semantic substance could not have a political connotation.

Yet it was also true that Scindia shied away from the sharp-edged critiques of the present political crises that are preferred by the Left parties. The reluctance on his part to sharpen arguments to a point that could radically polarise the political space perhaps blunted his capacity to project himself as a leader willing to take risks. But he was perceptive enough to see that unless the Congress party began coordinating closely with the Left parties on the agenda of democracy and secularism, the effort to resist the onslaught of the BJP's majoritarian politics would lose its cutting edge. He went out of his way to cultivate contacts with the Left parties, even as he kept his distance from the sharper edges and tactical consequences of their formulations. In other words, his political efforts had all the potential of injecting fresh life into the Congress party's jaded and cliched agenda and thereby persuading an electorate turned off by the Congress party's stale rhetoric that the Congress was capable of offering a political vision that was forward looking and inclusive rather than revanchist and sectarian.

Despite the harshness of the ground realities in India today where basic rights to food, shelter and security still cannot be taken for granted, the peculiarity of the Indian political system is that the Indian voter has tended to avoid choosing political extremes and radical solutions but has instead preferred to stay with what he or she perceives as the centre of the political spectrum. In this sense, a leader like Madhavrao Scindia could have offered leadership to this country that held the promise of modernity and growth without abandoning this polity's historic moorings in pluralist and inclusive governance. The life of Madhavrao Scindia with all its triumphs and tribulations as he made his arduous journey from being a maharaja to an enthusiastic and committed citizen of the republic, ceaselessly casting his energies into the practice of democratic politics, unswerving in his belief that India's future lay in embracing modernity without jettisoning pluralism and the commitment to address the sharp social and economic inequalities is an inspiring example of democratic India at its best. Farewell and thank you, Madhavrao Scindia.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Opinion
Previous : The milch cow of higher education
Next     : Support is for real?