Who has been the most admired among the 15 Prime Ministers India has had so far? The answer is a no-brainer. It was Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. As a towering leader of India's freedom movement, and later as the principal architect of modern India, Nehru scaled a height in the hearts of Indians that remains unequalled till today. Notwithstanding the hate-Nehru campaign unleased by some supporters of the Sangh Parivar in recent times, and notwithstanding the mistakes committed by Nehru himself, the mass adulation he commanded in his time is incontestable.

His daughter Indira Gandhi was also widely admired as a strong-willed leader. But that admiration was tinged with fear. Moreover, some of her actions made her the target of strong opposition. Rajiv Gandhi became immensely popular when he became Prime Minister, riding a sympathy wave, in the wake of his mother's tragic assassination. However, he, a good-hearted man and a guileless politician, lost much of his popularity in the wake of the Bofors scandal. His lack of maturity cost him dearly.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee, on whom the Bharat Ratna is conferred today by President Pranab Mukherjee, comes after Nehru as India's most admired Prime Minister. However, his place among former Prime Ministers is unique in many ways. Unlike India and Rajiv, he did not have the advantage of belonging to a "dynasty". His rise in Indian politics was entirely due to his own innate talent, striving, struggle and sacrifice. He became the first genuinely non-Congress leader to win the people's mandate to lead India.

The party he belonged to before the Emergency – Bharatiya Jana Sangh – had only a marginal presence in India, both numerically and geographically. Yet, Vajpayee as the leader of the Jana Sangh was even then a widely admired national leader. In terms of the power of oratory, no other Prime Minister, not even Nehru, comes anywhere close to him. His meetings used to attract huge crowds even in non-Hindi areas. The fact that he is also a top-notch poet contributed to people's adulation for him. He had the rare ability to command the respect of even his political opponents. For example, Anna Durai, who led a powerful anti-Hindi agitation in Tamil Nadu, once said that he would welcome Hindi if the language was as charming as the one spoken by "my friend Vajpayee".

Vajpayee was one of the heroes of the anti-Emergency struggle (1975-77) that restored democracy in India. His short stint as India's External Affairs Minister during the Janata Party's rule was outstanding. The sincere efforts he made to normalize India's relations with Pakistan and China laid the foundation for the subsequent steps in this direction by successive governments. In particular, his move to ease visa restrictions for Indians wanting to travel to Pakistan, and vice versa, endeared him to Indian Muslims and also to many people in Pakistan. This is not what they had expected from a leader who had belonged to what was widely perceived as a "Hindu" party.

These days it has become the favourite pastime of a section of supporters of the Bharatiya Janata Party to malign secularism and to emphasise the "Hindu" identity and agenda of their party. How completely antithetical this is to the worldview of Vajpayee who founded the party in 1980! The disintegration of the Janata Party – partly due to in-fighting by certain power-hungry leaders and partly due to the continued Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) affiliation of erstwhile Jana Sangh members of the Janata Party – had convinced Vajpayee that both he and his newly founded party, BJP, had to move away from the "Hindu-only" image of the Jana Sangh.

It is instructive in this context to remind today's BJP leaders and supporters that Vajpayee wrote a courageous article titled "All responsible for the Janata crisis" in Indian Express on August 2, 1979. Even though he did not hold the RSS responsible for the crisis in the Janata Party, his words of advice for RSS leaders are highly relevant in today's context when a new equation of uncertainty and tension is emerging between RSS and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"… the RSS, claiming to be a social and cultural organisation, should have taken greater pains to demonstrate that they did not seek a political role. Patronising a press that takes sides in the sordid politics of power, involvement in youth bodies that interact with political parties, participating in trade union rivalries such as the one which recently brought enormous misery to the people of Delhi by callously cutting off the water supply – these do not help the RSS to establish its apolitical credentials.

It is possible that some people genuinely feel apprehensive about the RSS. A certain onus accordingly devolved on the RSS, an onus that has not been discharged effectively by the RSS. Its repudiation of the theocratic form of the state was welcome, yet the question could legitimately be asked – why does it not open its doors to non-Hindus?

The other course of action open to the RSS could be to function only as a Hindu religion-cum-social-cultural organisation wedded to the task of eradicating the evils, revitalising it to face the challenges of modern times. The kind of selfless service that the RSS has rendered in times of natural calamities has endeared it even to its critics and has established beyond doubt its capacity for constructive work for ameliorating the suffering of those who are in need of help. Such an organisation will draw support and sustenance from members of various political parties as has been the case with institutions like the Arya Samaj." (Emphasis added.)

At the BJP's founding conference in Mumbai in 1980, the person Vajpayee invited as the chief guest was a Muslim – Mohammed Currim Chagla, the widely respected former justice of the Supreme Court. Chagla predicted in his speech that Vajpayee would someday become India's Prime Minister.

Vajpayee's misgivings about the Ram Janmabhoomi movement launched by the BJP, in close cooperation with other RSS-affiliated organisations, are well known. His brief 13-day stint as Prime Minister in 1996 further convinced him that the BJP needed to mainstream itself as a party wedded to secularism. The result was the formation of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). His performance as a two-term Prime Minister heading the NDA government between 1998 and 2004 helped India become stronger in more ways than one.

According to me, the crowning glory of his Prime Ministership was not that he made India a nuclear weapons power. Nor was it the many landmark development projects he initiated. Rather, it was the sincerity and persistence with which he tried to normalise the situation in Jammu & Kashmir and to normalise India's relations with Pakistan. Despite Pakistan's betrayal in Kargil, he continued in his mission to establish peaceful and good neighbourly ties with Pakistan. He also established a framework for resolution of the border dispute with China. That framework, which has been carried forward by the governments of Dr Manmohan Singh and Modi, promises to yield a fruitful result.

I have no doubt that India's dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir would have been resolved had Vajpayee won a renewed mandate in 2004. The two principal reasons for the BJP's defeat in 2004 were: the communal conflagration in Gujarat in 2002 (which led to Muslim consolidation against the ruling party), and the disillusionment of the hardliners in the Sangh Parivar with Vajpayee.

Paradoxically, neither the BJP's defeat in 2004, and again in 2009, nor the fact that Vajpayee has been completely away from limelight due to his prolonged ill health, has diminished people's admiration for Vajpayee. The reason for this is the fact that here was a leader who always strove to rise above partisan politics, and also above the barriers in India's diverse society, for the larger good of the nation. Here was a leader of honesty and integrity who tried his best to bridge the inevitable contradictions in politics, always remaining faithful to the cause he believed in – the cause that had motivated him to leave the comforts of home in his teens and plunge into the uncertainties of public life.

In the highly, and increasingly competitive and confrontationist arena of Indian democracy, very few leaders have earned the Sanskrit epithet 'Ajaatashatru' – one who has only friends and no foes. Vajpayee is one of them. No wonder the entire nation has applauded the belated conferment of the highest civilian award on him.

Truly, the Bharat Ratna has been given to a Jewel of India.

(The writer was an aide to former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.)

http://www.ndtv.com/opinion/what-made-bharat-ratna-vajpayee-an-extraordinary-leader-750011?pfrom=home-cheatsheet

Like all true Gandhians, Narayan Desai lived a life of simplicity and dedication

Mahatma Gandhi touched the lives of millions when he was alive, and he continues to do so long after departing from this world. But there are few left whom he had physically touched, an experience many have described as a rare privilege in their lives. Last month I met Patil Puttappa (96), an eminent Kannada journalist, who has described this experience in his memoirs as “life-changing”. As a student-volunteer, Puttappa had received the Mahatma’s pat on his back when the latter visited his village in Karnataka. A couple of years ago, Justice Chandrashekhar Dharmadhikari, another 88-year-old Gandhian, recounted a similar experience on a widely appreciated episode of Aamir Khan’s Satyamev Jayate.

Narayanbhai Desai (90), who passed away in his native village, Vedchi, in Gujarat on March 15, had an even closer physical and missionary association with the Mahatma. First, he was the son of Mahadev Desai, Gandhiji’s legendary personal secretary. The Mohan-Mahadev relationship was so special that after the latter’s untimely death on August 15, 1942, during their imprisonment at Aga Khan Palace in Poona in the wake of the Quit India Movement, Gandhiji remarked: “The whole life of Mahadev was a poem of devotion… Remaining the disciple, Mahadev became my guru.” As such, Gandhiji showered his love, affection and attention on young Narayan, who spent his early years in Sabarmati and Sevagram ashrams.

Second, Narayanbhai himself became a widely respected populariser of Gandhiji’s life, philosophy and mission through his performances of “Gandhi Katha”, week-long discourses in Gujarati, Gujarati and English conducted in the traditional Bhagawat Katha style with music and songs. He rendered more than 100 such programmes in India and abroad. In 2011, the Ahmedabad Management Association published the English translation of Gandhi Katha, with a foreword by Rajmohan Gandhi, who writes: “This book is your ticket to a noble age. India then seemed to be the world’s moral leader… No one can take you closer to Gandhi than 86-year-old Narayan Desai. He has lived longer with Gandhi than anyone else living today. He has understood Gandhi better than anyone else. He has an amazing memory. He has a gift for telling stories; he is a poet, too.”

We should be truly grateful to people like Narayanbhai, his father and also Pyarelal (who worked devotedly with Mahadev Desai and later became Gandhiji’s chief personal secretary in the final tumultuous years of the Mahatma’s life) because they were not only first-rate Gandhians but also first-rate scholars and writers. Narayanbhai wrote 40 books, including My Life is My Message, an epic four-volume biography of Mahatma Gandhi, which was ably translated by Tridip Suhrud.

The Fire and the Rose, his biography of his father, is a gem. It holds a mirror to Mahadev Desai’s extraordinary life of service and sacrifice. If the world knows a lot about Gandhiji’s incomparably transparent life, including the smallest details, it is due mainly to Mahadev Desai’s meticulous recordings in his diaries. Again, I take recourse to Rajmohan Gandhi’s brilliant foreword to The Fire and the Rose. “His [Mahadev’s]diaries recorded Gandhi’s doings, conversations, political parleys, ethical dilemmas. Sometimes his articles and briefings interpreted Gandhi’s mind better than Gandhi’s own pen or tongue. Waking up before Gandhi in pre-dawn darkness, and going to sleep long after his Master, Desai lived Gandhi’s day thrice over — first in an attempt to anticipate it, next in spending it alongside Gandhi, and finally in recording it into his diary.”

Like all true Gandhians, Narayanbhai lived a life of utmost simplicity and dedication. And most of it was spent in constructive activities, which were an integral part of Gandhiji’s mission. He was a close associate of Vinoba Bhave in the Bhoodan Movement, and of Jayaprakash Narayan in his Sampoorna Kranti campaign. He called his residence in Vedchi “Sampoorna Kranti Vidyalaya”, where he experimented with Gandhiji’s ideas about “Nai Talim” education. He was also active in the worldwide movement for peace and nuclear disarmament.

In 2013, Narayanbhai invited me to deliver the Kamalnayan Bajaj Memorial Lecture on “Technology and Nonviolence” at Gujarat Vidyapeeth, of which he remained the chancellor until his demise. My lecture at the university (founded by Gandhiji in 1920) was based on the theme of my book, Music of the Spinning Wheel — Mahatma Gandhi’s Manifesto for the Internet Age. Narayanbhai did not sound convinced with my argument that Gandhiji was not opposed to modern science and technology. Nor did he agree with me that tools of the digital era, if guided by the moral philosophy of the spinning wheel, can be helpful in ending the death and destruction man has inflicted on nature as well on members of his own species. Nevertheless, he listened to my views with an open and curious mind.

After the lecture, Narayanbhai’s close aides and I discussed an important project with him — the need to create a digital library of all the available audio and video recordings of his “Gandhi Kathas”, coupled with some fresh recordings to fill the gaps. Unfortunately, this project could not commence because of Narayanbhai’s failing health. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who condoled his death in a tweet, should ask his government to execute this project. The legacy of Narayanbhai and Mahadevbhai is too precious to be lost to posterity due to societal and governmental apathy.

March 17, 2015 

The writer was an aide to former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee

photo courtesy :  Parthiv Shah

http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/mahatmas-storyteller-narayan-desai/

Reflecting on Gandhi's 1931 visit to Rome and the echo of his message in Pope Francis's pronouncements.

Rome, the Eternal City, is still as inviting as ever. But there is a certain new thinking in the air in Italy's capital, born of three factors — prolonged economic recession, political instability and the arrival of a progressive new Pope in the Vatican. I am here to give a talk at the Pontifical Council on Inter-religious Dialogue on my book Music of the Spinning Wheel: Mahatma Gandhi's Manifesto for the Internet Age. I am also participating in an international meeting for peace, whose theme is "The Courage of Hope: Religions and Cultures in Dialogue". It is organised by the Community of Sant'Egidio, a voluntary spiritual organisation dedicated to serving the poor, inter-faith harmony and conflict-resolution, three activities that were close to Gandhi's heart.

Before coming to Italy, I had tweeted about a recent speech by Pope Francis that the whole world is now talking about. I had highlighted the close similarity between Gandhi's rejection of economics without ethics and the Pope's flaying of the current global economic system that has put "an idol called money", and not people, at its heart. Speaking extempore to loud applause from a large crowd of unemployed youth in Sardinia, the Pope — he has quickly earned the reputation of being the Poor Man's Pope — said, "Let us all fight the money idol, against an unfair system without ethics in which money rules everything. To protect this idolatrous system we abandon the weakest, the elderly, those who have nowhere to sleep… Even the young are abandoned and left without dignity."

Safeguarding human dignity is the true teaching of Jesus Christ and Gandhi, and Pope Francis is giving impassioned voice to this philosophy. In his thoughtful speech at the peace conference, Italy's PM Enrico Letta, whose coalition government is sought to be destabilised by Silvio Berlusconi's supporters, touched upon another Gandhian theme — conflict-resolution through dialogue. Back from the UN General Assembly, he said the global community heaved a sigh of relief that America's imminent military strike on Syria had been avoided due to dialogue among major countries at the UN. Describing as "a miracle" the agreement on Syria's elimination of chemical weapons, Letta said the dignity, prestige and usefulness of the UN system has "finally been restored". The audience greeted these words with thunderous clapping.

I say a new thinking is in the air in Italy and elsewhere in Europe because their leading minds are increasingly beginning to see the vacuous nature of the economic and political systems controlling the lives of people, spreading misery and cynicism. They are realising the disastrous consequences of abandoning the ethical and spiritual traditions of Europe and the world. In the new Pope's unconventional pronouncements, they are finding an amplification of their own desire to see religion in a fresh light — not in the discredited old practice of one faith proclaiming its superiority and exclusivity, but in a new eagerness to respect and learn from all faiths.

These hope-giving sights and sounds in Rome make me recall Gandhi's historic visit to Italy in December 1931, on his way back from the failed Second Roundtable Conference in London. The Mahatma knew the London roundtable was doomed to fail, but his real purpose of undertaking an extended journey to Europe was to broadcast his message of truth (by which he meant recovery of the true essence of religion), non violence, universal brotherhood and a fundamental change in international economic and political systems to ensure human dignity and justice for all. Against the advice of many, he went to meet Benito Mussolini because of his conviction that the pursuit of peace through principled dialogue — especially at a time when the dark clouds of a new world war were hovering — could not exclude anybody, not even dictators and tyrants.

The highlight of the Mahatma's visit to Italy was his pilgrimage to the Vatican. Shockingly, the Pope refused to meet him, an indication of how far the church had moved away from the essential message of Christianity. The outward grandeur of the Vatican didn't impress Gandhi much. But he was spellbound by a particular statue of Christ on the cross above the altar of the Sistine Chapel. The profound effect it had on the Mahatma was later described by Mirabehn: "He remained perfectly silent, as if still in contemplation. He then said, 'So deep an impression did that crucifix make on me that it stands out all alone in my mind, and I remember nothing else of my visit to the Vatican.'" Was the Mahatma having a premonition of his own martyrdom 17 years later when he stood in front of the statue?

The Vatican press at the time scorned Gandhi's visit. However, in 1986, John Paul II visited Raj Ghat in Delhi, and said, "Today, as a pilgrim of peace, I have come here to pay homage to Mahatma Gandhi, hero of humanity. The figure of Gandhi and the meaning of his life's work have penetrated the consciousness of mankind."

There is a beautiful description of Gandhi's visit to Italy by Maria Montessori, the talian educationist whom he greatly admired. "His [Gandhi's] spirit is like a great energy that has the power of uniting men because it effects some inner sensitivity and draws them together. This mysterious and marvellous energy is called love. I felt this very deeply when Gandhi paid a visit to Europe and stayed a few days in Rome on his homeward voyage. During his stay in his honour, and while he sat on the floor and spun, children sat around him, serene and silent. And all the adults who attended this unforgettable reception were silent and still. It was enough to be together, there was no need of speeches.We must think about this spiritual attraction, it is the force that can save humanity, for we must learn to feel this attraction to each other, instead of being merely bound by material interests."

I can feel the presence of Gandhi's mysterious power here in Rome, as we at the inter-faith peace conference discuss the mighty challenges facing our world.

Wed Oct 02 2013 : http://www.indianexpress.com/news/why-gandhi-resonates-in-rome/1177140/0