Anna

Title: Anna – The Life and Times of C N Annadurai

Author: R Kannan

Publisher: Penguin Viking, 2010 (First)

ISBN: 9780670083282

Pages: 423

The state of Tamil Nadu exhibited a deviant streak of local nationalism right from the days of the independent struggle. Emancipation of the non-Brahmin castes took place early in this state, which in turn manifested itself in violent anti-Brahminism and opposition to the Congress party which led the freedom agitation from the forefront but was a monopoly of the Brahmins. The anti-Congress front was managed by E V Ramaswamy Naicker who attracted the cream of non-Brahmin Tamil youth. Conjeevaram Natarajan Annadurai (1909 – 1969) was the most prominent among them. Breaking up from his guru on ideological niceties, Annadurai (popularly known as Anna, elder brother in Tamil) enlarged his Dravida movement by relentless propaganda through plays, movies and speeches. Eventually, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK, Dravida Advancement Party) won power in Tamil Nadu in 1967 and Anna became its chief minister. He died of cancer two years later and his funeral was attended by the largest crowd in the world in recorded history. This was because of his exemplary qualities as an honest and perfect gentleman in politics and the image of an elder brother of the masses. Born in an intermediate caste of weavers, he always displayed the humility inherent in an ordinary man. He was also a wizard of letters. Anna’s speeches dazzled listeners for their kaleidoscopic alliterations, metaphors and unorthodox syntaxes as also for their content. Such was his appeal that on occasion tickets were sold for his speeches. This book is the biography of Annadurai as told by R Kannan, who is an eminent scholar of law. He has also served in various capacities with the UN, including as head of civil affairs in Cyprus.

This book presents the background for the rise of non-Brahmin ideology in Tamil Nadu. Christian missionaries had harped on the Dravidian identity and deftly manipulated it to widen the caste-fissures in Hindu society. Justice party was born from non-Brahmin association and it supported the British, even in 1919 when the Jallianwala Bagh massacre took place. However, this shameless allegiance brought it indelible shame and dishonor. In the 1940s, when it became evident that the British would eventually leave India, the Justice party started criticizing them. EVR Naicker transformed the Justice party into an apolitical Dravidar Kazhagam (DK). But when Naicker decided to marry his maid who was so young to be his granddaughter and to make her his heir to the Kazhagam, Anna and others split and formed the DMK. This was a political organization that fought and won elections.

The unmistakably racist bend of Dravida politics provide a chillingly prescient comparison to the Nazis of Germany. Even the gentle Anna declared that ‘Tamils should have art that instills the Tamil code, Tamil ways, morality, bravery, chastity and love; not one that lauds another race (italics mine) and grants it dominance and makes Tamils feel inferior about their race. Such stories should be consigned to the fire’ (p.64). This was in reference to the Ramayana and other Hindu epics. EVR planned to constitute a volunteer corps in 1945 to serve at party meetings. Taking motivation from the Nazi paramilitary wing, he wanted to christen it the Blackshirts. And this was so soon after Hitler’s defeat in the World War.

Another crucial aspect of the Dravida movement that is given prime focus is the anti-national mentality of most of its leaders. EVR’s Dravidar Kazhagam termed India’s first independence day on 15 August 1947 as ‘a day of mourning’ (p.114). The book includes correspondence between EVR and Muhammal Ali Jinnah asking help from the latter to voice the demand for a separate Dravidastan, but Jinnah, sensing lack of popular support for the idea, tried to dissociate from it. EVR described political freedom from the British in 1947 as a ‘British-Bania-Brahmin contract’. Even though Anna himself craved for Dravida Nadu, he characterized the Independence Day as a ‘day of joy’. But when the Republic Day arrived on 26 January 1950, he found it ‘a day of dissatisfaction, bitterness and condemnation’. However, the DMK slackened when it became abundantly clear that the Indian republic wound not countenance separatism. EVR then compared Dravida Nadu to an onion amounting to nothing when peeled right down to the core. After the 1956 states reorganization, the DMK was convinced of the total absence of support from the other south Indian states and the demand died out. Anna had insisted for the grant of Dravida Nadu in the Rajya Sabha, but the Nehru government proscribed any secessionist advocacy in 1963 by a constitutional amendment. DMK meekly gave in to this and chose to be content with renaming the state from Madras to Tamil Nadu. Thoughtless policies of the Congress which mandated the use of Hindi in non-Hindi speaking states resulted in a wave of violent protest across Tamil Nadu many times and the self-restraint still exhibited by northern politicians on this issue was largely due to the agitation by the DMK.

Kannan brings out the personal qualities of Anna. He rose from a humble background and led a simple life till the end. The party workers venerated him as an elder brother. His literary skills helped the party strike roots in Tamil Nadu. The author claims that he probably thought in English which when transformed into Tamil were refreshingly new and captivating. His formulations were limpid, diction new, style evocative and delivery smooth. However, the party depended too much on movies. Anna’s movie scripts contained radical, social reformist messages. Before him, Tamil cinema was in thrall of a formula which depended largely on epics, legends and myths, leaving little room for social consciousness or creativity (p.128). As time went on, other leaders found the prominence of movie stars a cause for concern. This caused much heartburn among career politicians. Even gifted speakers had to yield to the stars in public meetings. Anna encouraged it and didn’t wish to tinker with what had become a successful formula. Even after half a century later, matinee idols still control politics in the state.

The author also sheds light on the deep factionalism of the overzealous acolytes of Anna such as Kalaignar Karunanidhi who wanted to get hold of the party after Anna. In fact, the machinations had started even as the great leader lay dying in the hospital. During his life time too, complacence among the party workers had led to Anna’s defeat in the 1962 assembly elections. The man who defeated him was the owner of a bus company who would not speak even once in the assembly.

The book is easy to read, but is having an awful structure. It is fundamentally a history of the Dravida movement paraphrased with brief episodes from Anna’s life. An incident during the last days of Anna is worth mentioning here. Anna was admitted in a critical condition in a Chennai hospital and a doctor had arrived from abroad to perform a surgery which was considered very risky. Anna asked the doctor whether he was going to operate on him the next day. The doctor said yes but Anna implored him to do it on the day after. The doctor asked in surprise whether he was looking for an auspicious day as Anna was well known to be a committed rationalist. Anna vehemently denied it and said that he was midway through a book which will be completed only on the next day and that it did not matter what happened thereafter. It is difficult to come across such gem of a bibliophile among India’s politicians.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Nehru – A Troubled Legacy

Title: Nehru – A Troubled Legacy

Author: RNP Singh

Publisher: Wisdom Tree, 2015 (First)

ISBN: 9788183284424

Pages: 335

Mahatma Gandhi led the Indian struggle for freedom from the British yoke. The nation stood solidly behind him. Thousands sacrificed all that they had – their wealth, career and personal life – to heed Gandhi’s call for national action against the occupying foreigner. As time progressed, it became evident to shrewd political observers that Britain would eventually relinquish power. It was more a question of when than if. The Congress party suddenly became a stepping stone to power and riches. Motilal Nehru was a super-rich lawyer in Allahabad who had scant regard for the Satyagraha mode of nonviolent protest. However, sensing a good opportunity for his family, he joined Congress and persuaded Gandhi to make Jawaharlal Nehru, his son with a failed legal career, the Congress president in 1929. Motilal was the incumbent president of the party and his dynastic ambitions were clearly visible to all in his attempt to hand over the position to his son. This catapulted Jawaharlal into a high-profile career. But the ordinary party workers were not with him due to his elitist life style and company. The crucial moment came about in 1946. By influencing Gandhi once again, he wiggled himself into the party president’s chair once more, and assumed prime ministership once the country became independent. Most of the Congress stalwarts were much older than Nehru and in the first decade of freedom, all of them passed away, leaving the stage open for Nehru and his dynasty. They took control of the Congress party which is still laboring under the family’s thumb. This book is a logical assessment of Nehru’s performance and assigns his failure to his greed for autocratic hold on both the government and the party, his own ideas of implementation of socialism, lack of understanding and appreciation of the poor man’s requirements and of rural India. RNP Singh is a noted political writer who had served earlier in the Intelligence Bureau. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Vivekananda International Foundation, a think tank, in New Delhi.

Singh provides a saddening narrative on how Nehru turned the Congress party into his personal fief. This should be an eye-opener for the naïve who are still taken in by the party and old Congress governments’ propaganda that Nehru laid the foundation stone of democracy. This book tells how Nehru emasculated a series of party presidents to ensure his unopposed dominance in the party machine. When Nehru became prime minister, J B Kripalani was the Congress president and he resigned in November 1947, frustrated at Nehru not consulting or even informing him about important government policy decisions. Nehru brought in Pattabhi Sitaramayya next, who did not assert or even ask for equality and confined the functions of the party president only to organizational matters. P D Tandon came next in 1950 with Patel’s support, but Patel died soon in December 1950. In the beginning, Tandon tried to function independently and did not pay enough regard to Nehru’s concerns in party affairs. But Nehru intervened wherever possible and threatened to withdraw from the Working Committee if it was not reconstituted to suit his taste. Tandon resigned in disgust in 1951 upon which Nehru himself assumed the party’s presidency. Three years later, he nominated his loyal crony U N Dhebar for the post who kept the chair warm for his daughter Indira to become president in 1959. He filled important positions with the second generation of Congressmen who were not distinguished enough to question him. The new line of Congress presidents readily accepted their subordinate position. At the same time, he was determined that none of the state chief ministers emulate his modus operandi and become powerful. He wanted to deny them the opportunity to build themselves up into powerful potentates who could challenge Nehru. Congress passed a resolution forbidding state chief ministers from holding office in the state Congress committees. Sanjiva Reddy, the Congress president from 1960 to 1963, publicly remarked that as the party president, he was treated as ‘Mrs. Gandhi’s chaprasi (office boy)’ (p.24). Singh claims that what Nehru was after was not personal supremacy, but dynastic dominance.

The book exhibits some of Nehru's personality traits, most notably hypocrisy. While deftly pulling the strings for Indira’s elevation, he expressed ‘surprise’ in a noting on his diary at the idea of her becoming the party leader as if he was totally alien to such a scenario. Whom was he trying to hoodwink? Noted historian K M Munshi puts it down succinctly. He remarked that ‘Nehru was justifiably proud of his heroic role in the struggle for freedom, pampered by his doting father, built up as his heir by Gandhi, spoiled by interested adulation, was intolerant to criticism and impatient of opposition’ (p.68). Nehru tolerated dissent only so long as it remained defused and articulated within the orbit of the Congress system. His democratic credentials are further slurred by the frequent dismissal of state governments on a whim. Between 1952 and 1964, he imposed President’s Rule five times to dislodge non-Congress chief ministers. Tired of his unwarranted intrusion in their departments, S P Mukherjee, K C Neogi, Ambedkar and John Mathai resigned from Nehru's cabinet.

Nehru's megalomania is fully exposed in this book. Nehru was a hero not only in the eyes of the people, but also in his own eyes. He believed that he was a man of destiny and that he had been cast for a historic role. Later in life, he developed a habit of making his own decisions on vital national and international issues and then presenting them as fait accompli to his cabinet and the parliamentary committees. Transfer of the enclave of Berubari to Pakistan was taken without consulting the West Bengal state which housed this patch of territory. Minority appeasement was begun by Nehru in national politics. Akalis were brought in as a group in Congress for the 1957 election. The Bishop of Kottayam issued an appeal to the Christians of Kerala which projected Nehru's image as the only leader who was a protector of minorities. He openly enticed the Muslim vote bank and made a political alliance with the Muslim league in Kerala.

The author presents enough evidence to prove his claim that Nehru kick started corruption in high places while keeping himself out of the cesspool. He exhibited an ostrich-like attitude to corruption, refusing to get convinced even when all the incriminating evidence lay before him. He believed that corruption is a result of the democratic process. His own private secretary, M O Mathai, was found to be corrupt, but Nehru defended him. He harboured politicians in administration on the plea that they are otherwise efficient! Congress badly needed the money as its sessions and other programs had become shows requiring extravagant expenditure. All this pomp and show required huge amounts of money. Raising election propaganda costs was another guzzler. When the pressure became irritatingly persistent, Nehru ordered commissions of enquiry but sat firmly upon their reports. These commissions were usually headed by serving judges of the judiciary and found many politicians guilty. However, no criminal charges were brought upon them. Nehru was satisfied by their resignations and they enjoyed the fruits of their felony in comfort. The notorious Jeep scandal occurred during Nehru's rule in which kickbacks were paid through V K Krishna Menon for purchasing Jeeps for the military. This was only a harbinger of the Bofors scam under his grandson’s rule.

Nehru's antipathy to men in uniform and his complacence in formulating a credible defence policy is widely known. Singh adds his two cents’ worth here. The military was downgraded and kept under bureaucratic control. During the British rule, a Secretary to the government of India was ranked lower than a Lieutenant General while Nehru made him on par with the General. He abolished the post of commander-in-chief and made the President of India the supreme commander-in-chief, but this was largely ceremonial. Pakistan feared Indian military, but Nehru feared it even more for their potential for staging a military coup. He starved them of equipment. One battalion of the Indian army went into the Battle for Goa in PT shoes due to lack of supplies. Only fifteen per cent of defence requirements were produced in India, but government opposed their import citing dearth of foreign exchange. Nehru's two-fold military doctrine was ridiculously childish. He held that wars were evil and that India had no enemy to fear. He had drugged not only the civil administration but also the armed services into supine inactivity.

Singh claims that he has provided an academic and unbiased analysis of the different facets of Nehru, rather than a biography. While the truth of his assertions is undisputed, his slight anti-Nehru bias is clearly discernible. The book has included a whole lot of letters and little known correspondences Nehru had had with various leaders. The letters between Nehru and Patel serve as a model for new leaders on how to make decent and dignified debate with their political opponents. We also see that cordial salutations like ‘My dear Jawaharlal ji’ and ‘My dear Rajendra Babu’ between Nehru and Rajendra Prasad slowly giving way for ‘My dear Prime Minister’ and ‘My dear President’ as the years went by. The book also includes some rare photographs. It is a credit to the author that he does not mention the personal vagaries of Nehru such as the Edwina affair.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

The Last Empire

Title: The Last Empire – The Final Days of the Soviet Union

Author: Serhii Plokhy

Publisher: OneWorld, 2014 (First)

ISBN: 9781780746463

Pages: 488

The forces of communism and western liberalism joined hands briefly for a while to take on the might of the Axis powers during World War II. Burying the differences and bridging the yawning chasm that divided their own ideologies, this united force admirably eliminated the threat of a Nazi takeover of the world. After the victory, however, it became evident that the natural instincts of the two camps could not be concealed any longer. The Cold War began shortly, as the USA and USSR played with their pawns and puppets at various theatres of war in the world. They fought with each other – killing, maiming and destroying resources – but without firing a shot directly at each other. The balance was so precarious that the world was scary at the thought of a sudden nuclear holocaust triggered as a result of a false move by any one of the opponents. In 1985, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev took the reins of power in the Soviet Union through the regular route – as the General Secretary of the Communist party. Gorbachev thought and acted differently, as he recognised the ideological bankruptcy of communism which had given the Soviet people nothing but misery and turmoil. He wanted to emulate the west to obtain its level of material prosperity. This came as an interlinked package with democracy. Gorbachev slowly opened up the political space for pluralism. The Soviet people, who were eagerly awaiting liberation from the communist yoke, rushed out of the union in a stampede before anyone could figure out what was happening. This book tells the story of the decimation of the Soviet Union in just five months from August to December of 1991 when the Communist party was dissolved and the nation crumbled to dust. Serhii Plokhy is a Ukrainian-American historian and author specialising in the history of Ukraine, Eastern Europe and Cold War studies.

Plokhy terms the Soviet Union as the ‘last’ empire. This is not in the sense that there will be no more empires in the future, but because it was the last state that carried on the legacy of the ‘classical’ European and Eurasian empires of the modern era such as the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, British or French. Anti-imperialism was a pet slogan of the communist rhetoric, but the irony of the very political state through which it was being manifested was itself an instrument of imperialism is sure to come as a realization for the naive among the communists. The hallmarks of an imperial centre were visible in Russia, the largest constituent of the union that led all the other republics. The member states were de jure free to secede at will, but this option always remained in the realm of imagination. Russia controlled the political, economic, cultural and social webs that linked many nationalities and ethnic groups. But there were differences as well. The metropolis – Russia – commanded huge energy resources on which the other republics eagerly counted on. This dependence had become a millstone around Russia's neck by the time of Gorbachev. This has also contributed to the metropolis’ desire to dissolve the empire.

Plokhy argues that the fate of the Soviet Union was decided in the last few months of its existence, between the coup that began on August 19 and the meeting of the leaders of the Soviet republics in Almaty on December 21, 1991. The reluctance of the political elite of Russia and Ukraine to find a modus vivendi within one state structure drove the final nail in the coffin of the union. The road to disintegration was ready in the early Gorbachev years. His attempts to reform Stalin’s centralised system of economic management had accelerated the speed of its collapse. Perestroika’s economic reforms failed, with increasing shortages of goods and growing scope for criticism of party policies. The Communist party lost its race with its opponents. The author identifies one more factor for the unwillingness of the non-Russian republics to prop up the Soviet structure. The coup, though organised by the KGB, was unprofessional which simply fizzled out when it encountered the first signs of resistance among the crowds that surrounded Yeltsin and his Parliament building in Moscow. Yeltsin’s stature grew immensely overnight. He could exert his control over the armed forces. It looked as if he liberated Gorbachev from the coup leaders’ captivity in Crimea. Yeltsin and his Russian cronies tried to exploit this bargaining chip to step into the shoes of Gorbachev and assume control of the central organisation that still held the union afloat. The other republics immediately got wind of this operation which indirectly helped catalyse their decision to depart. Most of these units were under the Tsarist regime before the Bolsheviks took over and they wanted no trek with a new Russian hegemony under Yeltsin. Ukraine was steadfast in asserting independence as shown by the sweeping majority for secession in a referendum held on December 1.

This book somewhat captures the plight of the common people during the last days of the communist state. But this does not attract the required attention from the author who continues with a blinkered version of the political narrative. Soviet Union desperately wanted food aid from the west to tide over the winter of 1991 in the form of eggs, powdered milk and mashed potato mix. They appealed to the Americans to release the material stored by US army which would be thrown out after its expiry period of three years, implying that their shelf life of three years would be acceptable to the Russians. Plokhy then dishes out an old comment made by Nikita Khruzhchev in which he threatened to bury the West. The stark contrast between the times of Khruzhchev and Gorbachev is visible here.

The author also tracks the crucial influence exerted by George H W Bush, the US President. All the factions which strove for power in the Soviet republics obliged Bush with interviews and factual reports in return for economic and food assistances and diplomatic recognition. The US was mainly concerned with the safety and unified control of the nuclear arms stored in four republics – Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus. Luckily for the US and the rest of the world, all states except Russia expressed their desire to let go of the nuclear capability. Russia collected weapons from the other states and assumed control of them. They also agreed to abide by the arms-control treaties signed by the Soviet Union earlier. This appropriation was timely, as radical Islam was beginning to tighten its hold on the central Asian and Caucasian regions. Plokhy argues that Bush tried to save the union from collapse, but once it had become certain that it was unavoidable, entered into a pragmatic arrangement with the successor states.

That leaves us with the image of Gorbachev, who is treated with respect by the author, but not unduly so. He won the Peace Nobel and is glorified across the world as the man who brought in a crucial change for the better in world politics by destroying communism. The west considers Gorbachev to have ended the Cold War and responsible for dismantling of the totalitarian system, democratization of Soviet politics and the opening of the country to the world. Even with all these achievements, Plokhy assert that Gorbachev was not the ‘blue-eyed boy’ made out by the west as far as native Russians were concerned. The reason for this is purely economic. When Gorbachev allowed the fundamentals of political freedom to percolate in Russian society, it accelerated the demise of the old structures that ensured at least some amount of succour for the common man. Even basic foodstuffs went off store shelves when the first whiff of political freedom touched the mercantile community. The people arraigned Gorbachev responsible for this state of things. The author claims that the Russian people were irritated even to hear Gorbachev's broadcasts over the radio.

This book is written with a superior bias to American interests and politicians. We read of Russian leaders, including Gorbachev and Yeltsin politely presenting status reports to the American president in person or through phone. They are also portrayed as bending to American pressure. While there may be some truth in this, the overall picture painted in the book is quite embarrassing to Soviet interests and sovereignty. Another incident narrated is that of the Russian foreign minister Kozyrev inquiring about the differences in meaning of the terms ‘federation’, ‘association’ and ‘commonwealth’ with an American scholar on the eve of a crucial meeting of the Soviet republics convened to decide on the most suitable form of political organisation for them. The book also includes a good collection of monochrome plates of the major actors and events of the era.

The book is strongly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star