The Premier

S. P.
[This article was written by the Late Mr. Justice M. Seshachalapathi, Soon after Rajaji took up the office of the Premier of the composite State of Madras. It was first published in Triveni for October 1937, and was very much appreciated. To the present readers of Triveni it would be highly informative and really interesting.
–EDITOR]

The present writer had occasion to observe from the strangers’ gallery of the new Legislative Assembly in Madras its proceedings on the Speaker’s election day. To him, as it must have been to several others, it was an unforgettable experience. A strange and an almost infectious liveliness pervaded the scene. The small officials in charge of the arrangements were more than usually alert, while the orderlies were doing their best to be as deferential as their calling and tradition would permit. The hall was filled with khaddar-clad ladies and gentlemen in as many types of unconventional attire as one could imagine–as if they sought to signalize their new acquisition of power in a riotous non-conformity to the usual dress styles. The few European gentlemen looked almost apologetic for the clothes they were in. Tail coats and flashing ties were absent; and with them seemed to have vanished also the aloofness and pomposity that marked the manner of the old Councils. Democracy literally seemed to have come into its own. The people at last seemed to be tenanting the central seat of power.

Lined up on either side of the House were men and women who dared and did several brave things, who played a splendid part in their nation’s liberation movement, who suffered long terms of imprisonment and who counted nothing greater than the love of country and the love of freedom.

At the head of them all sat the Prime Minister. All eyes were riveted on him; yet, there was so little to see. His small frame looked even frailer than ever, as he sat in the padded recess of the heavy Treasury Bench. The usual landmarks, however, were there–the white apparel, the dark glasses, and, of course, the famous smile. He should have been more than human if he was not affected by the situation. But his keen, mobile face did not show any trace of the emotion within. Neither was there the touch of weariness and disillusionment that can be expected in one who had just formed a Cabinet. His manner was, as usual, calm and humble.

As he rose to felicitate the Speaker on his election in that tranquil, cultured voice of his, the thoughts of this writer went far into the past. He thought of the days of 1922 and 1923 when a violent schism rent the Congress in twain. He conjured up the tall, gaunt figure of the late Mr. C. R. Das–already in the grip of the malady that was shortly to lower him to the dust, pale and haggard, and yet as if possessed by sombre passions–crying hoarse over the Council programme. Pitted against him was Mr. Rajagopalachari, cool and collected, meeting Mr. Das’s emotional rhapsody with perfectly constructed syllogisms. The two great men measured their strength on the freezing banks of the Phalguni at Gaya. Mr. Das lost and Mr. Rajagopalachari won.

To neither of the two doughty combatants was the controversy a matter of personal equation. Their difference was due to a difference in temperament and intellectual bias. In the reaction that followed the first phase of the Non-co-operation movement and in the then spreading feeling of frustration, both agreed that some new momentum should be given to the Congress policy. On the method they differed. The eager, volatile temperament of Mr. Das favoured a spectacular fight through the Councils. Mr. Rajagopalachari was not blind to the popular appeal in such a policy. But he had other notions about the Non-co-operation movement. To him it meant nothing short of a huge attempt at a moral regeneration of his race. The first campaign failed because the moral stamina of the people was not equal to the job. That stamina should be strengthened. The moral and spiritual resources of the people should be galvanized. The process might be slow. But there was no other go. If one believed in the philosophical foundation of the movement, there was no other conclusion possible. His logic was flawless; and he expounded his view with that simplicity and directness of which he is so great a master. The Congress voted for him; Mr. Das walked out in rout and rebellion.

The whirlgig of time takes a malicious delight in pitching men into positions they had erstwhile abhorred. Today, long after Mr. Das is gone and the hatchets of the old controversy are buried, Mr. Rajagopalachari, once the prince of no-changers, is the peerless leader of the parliamentary programme of the Congress. “None but the dead,” says Louis Blanc, “come ”; and if by any chance the ghost of Mr. Das should emerge out of its home of shadows with a smile on its bloodless lips, it might perhaps be forgiven. The incident has enough irony
to tickle even ghosts.

But sober reflection would reveal that in no aspect of his busy and eventful life has ‘C. R.’ shown more authentic marks of high statesmanship than in the quiet and almost imperceptible evolution of his views in regard to the work in the Councils. A smaller man would have felt both intellectually and morally intimidated by his past predilections. But like the great leaders of democracy, who by their conduct illustrate that democracy is leadership and not the rule by the howling mob, Mr. Rajagopalachari has shown that he possesses the two great assets of a public man, flexibility of mind and the courage to act in scorn of consequences to himself. We read in Morley that Mr. Gladstone always thought that the statesman’s gift consisted in an insight into the facts of a particular era disclosing the existence of material for forming public opinion, and directing that opinion to the given purpose. It is this faith that explains much that is in the nature of abrupt and violent change in the political strategy of the great Victorian and exposed him to the blistering gibe of Huxley, “Here is a man with the greatest intellect in Europe and he debases it by following the crowds and the majorities.” The popular superstition, that change of policy betokens shallowness of conviction, is mainly responsible for the anxiety of so many sententious public men trying to end their politics as they have begun them, in the unctious belief that there is no higher political virtue than consistency.

Today the political ground of the country has shifted from what it was in 1922. The old orthodoxies are no longer possessed of vitality. Disenchantment has come over the people and the early idealism of the movement is nothing more than a wistful memory. The Councils might be good or bad. They might even by design be blind alleys. But they had been got at by men who had no touch with the real thought and aspirations of the people. The bubble had to be pricked. The country had to be saved from an endless reign of flummery. The people were anxious that the Congressmen should go into the Councils. To ignore this state of feeling would have been to forfeit the faith of the people in the political wisdom and the acumen of the Congress high command.

It is well known that Mr. Rajagopalachari’s attitude in regard to the work in Councils was one of the contributing factors in the decision of the Congress executive to lift the old ban. In his attitude there was not a trace of personal ambition. The place which he now occupies has come to him unexpectedly. It has come to him naturally, inevitably. The peculiar exigencies of the political situation in Madras, to which it is no use referring just now, have conspired to bring him to a place which he never desired and which, if he had consulted only his personal feeling, he would have rejected. No man who has achieved so much distinction in public life has ever been swayed by so little of personal ambition. The play is the thing in politics as in Hamlet, and it is of little consequence who the player is. In fact, Mr. Rajagopalachari would like to be relieved of all these responsibilities, for, hidden deep down his smiling courtesy, his dry intellectual manner, his tranquil dialectical powers, there is a mystic element in his nature that bids him away from the cliques and the cabals, the polemics and the pot-boilers of political life and seek his peace in some rural abode where, in silence, he can deepen his spirit. When, the other day, over what is known as the ‘Rajan incident,’ he intimated his desire to wash his hands of all this political turmoil and retire, he was not expressing the injured sense of leadership but was merely articulating the profounder
intuitions of his soul. To remain in politics and to be what he is today is to him an act of constraint. Power may have its attractions to most men, but to him it has none. When we discover a man who is unwilling to govern, says Plato, then let us be sure that we have discovered the man that is best to govern.

It is more than two months since he formed his Cabinet; the fact of these erstwhile defiers of law taking up the administration was not lost on the public whose relish for the unusual is ever so notorious. It has enjoyed the legends that have already grown round what may be called Mr. Rajagopalachari’s art of taming the lions of the Secretariat. The news that an important permanent official accepted from the Premier a gift of khadi and actually wore clothes made of it, tickled the imagination of the people in a manner that is out of all proportion to its importance. The excitement was visible everywhere and in almost all sections of society. In homes, in buses and trams, in clubs and cafes, people discussed nothing else.

As the sensation is dying down and life reverting to its normal plane of routine, the crucial question is shaping itself: what will Mr. Rajagopalachari do? Will he settle down, as the most democratic of leaders often do, never wanting to be reminded of the idealism of the pre-election speeches, merely running the administration and sending up every night of their life the pathetic prayer, “Oh Lord, peace in my time”? His past, and the dynamic character of the great body of ideas he represents, make this eventuality impossible. Mr. Rajagopalachari is going to tell on the life and thought of his people, and so the further question arises,” In what way is he going to tell?” Will he usher in an age of general dissolution; will he upset the apple cart of the present economic order? Will the two puissant postulates of British jurisprudence that rules this realm, namely, the sanctity of property and the freedom of contract, receive from him the same respect that they have hitherto received? It is curious how, already, he has created a flutter among certain groups. He has said nothing; he has as yet done nothing to justify these fears. But his very presence, and the feeling that his presence means so much, has been responsible for a good deal of nervousness in what we call ‘vested interests.’ Already they seem to see as if in a nightmare his thin, spectral fingers closing round the neck of privilege. Is there warrant for these fears? Even speculation requires some data for its sustenance, and for the data we have to go into his past and his general point of view.

The main incidents of his life are but briefly told. Born in an orthodox family in the district of Salem, and doing his collegiate education at Bangalore, there was nothing in Mr. Rajagopalachari’s early life and upbringing, suggestive of the social courage that he has shown or the political faith that we now associate with him. Like a thousand other boys similarly situated, he was brought up to be an ordinary flourishing middle-class man of the world. In a recent speech he related, with all the charm of his limpid humour, how his parents debated as to what education they should give their child, whether like his sires he should be trained in Sanskrit schools, or like so many prudent people he should be given English education. Somehow, in the duel between things of this world and of the next, the present world won, as it seems to be always winning; and so Mr. Rajagopalachari was denied to Sanskrit and old traditional culture, for, if he had taken to them, he would have won an equal distinction as the most authentic successor to the medieval logicians and the Naiyayikas. After a bright career at college he settled down as a lawyer at Salem. Success came to him soon. Not merely briefs began to pour in increasing measure, but he was building up a reputation as a most acute and accomplished advocate. Almost immediately after his famous defence of Dr. Varadarajulu Naidu in a political prosecution, he came over to Madras and promised to take his place amongst the leaders of the profession here. Then came the deluge. The Punjab troubles created a furorein the country. Mr. Gandhi came on the scene. His arrival was perhaps in many ways the most significant event in the political life of this country for a century. It was the birth of a man and a method. The Satyagraha movement found in Mr. Rajagopalachari a most ardent and devoted follower. If for the new creed sacrifices were called for, he was in a mood to give them gladly, and gladly did he give them.

In an atmosphere that is congenial to the growth of fanaticism, and with a creed that is helpful to the growth of self-righteousness, Mr. Rajagopalachari has retained both his native sense of proportion and innate modesty. He is not like some of the grim figures of history ruled by a single idea to the exclusion of all else. It is such men lacking historical perspective, lacking pity, hard, relentless, implacable, that are the menace to the peace of the social order. Mr. Rajagopalachari has enough sense of humour not to be dangerous. Looking at his thin frame and his dark glasses, and a certain austerity of bearing and manifest rigidity of principle, one might be reminded of Robespierre. But the comparison is by no means apt; for Robespierre never smiled, not to speak of making others smile. The man that can see a joke and make one, will never be a fanatic. He will never inflict pain.

Also he is free from emotional extravagance. He is innocent of passion. A calm, dry, intellectual atmosphere pervades his being. His mind is an evolutionary mind. His thoughts move in an even progression. He does not share the exotic ideology that looks upon religion as dope, tradition as tyranny, and the past an encumbrance. Like his great preceptor, his mind has an Eastern bias, arid his attachment to the faith and tradition of his fathers is deep.

The temperate qualities of his mind and character are enough to guarantee against the possibility of far-reaching measures being hustled into existence under the stress of sentimental or doctrinaire enthusiams.

But his smiling urbanity need not deceive anybody. He would not sacrifice justice for sweetness. He is one of those men who follow the principle of Bishop Whatley, “It makes all the difference in the world if you put truth in the first place or in the second place.”

The injustice of the present economic order appeals to him, not as a whetstone on which to sharpen dogma but as a thing that calls for immediate redress. To set the present wrongs right, the socialist approach is not the only one. There is much that can be done even without borrowing from the Das Kapital. Callousness and incompetence of the State is not by any means an inevitable alternative to Socialism. The State is the contrivance of civilisation to checkmate the inexorable laws of biological evolution. The pernicious philosophy that seeks to incorporate the theories of struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest into the affairs of men, has been the excuse for the powerful classes exploiting the weaker ones. The organic character of society which regards the prosperity of one section as dependent upon the prosperity of the other is looked upon by the bloated plutocrats as a jejune adaptation of the vapourings of religious simpletons who cry, “Under Heaven one family.”

Life has its prizes, it is said, not for the moony folk who think of others but for the resolute men that run in blinkers and seek their own destiny. If in so doing they have to trample upon others, it is just inevitable. “The many have to go down,” says an eminent Indian writer, “so that one may go up; that is the passionless law of life.” To avoid the heartlessness of such a situation, to protect the weak from the strong, to falsify the rule of might being the right, to check the cupidity and barbarism of primitive life, the State was evolved. “The Polis came to make life possible,” says Aristotle. “It exists to make life better.” That is the justification for the State. And so long as this Province has a man like Mr. Rajagopalachari at the helm, the activity of the State will be inspired by nothing but the highest interests of the common weal. There is no higher tribute that can be paid to a statesman than to say that he creates such faith.
–From Triveni, October 1937