An important segment in the present volume is a set of articles that narrates and analyses the political-reform movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan. In these essays DVG has pinpointed the job cut out for the political reformer:
Sri Jayaprakash Narayan and those who like him who are interested in renovating public life and establishing a true democracy have to address themselves first to the task of increasing the quantum of honest and good men in public life. This is no easy task. Bad men have managed to make public life look so bad as to frighten away good and honest men. Not that there are no good and honest men in the country. But they generally prefer to remain in the dark and leave the field free for noisy and enterprising aspirants. As in economics so in politics — bad coin drives the good out of circulation. Bad air drives out good air. So the noisy and the tricky come into the places meant for the good and the pure; and our assemblies and councils and panels have come to be occupied by the secretly self-seeking and the selfishly ambitious. The so-called public-spirited man is often really private-spirited one and it is the monopoly by the private-spirited of public places that is the crux of the matter.
When we recall that the Bihar movement primarily comprised students, we cotton on to DVG’s advice about increasing the quantum of honest citizens: catch them young, watch them grow.
Among the many non-issues raked up by the Tamil Nadu Government, one relates to the Sanskrit mantras recited in temples. Some jingoists of language wanted to replace Sanskrit with Tamil. On this DVG commented:
This is not a language controversy at all. What is involved is the sanctity attached by tradition or long-term usage to a Sanskrit formula (or mantra). The substitution even of a syllable by another syllable or word without affecting the meaning is not considered as harmless. Indeed, it is regarded as a damage to the mystique of worship. This is the theory of shabda-pramanya in the Purva-mimamsa school of thought. The substitution, for example, of the word ‘vanhi’ for the word ‘agni’ is prohibited even though ‘vanhi’ and ‘agni’ both mean one and the same thing — fire. In other words, the essence of the mystery is firstly in that the word ‘agni’ was originally used by a great sage of the remote past and secondly that the sanctity has been enhanced by long-time usage by great men … Not that Tamil (Kannada or Telugu for that matter) is not understood by God. The bhakta or devotee is free in his own mind to offer his prayers in any language in addition to the Sanskrit mantra. Mentally, he would, in any case, pray for the mercies and kindnesses of the Lord. Tamil is thus not disallowed. The appointed priest, however, is free to use the formulae he is accustomed to and he is also required to do so.
DVG used to attribute the degeneracy of democracy primarily to the party system. He has summarized the positive outcomes of doing away with parties:
Party is a great evil; at any rate in Indian experience. Party divides the nation and a perpetual brawl is the result. The rivalries of parties take away the concentration of attention to the interest of the public and there is a perpetual division of the country. Every man with ambition to stir in him a little gift of speech goes about getting together the disgruntled and the ill-conditioned among his friends and acquaintances and puts himself at the head of it as a party leader. Thus he becomes a factum to reckon with to make or mar public welfare. It is thus that parties grow in number and multiply. If John becomes a Minister as a result of party leadership, why not Jones? So goes on the rivalry for Ministership.
The evils which we may hope to remove by eliminating party are chiefly the following:
- At present the Chief Minister chooses his colleagues from within his own party and does not go out of his party to find the best talent and character among those elected to the Legislature. He has to rest satisfied with any noisy muff, but of the party.
- The Ministry thus contains elements of noise more than of talent and character.
- Any mistake or any error of the Minister finds ready shield in the members of the party.
- They in return become sharers in gains made by the Minister.
- It is on the basis of one man’s promoting self-seeking in others on the strength of party that the present provincial State Governments are formed.
DVG was always full of support for our people in khaki. Today it has become fashionable to condemn the police for doing their job. They have to hold the lathi, it seems, but not use it ever. In a way, this is similar to pouncing on teachers for reprimanding students. Nobody seems to realize that the problem lies with case-hardened criminals and wayward wards. DVG was of the opinion that the hands of our policemen ought to be strengthened, not tied, if the society is to benefit:
It is not impossible that sometimes the amount of force employed by the police is excessive. But this is an error that must be suffered. If the liberties of A are curtailed or denied, that is done so that B, C and D may continue to possess their liberties intact. Extraordinary measures and a certain amount of suffering becomes inevitable to one party or another. But blaming the police instead of encouraging them to keep to their sense of duty is to hasten the advent of anarchy. The prime duty of Government, traditionally, has been, in India, the maintenance of law and order. At present crime — reckless crime — is becoming very common. The concept of liberty and independence is taking ugly forms at the hands of the unqualified and the ill-tempered. At such a time, if the police are not strengthened, society is bound to suffer chaos.
DVG’s assessment of the philosophy of Government as conceptualized in India and the West is relevant to all times. Economics, he says, is a precarious branch of philosophy:
The cardinal difference between the ancient Indian’s philosophy of Government and the modern Indian’s, which is the modern European’s and American’s also, is in that the ancient Indian put emphasis on the purely political side of social organization and the other is emphasizing the economic aspect. To the ancient Indian, the supreme duty of the State is punishing the wicked or keeping anti-social elements in check. To the other, the supreme duty of the State is to ensure the equal distribution of material wealth … Before the philosophy of Government comes the philosophy of life and therefore those who write or speak of governments should first clear their own minds as to the chief purpose of life itself and the place of money or material wealth in relation to that purpose. It is there that the ancient Indian concept scores. It makes three points: (1) that material wealth has simply an instrumental or auxiliary value; that we acquire wealth for two purposes: (i) for self-sustenance and (ii) for charity; (2) that in any case the idea of equality is impracticable; (3) that in our effort to achieve an impossible ideal of equality there is the danger of our losing sight of the main purpose of life itself and be tempted into side-issues.
DVG’s love for traditional Indian values was next to none. He was constantly on the lookout for opportunities to disseminate ancient Indian wisdom. Of his several such endeavours, one is the inclusion of Vedic mantras in every issue of Public Affairs along with English translations, starting from January 1975. DVG could have easily translated the mantras himself, but the great man that he was, he requested a noted Sanskrit scholar, Dr. K Krishnamoorthy to do the job.
At the beginning of this Overview I have referred to DVG’s extraordinary protest against the Emergency. To recall the same in brief, his editorial consisted of just two lines from the Rāmāyaṇa:
Vākyajño vākyakovidaḥ; tato maunam upāgamat |
The one well-versed in speech sought refuge in silence.
As much as DVG advocated democracy, he was keenly alive to its pitfalls in practice. On the issue of public assemblies, he wrote:
The basic error of unqualified democracy is in assuming that a large number of humans thinking and talking and scheming together is a way to take away fallibility. A hundred fools talking and deciding are no substitute for one honest mind. As old Manu puts it: Sahasrashah sametanam parishattvam na vidyate. Manu would accept the authority of an assembly. When doubt arises as to a point of conduct, his recommendation is to refer it to an assemblage of two or even three Dasavaras: two men totally disinterested personally and devoted to the cause apply their mind afresh to the problem and arrive at an independent conclusion. In other words, the essence of the matter is in the independence of the mind and at the same time its loyalty to certain moralities sanctioned by long-time tradition.
Writing on ‘the conditions of freedom in literature,’ DVG advocated the middle path between liberty and restraint. Incidentally, this essay contributed to the All-India Writers’ Conference held in Jaipur in 1945, is a model of composition. Aspiring writers can learn the subtle art and exact science of reasoning, assessment and presentation from this piece:
Persecution is the grim compliment that the purblind pay to the farsighted in the realm of the mind.
Power divorced from responsibility is no more tenable in literature than in politics. But while there are fairly definite and recognized methods of calling a Minister of State to account, no such rationally working machinery exists to judge and control the writer. This difference is but natural, for the results of the Minister’s labour are in the outer world and concrete and admit of exact standards of measurement, whereas the results of the writer’s art belong to the inner world and are intangible and idiosyncratic. The blow that falls on the writer is therefore arbitrary. That it is apt often to be more arbitrary than is unavoidable is the gravamen of his complaint. To mitigate the arbitrariness is to that extent to safeguard freedom.
As in the life of the State, so in the life of art and literature, the problem of problems is to discover the proper line of adjustment between the individual and his freedom on the one side and State and its authority on the other. A proper adjustment is that which can make them, not antagonists, but complements each to the other … So I plead for the cultivation of the sense of justice by statesmen and of the sense of balance by writers.
An essay titled The GIPA: Its Birth, Growth, Prospects and Ideals included in this volume was written in 1965, “the year that marked the completion of fifty years since the birth of the GIPA idea and twenty years since the translation of that idea into permanent fact.” Aside from chronicling the early history of Gokhale Institute of Public Affairs, which remains a monument of the founder’s enduring legacy, it talks of DVG’s sustained and untiring efforts at serving society. The committees of which he was a part, the informal groups he put together, the formal institutions he established, the memoranda he submitted to the Government, the journals he edited and published, the surveys he conducted, the lectures he organized, the treatises he taught, the people he looked up to, the people who supported him with material, financial and intellectual resources, the people he inspired – each item is the stuff of legend. All this is apart from his preeminent status as a littérateur who contributed immensely to the development of modern Kannada. This chronicle is solid proof for what one man’s ‘constancy in devotion’ can accomplish.
Apart from DVG’s own writings, this volume includes a series of tributes written upon his passing by people who knew him well. It is appropriate to conclude this Overview with a couple of extracts from these tributes:
His inclination was not towards the abstract, but only towards the concrete. He loved and his concern was for, individuals and not for the abstract humanity. That is why he knew full well all those — high or low, rich or pauper, scholar or the ignorant — who came into contact with him. In literature the words and sentences were to him as important as the thoughts, nuances and every other thing which make literature great. Likewise authority to him in the State was not unrelated to the holder of it. So his insistence was on the maintenance of high moral standards of public men. Similarly the public good was not something elusive for him. Every detail which made the life of the citizen happy was an item of good for him. — D R Venkataramanan
Born poor, receiving no formal education beyond the secondary stage and entering public life when he was about twenty years old, Gundappa worked hard and with a will to make something of life; and ended making it a great thing. He read and thought; read widely, thought carefully. He wrote and spoke; wrote thoughtfully, spoke carefully. He worked in many fields with no eye to profit for himself; and always with the idea of doing good to the public which he was serving. In the sense of material well-being he succeeded in nothing. In the sense of good work for its own sake, he succeeded in every field in which he laboured. With no advantage of birth, or wealth or office, he attained a position in the life of the State that few, with all such advantages, ever did. People now utter his name as equal in importance with the name of Sri Visvesvaraya as gifts of Kolar and those who hear them feel that it is quite proper. — Masti Venkatesha Iyengar
Nadoja S R Ramaswamy introduced me to the nuances of editing and provided incredible insights into the personality and works of D V Gundappa. Shatavadhani R Ganesh breathes life into all my activities. Sandeep Balakrishna patiently polished my prose and offered valuable suggestions to shore up the observations in this essay. I owe an immense debt of gratitude to all of them.
To be continued.
