Gokhale Institute of Public Affairs, an organization DVG built and nurtured, has made quiet but sustained efforts to educate people in all matters of collective living. Apart from conducting civic surveys, preparing reports for the perusal of Government and organizing lectures, it has played an active part in times of crisis. For instance, during the Indo-China war, it exhorted all its members and the people at large to contribute to the national defence fund. It issued the following Statement of Appeal on 29 October 1962:
The Gokhale Institute of Public Affairs, Bangalore, regards the present aggression by China as a challenge to the people of India to prove their capacity to stand united to secure the safety of their motherland and protect their national integrity and honour against attack by foreign powers. The GIPA appeals to people throughout India to lay aside their differences of race and religion and language and of political ideology and social rank and economic status, and stand together solid and determined in support of the Government of India in every effort to clear the territory of India of the Chinese and recover areas encroached upon. The GIPA appeals also for liberal contributions to the National Defence Fund and will be grateful to receive contributions, be they ever so small, and will forward them to the appropriate authority. Receipts will be issued by the GIPA Office for all sums received towards the National Defence Fund. (p. 150)
In 1962, the finance minister Morarji Desai came out with an unsound Gold Control Act to disincentivize gold imports and prevent smuggling. Additionally, he intended to “destroy the sense of sanctity attaching to the custom of using gold.” This would mean a huge blow to private reserves of the precious metal and take away the goldsmith’s only source of livelihood. DVG gave the minister a thorough dressing down for his schadenfreude and observed:
No more melancholy measure was ever thought of by anyone in the known history of India than the present attempt to take away from the community its last source of stamina. Private wealth, — gold and jewellery in particular, — is not merely economic stamina, but also moral stamina. Jewel gold and silver create in the owners a sense of security and responsibility which makes for the stability of the community. To take it away from them is to make the people a plaything of chance — a thing to be tossed about by the Government’s varying fiscal policies. (p. 161)
In recent times some politicians including Rahul Gandhi have put forward similar reckless schemes, which make us marvel at DVG’s prescience.
DVG minced no words in calling out the political policies of the Congress Government that militated against the basic ethos of our country. He attributed the sufferings of the day to three ‘superstitions’: socialism, non-alignment and Hindi suzerainty:
Our rulers adopted the ideology of Russia and planned to execute it with aid-money got from America. The ideology has upset the age-established economy of the country; and the aid-money has blunted our moral sensibilities. (p. 195)
India’s sufferings of today are to be traced to three superstitions, and a superstition — because it is a superstition, and therefore irrational — does surely become a tyranny. The first superstition is Socialistic Planning. This is the parent of the disruption of the economy of agriculture, monetary inflation, exorbitant prices of foodstuffs, malnutrition for the people and general physical degeneracy in the country. The second superstition is that of so-called non-alignment. This has encouraged China and Pakistan and discouraged every country in a position to help us from becoming a firm and dependable helper. Our position is one of utter weakness and self-humiliation. Our third superstition is that of Hindi Suzerainty. All linguistic fanaticisms are wrong, because no single language in the world can claim to cover all aspects and all minutiae of the lives of its people. (pp. 217–18)
Because DVG had lived through the ill-effects of Socialism and had seen Communism implode in many parts the world, he repeatedly warned our people against them. I quote his words in extenso:
Democratic Socialism is only a deceiving phrase for the nationalization of what truly belongs to the individual. In other words, it is the transformation of every large factory or firm into a department of Government. The dangers of this are obvious. It is the delimitation of the individual’s liberty, the expansion of officialdom, the exaltation of the red-tape and the maximization of opportunities for corruption … A remedy is necessary, but that remedy is neither Socialism nor Communism but a new way of reconciling and bringing together both Capital and Labour as brotherly partners in one common concern. (p. 263)
What divides the Socialist from the Communist is just a screen of tissue-paper. It is a tissue of plausible phrases. Thereby the Socialist is able to canvass recruits for the Communist. Both aim at the universal domination of the State. Both would flatten out the individual. And both would be coercive. While the Socialist would make use of the machinery of the Constitution for this end, the Communist would not hesitate to break it in order to initiate a revolution. While the Socialist pays lip-service to the forms of convention, the Communist would let no such scruple hold him back from attacks on the existing order. If the Socialist would give headaches, the Communist plans a sudden and full paralysis of institutions. If we would live by the spirit and intentions of the Constitution we have, the Communist is clearly out of place in this country. (p. 427)
Considering the historical fact that DVG had championed the case of Princely States before India attained independence, it comes as no surprise that he condemned the Government’s decision to abolish privy purses. According to him, it was a direct consequence of Socialism, “a road-roller moving forward relentlessly,” which “recks nothing of the obligations of the past” and “can put with no eminences other than those of the bazaar and the hustings.” (pp. 392–393) He further observed:
The Princes have for generations been accustomed to a certain standard and style of living, and they have certain obligations of rank and position to maintain; and it would be cruel unfairness to them to deprive them of their means — particularly when so much is being expended on political careerists and adventurers … It is time our Princes took warning and ceased wasting their substance on frivolities — and that too in foreign lands. Even today, they have a service to perform for the motherland in preserving and promoting literature and learning and art and a liberal humanistic culture. (pp. 407–08)
* * *
Volume Nine (1969–1971)
DVG was a Vedantin through and through. In many writings he has cogently explained the problems connected with the Western conception of the divine and contrasted it with the Indian view. Here is a sample picked at random:
The fundamental error is in seeing God and the world as two different entities — separate and to be connected by men like the electric bulb and the switch. They are one and the same, in two different forms, like the trunk of a tree where there are no leaves and flowers, and the top of it, full of foliage and bloom. The two are not different and separate. They are the same. The non-recognition of this identity leads to the dichotomy between religion and practical life. In the Hindu philosophy, practical life is nothing but the issue in concrete form of God-man relationship. The duties we perform, the pleasures we seek, the aspirations we cherish and the sufferings we go through, should all be viewed as incidents of God-man relationship. This is the logic of the Ishavasya teaching that the universe around us is the abode of living God. (pp. 6–7)
Writing on the rule of law, DVG has explained the correlation between law and morality in a short compass:
Law differs from morality only in that law has behind it the entire apparatus and resources of the State to support and enforce it. Whereas morality has no such material support and is maintained merely by the voluntary good-will and good-sense and usage of men and women … morality made enforceable by the State is law. (p. 50)
We have previously recorded DVG’s displeasure with the ‘non-alignment’ stance of the Congress Government with respect to international affairs. Commenting on the issue further, he has remarked that foreign policy is more strategy than principles, which expects imagination, sagacity and personal prestige in the ministers and their advisers. “No hard and fast rule can work there” is his conclusion.
DVG had burnt his fingers several times while working for the ‘larger good.’ However, he never turned bitter; he remained an optimist till the end. When a youngster asked him for advice on voluntary public work, he opened his heart and gave a detailed primer. This advice, if assimilated, will surely hold service-spirited youngsters in good stead:
Economic competence in private life is a condition of independence in public life. Indeed, the first duty of patriotism is that you should avoid becoming a burden upon society … In the name of economic sufficiency, you may cross the limits of honesty and honour, and land yourself in ambition and self-seeking. To avoid this mortal danger, you have first to accustom yourself to ways of simplicity and keep nerves of steel against temptation and the lures of opulent living. If you are not capable of resisting money-temptation and the temptation of public applause, you had better keep away from the public field. (pp. 81–82)
Never think of attempting a Utopia. Utopias are built either with self-perfected men and women or with brainless robots of obedience; but not with such mixture of good and bad as we are. Attempt at Utopia is therefore a delusion. It causes diversion of attention and energy which should go to little improvements that are achievable. The Utopia is thus the enemy of the practicable good. (p. 85)
DVG delivered the Inaugural Address at the College of Journalism under the auspices of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bangalore. Two points stood out in his talk: (1) the urgent need to avoid prolixity in journalistic writing (2) a newspaperman rises to his highest not when he caters to the popular taste, but when he refines and elevates it. Indeed, DVG’s own journalistic career is a shining example of these precepts. He was not one who did not practise what he preached.
Not many people know that DVG was good friends with C V Raman. True to his stature as a master interpretive biographer, he has recorded several unique aspects of the Nobel laureate’s luminous personality. Sample these two incidents that are not recorded elsewhere:
We were sitting at a tea party on the lawns of the house of a friend who was our host, the occasion being a marriage in his house. C.V. caught hold of me by the arm and said (in Tamil): “Look at that house there; the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge is not bigger. It is in such a small place that the Rutherfords did all their work and there are seven Nobel Laureates working there. What is the use of towers and colonnades? You must have men first to make use of your halls and equipment.” (p. 118)
Raman was a simple man who found happiness in simple things and doubled that happiness by sharing it with others. I chanced to go to the Institute of Science the morning after his return from Mysore, having received the title of Raja-sabha-bhushana from His Highness the Maharaja. He stood beaming in the lace turban and uttariya in the Mysore style. He spoke to one and all about it, bubbling with the joy of a child who has received a glittering new toy. Not that he exaggerated its significance by an iota. The significant thing is that he did not under-value it either. He did not affect cynicism. He let himself be seen that he is not above feeling delight in what delighted so many of his ordinary fellow-humans. (pp. 124–25)
Incidentally, this essay on Raman contains an invaluable piece of information about DVG himself. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, the celebrated savant of Indian culture, was asked to give a message for New India on the eve of independence. He had replied “Be yourself” and encouraged Indian citizens to emulate Ramana Maharshi, Mahatma Gandhi and D. V. Gundappa, among others. From the present essay we learn that DVG knew of this. Raman, we are told, used to use this ‘high compliment’ to pull DVG’s legs – he would prostrate before DVG with great solemnity and both would burst out laughing! (p. 125)
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.
