In Ramachandra Guha’s last book, Patriots and Partisans, he charted the rise of Hindutva in India while lamenting the free fall of the Left and the Congress. Along the way, there were some memorable character sketches and revelatory anecdotes. The follow-up Democrats and Dissenters takes a deeper dive into similar territory, whether it’s our never-ending battle of posturing with Pakistan, the possible annihilation of left-liberal politics in India or the troubling anti-intellectual bias that seems to be sweeping across the country, including and especially the Central government. The second half of the book is also well-served by affectionate but by no means obsequious profiles of Eric Hobsbawm, Benedict Anderson, Amartya Sen, UR Ananthamurthy and others. The chapter about Sen (and Guha’s misgivings about his work) is particularly entertaining, a first-rate clash of ideas, marked as much by mutual admiration as by the thoroughly civil air of the debate.

BLink spoke to Guha recently. The following are excerpts from the conversation.

Despite there being pressure on the BJP government on several fronts in recent times, you are very clear in the first chapter, about the Congress dying “a lingering death”. Won’t the anti-incumbency factor, or the fact the fringe elements of the BJP keep putting their foot in their mouths help the Congress eventually? You don’t seem to extend them these courtesies at all.

It may help them marginally. I mean, 44 seats is pretty low. People can only rise from 44: the question is how much can they rise to, even if these factors did help them? 50, 60, 70? Certainly not 150 or 200. My sense is that the Congress is in terminal decline; it can’t be revived. It has a few pockets of influence, it has a few good leaders. But organisationally it is in shambles. And, of course, the top leadership is wholly uninspiring. Their performance as an Opposition has been no better than their performance in power. Also, it’s the same group of leaders that you see everywhere, the ones who were ministers. Even now, they haven’t tried to blood new people. If you want to revive the Congress, why would you stick with P Chidambaram, Kapil Sibal and Anand Sharma? All it shows is their family loyalty. Rahul Gandhi certainly doesn’t know how to build a good party, how to develop good leaders.

I found your mini-portrait of Kumaraswamy Kamaraj fascinating. Here was a man who spoke no Hindi or English. And yet, he grew to wield great power in the inner circle of the Congress in the ’60s. Today, we have an analogous case: Naveen Patnaik, who has been in power in Odisha for a long time, despite speaking no Odia — and being criticised for it virtually non-stop. How do you explain these cases, especially when you consider the high premium placed on oratory these days?

There is a mystique about Patnaik, which he wields all the time. It’s his father’s (Biju Patnaik) legacy. Patnaik bears a resemblance to Modi, Nitish Kumar and Mayawati in the sense that he has no family and no spouse. And also, this idea of sacrifice, that he was leading this privileged life in Delhi and he left that to come and serve the people of Odisha in his father’s memory. I keep travelling to Odisha so I know the State quite well. He can stand for elections and win for as long as he likes. The Odias trust him as a leader who’s not on the take. There is something about him that makes him invincible; it’s peculiar.

In Amitav Ghosh’s latest book, he quotes a political scientist to claim, somewhat cynically, that people no longer realistically expect politicians to fully represent their best interests, that there’s a sort of ‘lesser evil’ syndrome going on. Do you feel we, as a nation, have reached this point or that we’re headed there very soon?

Not really. If you look at the last election, I think Modi won because he evoked hope among those who voted for him.

I am not a Modi supporter but as a student of Indian politics, I think that many people who voted for him thought of him as an inspirational figure. Some of them feel let down two years down the line, but that’s a different matter. And part of his appeal was this: that there was a sleepy, dysfunctional, corrupt regime in Delhi where one leader was silent and the other was absent.

Modi took it upon himself and said: I have the energy and the charisma to deliver, to turn things around. His speeches may have been more rhetoric than substance, but they struck a chord with people.

Modi was not about lesser evil, he was about hope and promise and acche din. I think most voters in India aren’t quite so cynical yet. Not everywhere, at least.

Which indicates that in some places, people are that cynical?

Well yes, like Tamil Nadu. The people there know that both the major parties are corrupt, they vote for those who they think are less corrupt, less beholden to family interests.

Or for those who manage to put their pictures on flood relief packets.

Or that, yes.

At one point in Democrats and Dissenters, you point out that most major Indian newspapers used to have an environment beat, at least in the ’80s, and that this is no longer the case. Don’t you feel that there is still quality environmental reportage being done today?

Actually, what has happened is that these reporters (who’re writing about environmental issues)... they are now part of specialist organisations. So you have Down to Earth. But there was a long period, between the ’70s and the ’90s, where they would report seriously and sympathetically on the environment, particularly its impact on the poor. Then there was a period of about 15 years where environmentalists were seen as anti-development party poopers. Now we are entering a new phase where there is a belated but welcome recognition or a re-recognition that these are serious issues: see Delhi’s concern over its pollution levels, for example. The first wave of environmental journalism was about the degradation of forests, displacement by dams, contamination of soils and so on. Now we have a new set of issues, largely driven by air pollution, which is a huge problem in all of our large cities and affects the poor more, because of their nutrition standards.

You devote an entire chapter to conservative intellectuals, claiming that there are virtually none in India. I imagine there would be many who’ll throw names like Jagdish Bhagwati into the mix.

Well, Bhagwati doesn’t call himself a conservative. He is a liberal who believes in the free market. And he chastises Modi for gau raksha and so on. But who else can you name? I can think of only Arun Shourie. He is someone who could have given them intellectual inputs, advice that could have saved them from bad publicity. I find it interesting that Shourie was pointedly excluded from the government. They could have gone up to him and said: “We want a chairperson of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) who is a scholar but not a Marxist.” He would have found them someone. But who did they find? Some character called Sudershan Rao who believes that the Ramayana is real history, who has never published an original paper in his life. There is a serious deficit (of conservative intellectuals) and that should worry everyone, including people like me, who are not conservatives. For a democracy to be in good health, checks and balances are required and having a strong conservative intellectual tradition is very much a part of that.

Like the conversation between Jayaprakash Narayan and Nehru you cite towards the beginning of the book?

Exactly. JP was warning Nehru that the Congress won’t always remain in power and it was important to build certain structures that allowed a strong opposition to thrive. The Congress was as arrogant then as the BJP is now. Who are the most argumentative faces of the current regime? It’s the trolls on social media, for whom abuse has replaced analysis and arguments. Even if you consider the last NDA cabinet, it was much better than the current one. It had people like Shourie, Vajpayee, Advani, Yashwant Sinha, Jaswant Singh, George Fernandes — all people who were not Marxists, but respected scholars and artists and filmmakers. Beyond GDP growth and a nuclear arsenal, civilisation has been sustained by other things, too. I think the current regime lacks an appreciation of this.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW