Building a merchant ship

Guest Columns by Sauvik Chakraverti,

The Newindpress on Sunday, 2007-2008

Building a merchant ship

The history of Britain offers us examples of many excellent politicians, from John Wilkes who had the London mob on his side and became Lord Mayor, to Cobden and Bright who led the nation to demand free trade. Pitt, Peel, Gladstone, Disraeli and Thatcher were all superb politicians.

In India, on the other hand, the political organisation of the Congress has thrown up great leaders, who have tended to be more in the mould of statesmen than politicians. They worked towards making the Congress strong, making the government and the bureaucracy strong, and making local politics and local politicians weak. They themselves were elected solely because of organisational support; and none of them have ever commanded a ‘body politic’. It cannot be a coincidence that, in India today, neither the president and the prime minister, nor Sonia Gandhi, are politicians.

What then is a politician? Some answers emerge from an essay entitled In Praise of Politicians, arguably the only essay of its kind, penned by Samuel McChord Crothers, who served on the British cabinet.

In the essay, dated 1915, we are informed that, in England, ‘‘politics is the national sport’’. Further, ‘‘it is pre-eminently a gentleman’s game, and success gives real distinction’’. Crothers here is referring to the debates in the House of Commons, with the ‘‘thrust and counter-thrust of keen wit’’, which ‘‘furnish entertainment for the entire kingdom’’, and that the people follow with keen interest. This is possible in England because of its compact size, but not so in the US, he says, where, because of other, local distractions, the people do not follow politics as closely. The same may be said of India, where no one watches the televised debates in the Lok Sabha, and anyone who does so is quickly horrified. We are forced to accept that copied political institutions never work.

It is here that Crothers offers hope. The politician works on a ‘body politic’ - and this is a serious function. There are therefore serious politicians who attempt the task, and there are the quacks. The problem is that ‘‘we have only one name for all those who do business on the great waters, and are unable to distinguish between the merchant and the pirate’’. It is in this sentence that the solution for liberal politics in India lies: liberals must build for themselves a great, big merchant ship. Thereafter, the pirates will be easily identified and dealt with. With their socialism, social justice, crony businessmen, public sector and trade unions, our present lot of political quacks have converted the ship of state into a pirate ship. Liberals must never get aboard that ship.

Crothers asserts the open character of politics and politicians when he reminds us that the term ‘candidate’ comes from Roman times, denoting a person who appeared in public to vie for office, wearing a loose white toga to show the candour of his nature as well as to better display scars won in battle. He goes on to add that the real politician ‘rolls his logs in public’. This must be the motto of all politics on board the merchant ship. It is, after all, to practical politics that we must turn if we are to effect the changes we desire. This will require many great politicians. Only then will these quacks beat a hasty retreat.

Crothers insists that ‘‘one who would represent a commonwealth must realise what a commonwealth is.’’ He goes on to say:

‘‘A commonwealth is not only big, but, at least in relation to its own citizens, it must be thought of as honest. Dishonesty is the attempt of a part to obtain what belongs to another part or to the whole. But it is hard to conceive of the whole as engaged in a deliberate robbery, for it has no one to rob but itself… The self-interest of a commonwealth is but interest in the common weal, and against this there is no law. We may think of a commonwealth as a huge and honest personage who means well, but has never made himself fully articulate. He manifests his more permanent ideas in laws and customs and social usages; but in dealing with the events of the passing hour, he must employ interpreters. Like Nebuchadnezzar, he has his soothsayers, and Chaldeans, and magicians to interpret his dreams. They have long been with him, and are skilled at reading his habitual thoughts. But sometimes it happens that the huge personage has a new dream and has forgotten what it was. Then he calls his soothsayers, but the wise men only shake their heads. If he will kindly describe his dream they will tell him what it means. Which learned indecision makes the huge personage very angry. So he seeks out someone who has dreams of his own, whose soul has been stirred by vague forebodings of impending change…

‘‘The hero in politics is one who has convinced the people that he possesses this higher prudence. They recognise him when he separates himself from the crowd of petty politicians, by sacrificing a small advantage that he may seize a large opportunity. He is the man they were looking for; they hail him leader, for he is the one who ‘all alone stands hugely politic.’ The master-strokes of policy have been made by such men.’’

Such a politician, Crothers adds, ‘‘must know the value and the limitation of organisation’’. This is precisely where all the ‘statesmen’ of the Congress failed. The failure of the organisation of the Indian state (the bureaucracy) closely mirrors the failure of the Congress party (another organisation) to retain its hold on the electorate. The Nehruvian dynasty could think big because they were in command of both organisations. And the electorate always delivered a verdict that made the country a ‘one party dominant system’. That age has passed, and the limits to political organisation (and therefore its command over bureaucratic organisation) have been exposed. There is sufficient scope, therefore, for genuine civic politics.

The liberal politician, knowing well the limits to organisation, must be a man of the streets, of the people, and one who ‘‘moves in magnificent masses careless of particulars’’. We in India need many such politicians on the side of liberalism. It is hoped that this essay will be of utility to them.

(The writer is the author of Antidote: Essays Against the Socialist Indian State, and its sequel, Antidote 2: For Liberal Governance)