Jairam Ramesh, who is fast becoming our foremost chronicler of the Indira Gandhi years, has produced a life of P.N. Haksar, her “ideological compass and moral beacon from May 1967 to January 1973, guiding her through her magnificent achievements: the nationalisation of banks, coal and oil refineries, abolition of privy purses, victory over Pakistan...” and so forth.
In telling Haksar’s story, he relies on the voluminous papers that lie in the Haksar archives at Nehru Memorial, letting him speak for himself through the documents. This has both advantages and disadvantages. The reader is brought into direct touch with primary source material and can almost hear Haksar’s voice. But the extensive documentation also crowds out commentary, analysis, and context that younger readers might have found useful.
Those difficult years
It is not easy for my generation, who lived through those years, to forget how far we have come from the times when Haksar virtually ran the government of India and guided Mrs. Gandhi’s hand on the tiller of the ship of state. Looking back, those were years of continuous crisis. Parliament was attacked by gau rakshaks in January 1966, we were short of food and lived ‘from ship to mouth’ on PL480 grain from the U.S., rupee devaluation was a political and economic disaster, the Congress party was split in slow motion and Mrs. Gandhi’s authority threatened by the Syndicate, and the Congress lost control of significant States in 1967. If the economy and internal politics were fragile, the external situation was no less challenging. A young and inexperienced prime minister was surrounded by enemies within her party and government. That she and Haksar not only survived this but put their stamp on the republic and polity for several years to come and led India out of the morass is truly remarkable. It is this historic achievement that qualifies Mrs. Gandhi as one of India’s greatest leaders and Haksar as one of our most influential civil servants ever.
It is Haksar who was responsible for the pronounced populist and leftward turn that India’s politics took between 1969 and 1973. Left to herself, I am not sure if Mrs. Gandhi would have done all that she did. Her behaviour and policy choices without Haksar suggest a far more pragmatic and centrist inclination than bank nationalisation and the 10 Point Programme. After all the AICC had approved the 10 Point Programme in mid-1967 but she only began implementing it and the Young Turks’ agenda in 1969 after she came under direct attack by the Syndicate and when they foisted Sanjeeva Reddy on her as the Presidential candidate, a move that Kamaraj later admitted was designed to prepare the way for her removal from prime ministership. She fought back with the populist leftward turn that resulted in her massive electoral victory in March 1971 on the slogan Garibi Hatao .
In terms of external policy the duo’s list of accomplishments is most impressive, since they came when the external environment was actually worsening from India’s point of view, whether with China and the U.S. coming together in 1971, or with Pakistan. Their high-point was of course the birth of Bangladesh in 1971 and the handling of the crisis.
Role of civil servants
Of course, looking back also raises several questions. One must be the role of the civil servant in a democracy. Is the ideal “committed” civil servant exemplified by Haksar, eternally loyal to his political master, or is it to be apolitical. I prefer the latter, for several reasons. Significantly, commitment prevents the civil servant from performing his real duty, to speak and argue within government for the national interest and the Constitution, leaving party interest and electoral calculation and politics to the politician. It is the politician who is elected and answerable to the people in our system, not the civil servant, and therefore the politician has the final say, but he must exercise his choice in full knowledge. That to my mind is civil service, to speak truth to power. And the good leader welcomes it. For he has, in our society, enough people to tell him what he wants to hear.
Haksar himself was a person of great personal integrity and the book has several instances of his giving fair and clear but unpalatable advice to Mrs. Gandhi on the most sensitive issues. But “committed” civil servants like him unwittingly opened the door to some of what we see today as a deterioration and politicisation of the civil services.
The other question that is increasingly raised today, in these globalised neo-liberal times, is of the wisdom of the leftward shift in Indian politics they implemented. To my mind it is unfair to judge the results of policy only with hindsight. To say today that India did better when she moved away from leftist policies does not prove what might have been in the late 60s. This is where more context in the book might have been useful for it would explain the policy choices that were available and how far Haksar’s pronounced left inclinations were responsible for the shift.
Ultimately, this biography is a tragic story, as political lives must be. Haksar lost power, his eyesight, his relationship with Mrs. Gandhi whom he had served so loyally and well, and lived long enough to see his policies repudiated. But he never lost his dignity, his integrity, his piercing intellect, and the courage of his beliefs. These, quite apart from all else that he did, justify this biography and tribute to a remarkable human being who helped to shape the India that we live in.
Intertwined Lives: P.N. Haksar and Indira Gandhi ; Jairam Ramesh, Simon & Schuster, ₹799.
