Of a Certain Age by Gopal Gandhi

Author:Gopal Gandhi [Gandhi, Gopalkrishna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788184755541
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2012-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

R. Venkataraman (left), then vice-president of India, at the Mughal Gardens, Rashtrapati Bhavan, awaiting the arrival of President Giani Zail Singh at a reception in honour of freedom fighters, 14 August 1985.

Today, the position is different.

‘Anyone and everyone can join politics today,’ RV rued not very long ago in a conversation with me in his sitting room in New Delhi. The day’s newspapers were on the table in front of him. ‘All he needs to do is to show enough money towards his electability, enough vote-bank numbers on his side, and he gets a ticket.’

His own electoral history was awe-inspiring. RV had fought altogether five elections to the Lok Sabha, winning four—1952, 1957, 1977 and 1980—and losing one, in 1967.

Standing for Parliament from Tanjore in the very first elections held in independent India, in 1952, RV had taken a huge risk. Was the seat selected for this Aiyar Congressman, or he for the seat, because the district had a fair number of Brahmins? Double-cropping deltaic Tanjore was tense with exploited agricultural labourers (prominently Harijan) asking for higher wages and with non-cultivating landowners (mostly Brahmin) of large paddy acreages resisting the demand by importing labour and introducing tractors. In fielding RV from radicalized Tanjore, the Congress, in classic left-of-centre idiom, was making the statement that agrarian reforms must come, but must come constitutionally.

Leading the national campaign in 1952, Nehru was a fit sixty-three. Leading the battle for votes in the state, Kamaraj was an energetic forty-nine. And touring Tanjore in bullock carts, RV was an extremely young forty-two. Already valued as an exceptionally intelligent lawyer-turned-freedom fighter with a commitment to social equity, RV was known as one who had spent two years in jail for participating in the Quit India movement, and on his release diligently having taken up with cerebral passion issues pertaining to labour.

The Congress in Madras State was in for a tough fight and, with the rest of the south, did poorly. But RV won. He won the next election to the second Lok Sabha in 1957 too, from the same seat. Resigning from it to take up Chief Minister Kamaraj’s call to join the state cabinet, the trade unionist politician with strong egalitarian views showed another mettle—economic planning—turning a state not known for industries into one that became a model for industrialization at all levels, small, medium and large. And he did that with almost zero attention being allowed to come to himself. He was a minister, a minister in Kamaraj’s cabinet and later in M. Bhaktavatsalam’s cabinet and that was that. ‘We had a big-team spirit,’ he would say of that phase. Was that spirit smart because it was good or good because it was smart? If RV was asked that, he would probably have just smiled through his thick bifocals and said ‘You decide.’

The decade—1957 to 1967—that saw Kamaraj and RV becoming a politico-administrative duo within the state also saw national politics shaken. The war with China and Nehru’s passing away had demoralized the nation.

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