THE STATE AS A CONSPIRACY?

As chief ministers go, K.Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) is in a class of his own. He is known as an effective speaker and he is a good tactician. These were factors in the success of his mission to carve Telangana out of the original Andhra Pradesh. His decision to dissolve the assembly and go for an early test at the hustings was a smart move from his point of view. He is a man of ability and therefore, if he wins, he can do much good for the country. To do that, however, he must pay attention to at least three areas where a new approach will be essential.

The first is the I-Me-Myself style in which he handles his party, the Telangana Rashtra Samiti. He is the boss of course, but flaunting bossdom reduces one's stature. He doesn't really consult any one in the party. Advancing the election was an example of this. No one knew what he was planning. Without even waiting for an election notification, he announced 105 candidates, to their surprise.

Some may interpret this as a strategic masterstroke in that he struck before the opposition parties had time to realise what was happening. But the cost of such tactics is high. When all decisions are handed down from the Abode of Shiva as it were, discontent is inevitable across the board. Protests did rise this time from a few of his followers. Critics from other parties described him as "monarch, autocrat and despot".

The second area where KCR would benefit from a new approach is his habit of extending his religious beliefs into the public domain. As Chief Minister, he boycotted the state's administrative headquarters where the chief minister's office is situated for reasons of vaastu and improper designs in terms of setbacks and exit points. He built a new vaastu-compliant home-cum-secretariat structure sprawling over one-lakh square feet of living space on a 9-acre estate costing Rs 36 crore.

There is nothing wrong in having faith in vaastu or fixing programmes as per astrological rules. But the state's treasury cannot be used to foot the expenses when a chief minister desires to "fulfil his vow" and present gold ornaments to various gods. KCR travelled with his family in helicopters and chartered flights to make his offerings. In Tirumala alone the gold offered was worth Rs 5 crore. He said of course that all expenses were met from his personal funds and bank loans.

The third area where KCR should have second thoughts is the language he uses. He recently described Rahul Gandhi as the country's "biggest buffoon". He called Chandrababu Naidu a lizard, said that Naidu had a "thief's look" and was neechaa neechamaina (meanest of the meanest) chief minister in the country. He said his party would "drag Sonia Gandhi to bazaar". And so on and on.

Such remarks do get cheap applause from street crowds. But KCR should ponder over the fact that his abuse of Sonia Gandhi met with disapproval from his own rank and file. He is a man who holds a constitutional position. In our constitutional system, even enemies call one another "The honourable" inside the legislature. By observing basic rules of decency in public discourse, a leader will only enhance his stature. Likewise, abandonment of decency will only diminish him.

There is something almost visceral about KCR's hatred of Andhra Pradesh. He was once quoted as saying that he didn't want to be associated with anything that had an Andhra lineage. This is like one of a conjoined twins saying that he doesn't want to touch the other. Not all KCR's oratorical powers and temple offerings can nullify geography. In fact he should be grateful for what he has already got. Nizam's Hyderabad comprised a piece of Maharashtra (Marathwada), a piece of Karnataka (still known as Hyderabad Karnataka) and a piece of Teluguland called Telangana. Only Telangana succeeded in becoming a state on its own. A wise leader will rejoice in this and collaborate with the conjoined twin.

The Scottish independence movement has been a powerful one for decades. There is a separate Scottish Government headed by a First Minister. But when a referendum took place four years ago, 55 percent of the population voted to remain part of the United Kingdom. Geography prevailed. KCR will become a greater leader if he realises that he has only two options -- either to accept geographical reality and cooperate with his neighbours, or prove that Tolstoy was right when he said: The state is a conspiracy.

A CROWN PRINCE WARNS THE WORLD

Saudi Arabia's attempts to play innocent in the murder of US-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi flopped from the start. Even Saudi supporter Donald Trump, initially expressed dismay and called for "severe punishment" if Khashoggi was killed. In turn Saudi Arabia's effective ruler Mohammad bin Salman (MbS) threatened to "respond to any action with a bigger one".

Threats will not erase the damage already suffered by MbS and his country. Revulsion across the world at Khashoggi's disappearance in the Saudi Embassy in Istanbul led to protests by a number of independent agencies. A prestige MbS project, Vision 2030, suddenly saw many of its sponsors pulling out, among them World Bank, New York Times, Financial Times, The Economist, CNN, LA Times, Huffington Post, Viacom, JP Morgan, Ford. The Economist rubbed it in by underlining MbS's "brutish handling of even mild critics" and saying that his regime has started "to resemble an Arab nationalist dictatorship".

According to officials in Turkey, Khashoggi was done in by a 15-man Saudi squad, his body cut up and disposed of. The world believed the horror story because it fitted into the profile the Saudi power-wielder had acquired in just a couple of years. A liberal gesture here and there -- like allowing women to drive cars in the country -- did not hide the dictatorial streak in him. Quite a few fellow royals and business leaders have been imprisoned. Some have fled. Dozens of activists and writers have been arrested and tortured.

The war in Yemen, a one-man decision by him, is still going on, described by the UN as "the world's worst humanitarian crisis". Equally clumsy was the blunder of trying to boycott Qatar simply because it wouldn't declare Iran as an enemy. The biggest show of arrogance was the "arrest" of Lebanon's prime minister on a visit to Jeddah in 2017. That was part of MbS's idea of keeping Lebanon under his control.

When a German minister referred to Saudi war in Yemen as "adventurism", MbS went into a rage, recalled the ambassador to Berlin and closed down German trade deals with Saudis. The loss of business forced Germany to go down on its knees. When Canada's foreign minister tweeted for the release of human rights activists in Saudi Arabia, the Canadian ambassador was expelled, Saudi flights to Canada were shut down and Saudi students in Canada were asked to return.

This kind of over-reaction raised the question whether MbS, even as he sits on a powerful throne, is suffering from an insecurity complex. Perhaps he is haunted by the fact that he is an out-of-turn promotee in the royal hierarchy. Perhaps he is also bothered by the thought that the notion of "royalty" itself belongs to the past, especially after the Arab Spring saw anti-government uprisings and armed rebellions across the Middle East in 2011.

The Saudi royal family was not royal to begin with. Founder Ibn Saud was a tribal sheikh who was driven out of his home base in the Riyadh area of the peninsula in 1890. It took him a decade of fighting to subdue the tribes around his lost territory and another decade to consolidate his position. He turned out to be a master of political intrigue. He struck deals with the British, a prominent presence in the area at the time, and entered into an agreement with the fundamentalist religious doctrine of Wahabism thereby gaining a powerful, if controversial, pillar of support and a leadership position in the propagation of Islam.

Ibn Saud was considered an affable man with an undisguised talent to enjoy life. He visited India in 1955 and won a lot of hearts by distributing bundles of currency notes to passersby. He had a famous meeting with US President Roosevelt on an American warship near the Mediterranean. The King went on board with not only bodyguards, cooks and slaves but also astrologers, a fortune teller and some sheep. He told a British official rather lightheartedly that he had "married no fewer than 135 virgins". He had 43 acknowledged sons and 55 daughters. People liked him.

People don't seem to like Mohammed bin Salman. His tendency to be a law unto himself marked him out as a leader other countries were cautious about. Khashoggi's disappearance merely brought out the world's reservations about him in sharper focus. Saudi authorities have been busy with inquiries which no doubt will absolve them of any responsibility in the murder. But the world is unlikely to be impressed. MbS has lost more than he has gained.

HAKSAR FILES. WHAT ABOUT OTHERS?

History lies hidden in government files. Hidden because, while modern democracies declassify records after a reasonably brief period of time, India sits on them, sometimes for ever. Occasionally a gold mine of files falls into the hands of a creative mind and we see a glittering universe of information opening up in front of us. That is what has happened in Intertwined Lives: P.N.Haksar and Indira Gandhi. It must be author Jairam Ramesh's connections in Delhi as a member of that rare species, the thinking politician, that led him to the gold mine of unpublished manuscripts, official memos, letters, notes and other archival material related to P.N.Haksar. Let providence be praised.

Don't be put off by the dull and uninviting cover of this big book because, inside, every page bristles with valuable historical information. It's like Haksar has collaborated with Ramesh to publish this vital book. Although his name appears as the author of the book, Ramesh has chosen for the most part to stay in the background, like the director of a play, invisible. At best he can be called the editor of the material in his hands.

Why has the other collaborator remained relatively unknown all these years despite being, as these pages reveal, one of the shapers of India in the class of Jawaharlal Nehru? (An obituary writer called him the "last of the Nehruvians"). Because he was a civil servant? Because, as he once said, "I lack the strong ego to follow the footsteps of my very dear friend B.K.Nehru" and write an autobiography?

Haksar's contributions outweigh those of his very dear friends. Indira Gandhi picked him, an old family friend, soon after she became prime minister in 1967 and he stayed with her till 1973. Those were tumultuous years with Haksar's imprint on them. His memo on the Congress Party enabled Indira to assume supremacy over her rivals with the famous Congress split of 1969. It was Haksar, once a Communist and always a socialist, who masterminded such policy decisions as the abolition of privy purses, the nationalisation of banks, of coal, of oil refineries and of general insurance. He also played a central role in the development of relations with Iran, Bangladesh and China.

It is clear that Indira Gandhi's best years were the years when she trusted Haksar and implemented his ideas. Debates will continue on the socialism of the public sector policy she followed, but no one can deny that those years moulded India and gave it a mindset that survives to this day.

The main reason, perhaps, was that he was not always acting as a Marxist or socialist. He was a universalist, speaking English, Hindi, Urdu and Persian and a bit of Bengali, French and German as well. He was a scholar and connoisseur of art. He was ready to put human values above ideologies. When Pather Panchali was initially banned from screening abroad because it showed up Indian poverty, Haksar complained to Nehru and liberated Satyajit Ray. Ritwik Ghatak was chosen for Padma Shri in 1970 but the Home Ministry wanted to cancel it after the irrepressible Ghatak made some nasty remarks about Mahatma Gandhi. Haksar wrote in the file: "Human history is full of examples of artists of genius living in destitution and penury because they cannot compromise their art with the vulgarity of public taste... Shri Ghatak alternates between moments of sanity and long periods of insanity... Can anyone say that Shri Ghatak's words have diminished in any way the stature of the person against who he used such atrocious language?... If a man says something which he knoweth not, God forgive him, but man, his creature, cannot".

Haksar also played a formative role in science and research by putting men like Satish Dhawan, Homi Sethna and M.S.Swaminathan in leadership positions.He himself became, after he left Indira, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission and the first Chancellor of the Jawaharlal Nehru University. Splendid institution-building by a splendid visionary who laid some of India's foundation stones.

He died a disillusioned man. That phase began when he showed the courage to advise Indira against her profligate son Sanjay. Indira turned out to be all mother while Haksar was all commonsense, all patriot. Indira paid for her mistake. History applauded Haksar. The thought lingers: If these files have thrown so much light on so many big issues, what about the files by/on other prime ministerial alter egos -- M.O.Mathai, Kanti Desai, R.K.Dhawan, Quoattrochi, Chandraswamy, Brajesh Mishra? Gold mines waiting for the attention of thinking politicians.

JUDGES, RETIREMENT AND JUSTICE

Chief Justices come and Chief Justices go, but the going of Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra has been somewhat historic. He was, for example, the first CJI to face an impeachment petition. He was the first and only CJI against whom four senior judges not only had complaints but publicly expressed them by calling a press conference. This sensational spectacle took place only this January and the impeachment move was as recent as April, just six months ago. But in these few short months, Chief Justice Misra's image went through a transformation and he retired in what looked like a blaze of glory.

What happened? Was the impeachment move a political act by the Congress because Justice Misra was seen to be siding with the BJP? Did he side with the BJP? Did he come out in his last few months with historic judgements in order to retrieve his reputation? Was he out to prove that his critics were small-minded.

No one can belittle the importance of the judgements that stand out as markers of Justice Misra's career. In 1993 he dared to confirm the death sentence on Yakub Memon in the Mumbai bomb blast case and faced death threats as a result. He had also made passive euthanasia a reality by allowing "living wills." Then came, in his final days, rulings that provided constitutional space to the LGBT community, decriminalised adultery, allowed women to go to Sabarimala.

These are social subjects with little political importance. Judges can take their stand on them without worrying about their political ramifications. But two other topics on which the Misra bench pronounced verdicts are politically sensitive -- Aadhar and Ayodhya. The verdicts on these have not fetched universal applause. Aadhar has made all kinds of data about citizens available to all kinds of institutions as well as the Government. The judgement has struck out a few heads but allowed data under other heads to remain. Nor has there been any relief on the vast data already made available. What the judgement achieved was to give the impression of a progressive approach without in any way abridging the Government's ability to use/misuse the data on citizens. It is, shall we say, a careful and clever judgement, not a people-oriented one.

Ditto with Ayodhya. The ruling was that it is not essential for Muslims to have a mosque for them to pray. They can by tradition pray anywhere. (That is true. They can even spread a mat on a shop floor and do namaz. But when they tried to pray in the open in Gurgao in April they had police protection but that didn't prevent "activists" from appearing and causing tension while dispersing them.) The unwritten message in the judgement is that there is no real necessity for a new Babri Masjid to be constructed at Ayodhya. That in turn means of course that there is no real impediment for a new Ram temple to be constructed at the site. Again, careful and clever.

The balance sheet is that the Dipak Misra court gave out a cluster of progressive judgements in which the ruling dispensation was not all that interested, but turned mindful of the power elite in the two cases which had a political dimension. In those two cases the verdict could only have made the party in power happy.

Did that have anything to do with the Bar Council of India passing a formal resolution on the eve of Justice Misra's retirement asking him not to accept any government assignment after retirement at least for two years? This is a recurring issue. Great judges like J.S.Verma set examples by staying retired after retirement. Chief Justice R.M.Lodha said on his retirement day that no judge should take a post-retirement government job or constitutional office. But Lodha's successor P. Sathasivam walked from the Supreme Court straight to the Raj Bhavan in Kerala. Like the earlier CJI K.G.Balakrishnan, Sathasivam said there was nothing wrong in taking up the job. Critics said it was a quid pro quo with BJP boss Amit Shah.

Arun Jaitley put in best when he said, "Pre-retirement judgements are influenced by a desire for a post-retirement job." But that was in 2012 when he was Leader of the Opposition. Now that he is in power, his vision is not as clear as before. So, will Balakrishnan-Sathasivam kind of expediency win, or Verma-Lodha kind of integrity? What we know is that Justice Dipak Misra's post-retirement moves will be keenly watched. Which is a good thing for the country.

A REVOLUTIONARY TURN IN RSS ?

Imagine the Pope criticising Jesus Christ. If that is too ecclesiastical, imagine Sitaram Yechury rewriting Karl Marx. Actually we cannot imagine either because the catholic church and the Communist Party are rule-bound doctrinaire establishments that do not brook deviations. So is the RSS. Therefore, technically, we cannot imagine Mohan Bhagwat going against the tenets of M.S.Golwalkar, as sacrosanct in the RSS universe as K. B.Hedgewar.

Yet it happened. In his eleventh year as the acclaimed supremo of the RSS, Mohan Bhagwat said that The Bunch of Thoughts, the Golwalkar book that has been the Gita-Bible-Koran of RSS cadres, was not to be taken seriously today. Those thoughts pertained to a particular context and need not be considered as eternally valid. Times change and accordingly our thoughts, too, must change. Hedgewar himself had said, Bhagwat reminded his people, that we are free to adapt to times as they change.

Bhagwat did not stop with Golwalkar. In the course of a three-day lecture series in Delhi he decimated many Holy Cows of the RSS. When Hindutvavadis had been declaring that they would re-write the Constitution to fit into Deen Dayal Upadhyaya's vision of Dharmarajya, Bhagwat said: "The Sangh works after accepting the primacy of the Constitution and we respect it fully". No reference here to the BJP's standing objections to the words 'secular' and 'socialist' in the Constitution.

Bhagwat also rejected a view expressed by BJP boss Amit Shah whose capacity to make coarse statements has been harming the country internally and internationally. Shah's call for a "Congress-mukt Bharat" had become notorious because it actually meant an opposition-mukt Bharat lying at the feet of a monopolistic BJP. Bhagwat said: "We are for all-inclusive Bharat, we are not about mukt". He even complimented the Congress which had "many great personalities who sacrificed their lives and who still inspire us".

The concept of Hindutva, too, was revised by Bhagwat. Savarkar who had coined the word Hindutva was clear that Hindu Rashtra should be peopled by only those who descended from Hindu culture. Bhagwat turned that theory on its head and said: "Hindu Rashtra does not mean that there is no place for Muslims. If it is said that Muslims cannot stay in India, it won't be Hindutva any more". From the same chair Bhagwat now occupies, Golwalkar had referred to the "hostility and murderous mood" of Muslims and declared: "Foreign races must lose their separate existence to merge in the Hindu race. Otherwise they may stay in the country wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, deserving no privileges".

What is going on? How can the RSS head move so far away from the positions his predecessors had taken? Bhagwat is by no means a lesser RSS ideologue. Therefore there must be a reason for him to discard old orthodoxies and embark on a course that looks reasonable, fair, progressive and populist.

The explanation most people will accept is that Mohan Bhagwat is merely softening the RSS-BJP's image at election time. Fringe groups like Bhajrang Dal and Sri Ram Sene run amok hurting BJP's voter appeal. Although the RSS helped the VHP to create Bhajrang Dal as a bunch of street fighters in the run-up to the Ayodhya movement, Bhajrangis had become an embarrassment and the RSS's attempt to wrest back control of VHP and Bhajrang Dal did not really succeed. Is Bhagwat giving a message that these groups must be checked, that steps must be taken to remove the impression that lynchers have tacit government backing? It may be too much to hope that Bhagwat also wanted to send a signal to Amit Shah. For all his excesses, Shah is building a grassroots network the RSS always wanted the BJP to do.

So is Bhagwat's new stance a genuine attempt to discard the RSS's image as a hidebound, overly religious, intolerant and ultimately coldblooded ideological outfit and recast it in a more acceptable garb suited to the modern age? The farce of India's HRD Minister rejecting Darwin's theory and the Science Minister saying that Vedic theory was superior to E = mc2 has made India a laughing stock among educated people. That such neanderthals, unknown to the public before, became ministers of the Republic of India did no good to either the Modi Government or the RSS. If the RSS chief is making an attempt to save his flock from the fossilised minds wearing the Hindu cap, it would be a service to the nation. But can even Mohan Bhagwat get rid of the medievalists in his camp?