By S.Narendra
Former
Information Adviser to PM, Principal Information Officer
to
Government and Spokesperson
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(Political
communication is the oxygen of democracy like India. It can sustain political
institutions of a parliamentary democracy and empower the people as its
responsible participants, as demonstrated by the first generation of leaders
of independent India. India became a Republic on January 26th
1950. In a formal sense, the nation embarked on a new political journey that
was bound to be marked by electoral battles and power politics. The leading
lights of the freedom movement, who can be regarded as the founders of the
new nation had donned the role of ageing guardians who were in a hurry to secure the
hard won freedom by ringing it with
political institutions, appropriate political conventions and traditions. There
were both open and covert political contests among them and honest
ideological schisms. The national movement called the INC had become a
political party in quest of power. This formidable monolith was showing faint
signs of cracking. This process had unleashed political communication of many
hues.... Read on --- the third installment)
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The
world’s longest written Constitution was a done deal, and India became a
Republic on 26th January 1956. Unlike the contemporary new constitution
of Japan, (known as Gen. McArthur’s constitution) this document, debated with
much passion and light, was a totally an Indian product. Soon after, the Constituent
Assembly had converted itself into an interim Parliament and transacted some
momentous legislative business. From the political communication angle, the RPA
or the Representation of The People’s Act set the rules for the conduct of
first elections in early 1952 and provided the platform for the functioning of
the political parties and their political communication.
Another
piece of most remarkable but highly controversial draft legislation was the
Hindu Code Bill. This was a daring social reform attempt that touched literally
a holy cow -the customary Hindu Law. Remarkably, it was spear-headed by two
Brahmin leaders -Nehru and Rajaji - and a dalit Dr.B.R.Ambedkar. The heat
generated by this attempt to deal with the Hindu marriage, inheritance, status
of women raised as storm of protest from inside, led by the president of the Interim parliament Rajendra Prasad and Sardar Patel.
Outside, the orthodox priests, scholars and Hindu organisations cried foul. The
RSS (banned in the wake of Gandhiji’s assassination) and the Hindu Mahasabha
took up the fight to the streets. The Muslims became apprehensive over demands
for a uniform civil code in place of a Hindu Code. There were public protests and effigies of Nehru were burnt.
In
the end, the prime minister gave in to the chorus of protest and the Bill could
not become the Law. A disillusioned Dr.Ambedkar, the most brilliant law
minister India ever had, quit the government and later formed his own Scheduled Castes Federation, thus marking the
launch of political communication from the dalit aspect. It is another story
that the new parliament constituted after the general elections once again took
up the Hindu Code Bill, but it was broken up into several legislations mainly
to soften the opposition aroused by the earlier
comprehensive Bill. There was robust debate and finally the
legislations were passed. The first President of India Dr.Rajendra Prasad had
toyed with the idea of withholding his assent to the Bills. The newspapers dutifully
reported the disagreement between the government and the President but did not
take sides. And finally, Dr.Prasad, did not press his disagreement further and
signed the Bill, making it into a historic
social reform Act.
A
moot point to ponder in this context is
whether such a law treading on
the religious sentiments would have gone
through peacefully if India of those times had 24x7 TV news channels. The short
notable point was that the instruments of mediated political communication were
rudimentary.
The Election and Political Education:
Aptly described by foreign media as India’s biggest gamble, the first general
elections held in early 1952 were unprecedented in its scale of operations.
Over the years, the poll operations have only grown in size, complexity ,noise
and colour. The poll process and the campaign have themselves turned into the
medium and the message of political communication.
Only
looking at the official logistical arrangements made then (1952), there were
unique communication elements for overcoming
the prevailing mass illiteracy (85%) and even the absence of
communication infrastructure. The political parties were assigned unique
symbols for identification by voters to overcome the problem of illiterary. Unlike
the present elections, there were individual ballot boxes for each party with
its symbol. The very fact that at present Voting machine have replaced the
ballot box itself shows the long democratic stride India has made. The Election
Commission produced AV or audio-visual communication in the form of documentary
films for educating the voters on how to exercise their ballots. The radio
valiantly tried to supplement but its reach was limited. From the time of its setting up, the
Commission took almost one year to prepare for the polls. The mobilisation of the general government staff such as
teachers, clerks and other government
staff and training them in conducting
free and fair elections was another gigantic communication input.
The
political campaign adopted the communication methods, such as rallies, and
public address, tried and tested during the freedom movement. People thronged
to hear their heroes of the movement. The prime minister, who had by then
wrested the Congress presidentship, led the campaign not just on behalf of his
INC but for rallying the people behind the ballot box. The vigour of the opposition
campaign could not be quelled by Nehru and INC juggernaut, as could be seen by
the election results.
While
‘historians record the fact that Nehru’s Congress won a two-thirds majority in
a House of 525 members, they failed to recognise the significance of the opposition winning more than 100 plus seats against severe odds.
It was not a walk-over for INC, that speaks volumes for the effectiveness of
political communication from the opposition parties.
The
first general elections was held when there was no Gandhi or Sardar Patel. They both passed away. Patel
had out-manoeuvred Nehru on two crucial occasions. The first was in getting
Dr.Rajendra Prasad elected as the first President of India. The prime minister’s
wanted to nominate C.Rajagopalachari (Rajaji). Before Nehru could recover from
this set back, both Patel and Dr.Prasad
got their nominee –Purushottam Das Tandon-elected as the Congress
president at AICC session at Bangalore. The prime minister was more than upset
by this choice, as he considered the new party president as a traditional
conservative.
Contrast
this with the AICC session held at the same venue almost 20 years later (1969),
when Indira Gandhi was the prime minister. Following the 1969 AICC session, there
were daily attacks against the Congress president and her supporters like Kamaraj, Morarji Desai, S.K.Patil,
A.P.Jain and others (branded as Syndicate), and counter attacks. There were
mid-night media leaks of letters exchanged by the rival factions in order to
gain prominence in the morning newspapers. Unlike Nehru who conceded the
presidentship of India to Dr.Prasad, Mrs Gandhi chose to put up her own
candidate, V.V.Giri in opposition to the party nomiee-Neelam Sanjeev Reddy. This was the first and last
time (thus far), the election to the office of the president of India generated
not only political heat but exchange of polemics by proxies working for the
rival candidates. The media chose to be part of this partisan war. On the daily
newspapers front, the Patriot (started by left party stalwarts like Aruna Asaf
Ali,Sripad Dange) batted for V.V Giri and the Indian Express took up
the cause of the other side. The Bombay based tabloid weeklies like the Blitz
of Rusi Karanjia and the Current edited by the redoubtable D.F
Karaka battled it out, spitting much venom. Mrs Gandhi after getting Giri to
Rastrapati Bhavan, also split the party.
In
contrast, Indira’s father bid his time and made the party president’ s tenure
so difficult that the latter was forced to
resign. Patel was not around and Dr.Rajendra Prasad as the president of
the country could not intervene. Nehru assumed the party presidentship before
the general elections. From the political communication point of view, it was a
very strategic move by the prime minister, as he became the biggest vote
catcher for INC. A political commentator wryly remarked that ‘even a lamp- post
could get elected, if it stood for election under the INC banner’.
The
prime minister Nehru undertook a whirl wind campaign (that could matched by his daughter during the 1971
campaign and a comparable effort that comes to mind is that of Narendra Modi
election campaign of 2013-14) covering almost 24,000 miles. Rarely the prime
minister attacked other political parties or their leaders. Of course, at that
stage of India’s politics, Nehru need not have had to attack his rivals. Most
of them were his comrades in INC until recently. The prime minister was
essentially engaged in selling his dream of India, as a nation anxious to put
its poverty and illiteracy behind through the magic wand of centralised
planning and destined to play a leading role on the world stage. The media
followed the prime minister everywhere and every word he uttered was printed,
faithfully. As mentioned by the historian Ramachandra Guha, a scribe compared
Nehru’s election campaign to that of Samudra Gupta’s (patriarch of Gupta
dynasty) campaign for conquest.
A
little before the elections, a few new parties took birth. Except the CPI
or the Communist
party, all others including the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS)
were founded by ex–Congress leaders. The Communists had established a strong
base in Telangana, that had witnessed much violence. As they were perceived to
have sided with the British rule, their image was not very positive. Senior
leaders of the Congress such as Jayaprakash Narain, J.B.Kripalani left INC to
form their own socialist parties, as they felt that Nehru was not sufficiently
socialist in his economic thinking. Shyama Prasad Mukherji of West Bengal broke
away to found the BJS. At the state level also the INC faced dissensions as there were political tussels
for power. Although the birth of new parties was triggered by personality clashes,
the political communication that emanated
during this period was devoid of
personal attacks. No one questioned each
other’s integrity or sincerity of purpose.
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| The author sunarendra@gmail.com |
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How I got the
scoop on Gandhi’s assassination!
I received
severe spankings from my mother. As an eight year old boy, I used to play
football (with used Tennis balls) with my friends in a park near our house in
Mysore. We used to see older boys and men gathering near our play area and
hoist a flag every evening.
After hoisting the flag, they would engage in
vigorous exercises that used to end with a chorus of songs. Before dispersing
some of them would come to meet our foot-ball team and spend time in telling
us stories of Shivaji, Rana Pratap, and tales from Ramayana and Mahabharata.
On some festival days they would distribute candies.
On
the evening of Janruay 29th, this group of men sat with us for a
while and distributed Laddoos. We heard from them that Gandhiji will be no
more. As I returned home, I told my mother, who was fond of telling me
stories about Gandhiji (we had a big picture of him in our drawing room) that
I heard Gandhiji will be no more. She instantaneously
began to beat me and admonished me not to say inauspicious things. I received
more beating the next day when my brother rushed home around 6’O clock and
informed my mother about Gandhiji’s assassination.
On
hindsight, I keep wondering as to how the news of a plot to kill Gandhiji
could have travelled all the way to Mysore. Or was it a political
communication of another kind!
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Morarji Desai &
the Art of Silence as Communication
From
July 14th to 19th 1969 evening, I was at No.5 Rajendraq Prasad
Road, the residence of Morarji Desai, then Deputy prime minister and finance minister.
I was his information officer and was asked to be present at his house from
morning to till late in the evening for media relations. On the 14th
afternoon, PTI flashed that the prime minister had relieved Morarji Desai of
his finance portfolio. Without wasting any time Desai got into his private
car and drove home.
The
media persons, some of the biggest names in contemporary journalism, would
visit Morarji Desai throughout the day. All of them would bring latest news
of some personal attack against him or the other from the prime minister’s camp and expected
Moraji Desai to react. His standard response was:’ I have nothing to say.If some
has attacked me, please ask them the reason for it’.
He
would receive every journalist warmly, speak to each one but refrained from making
any adverse comments.
Desai
also said: ‘it is the prime minister’s prerogative to appoint ministers. So
also her prerogative to remove them’.
He
called me to his room and thanked me and instructed me not to continue my
vigil at his house, as he was no longer in government.
(From Desai’s residence, I rushed to the office of the
Economic Affairs Secretary Dr.I.G.Patel to get a briefing on bank
nationalisation that followed. That is
a separate story)
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