Underbellies of Indian Polity

Winston Churchill felt that the Indian polity was not ripe enough for independence but Mahatma Gandhi pressed for swarajya nevertheless. Some fifty-five years after Atlee freed India off the British colonial yoke, what is the bottom line of the world’s largest democracy? Barring the brief aberration that was the internal emergency imposed on it by Indira Gandhi, India, has been cruising on the path of democracy. That is about the physicality of going through electoral motions but what about the cerebral quality of the Indian democratic output? The cheerleaders of the Indian democracy cite the shining examples of its electoral maturity in avenging Indira for her emergency and dumping the Janata Party for its insipid rule. Oh, how the wonderful Indian voters routinely dump the haughty in the dustbins of anti-incumbency and where else on earth does democracy shine ever so bright, and such, tend to shape the grand narrative.

Was Winston wrong then? No for doubts arose soon as the electorate tended to vote on caste lines and communal contours only to be cemented as voters, in the wake of Indira Gandhi’s assassination, swayed by emotion, swamped its 8^th Lok Sabha with Congressmen. But the clinching evidence that Churchill was doubly right came a little later. The first real test Indian democracy faced was when PV Narasimha Rao (in the picture) sought a mandate from his electorate for a second term in office. That is after he, in an amazing turnaround, ably assisted by Dr. Manmohan Singh, had not only retrieved the Nehruvian India from its License- Raj mess but also laid a new economic keel for India’s prosperous sail. That apart, with the view to be seen as the crusader against India’s entrenched corruption in the public life, he went all the way to prosecute the accursed politicos across the board political spectrum, albeit at the directive of the country’s top judiciary. But how did the Indian electorate that cries hoarse against political corruption in the higher echelons respond to his willingness to tackle it? Simply put, it paid him a deaf ear. And that was about the rank ingratitude of the Indian voters to their leader who had unshackled them from the prolonged permit period to alter India’s economic face forever for good.

By their mindless rejection of a known performer, what the Indians gave to themselves and their country was the ineffective rule of a Deve Gowda on the one hand and on the other the ugly phenomenon of Sitaram Kesari that inevitably led to the repossession of the congress party again by its dynasty-in-the-retreat, by then headed by the Italian Sonia Gandhi nee Antonia Maino. It was another matter though that Rao’s failed gambit earned him a lot of bad blood in his own party that made him run around Delhi’s courts, to clear himself of the charges of misdemeanors leveled against him; and it was a matter of satisfaction to his tormented soul that he got a clean chit before life ended it all for him in his forlorn state.

The results of the second test the Indian democracy faced are just out. Though the question was repeated, ironically, the answer remained the same, proving that the Indians did not become any wiser during the worrisome interregnum. Prime Minister Vajpayee not only stemmed the tide of the political instability at the center that the earlier electoral exercises occasioned but also broke the barriers in the hitherto neglected infrastructure development in the country. If in Narasimha Rao the country perchance found the right man for the right job at the tight time, Vajpayee worked his way to the top post by cultivating the political sagacity to handle the onerous task of coalition management in a fractured polity. Yet, the electorate thought it fit to cold-shoulder him.

What then is the truth, really? Wouldn’t the past testify to the fact that the Indian voter is more of an emotional kind than the thinking type? Take away the anger against an emergency, the jingoism of a victory, the sympathy of an assassination or the apathy against incumbency, what one gets to see that which governs the Indian voters’ ballot mind – nuclear thought. It can be said without any contradiction that the Indian voter has the ability to identify himself only with his caste, region, and religion without an iota of a notion about the notional interest. Blame it on Nehru for he only put paid to Indian nationalism perceiving it as a threat to Muslim minority’s religious-identity. And he lived long and ruled enough to stall a pan-Indian electoral chemistry to the good of the Indian democracy. The Nehruvian perversion to nurse Islamist separateness in the bosom of the residual India forever ensured its Hindu-Muslim electoral divide. Besides, he had allowed the precipitation of the electoral division of the Hindu majority, on the basis of caste and creed, for his party’s perpetual political gain. It is thus, the unsophisticated Indian voter forever fails to unhinge his franchise from the communal and casteist calculus. Also, Nehru’s inculcation of radical secular ethos in the Indian intelligentsia, nursed by wooly liberal leanings, ensured that the Hindu majority’s impulses were seen reprehensible to his idea of India.

Alternately, Hegdewar’s vision of India with Hindutva as the binding material to hold the Hindu social edifice, built with deviant caste bricks, from sundering, though impeccable, was faulty in its positioning for his concept of the Hindu social reengineering was postulated as a means to counter the perceived Muslim communal threat. Though one would have expected the Indian intelligentsia to fine-tune Hegdewar’s laudable unity of the caste-ridden Hindu society per se, the wooly intellectuals, not known for doing their homework properly, badmouthed a good idea and sought to throw out the baby with the bathwater. It would have given them an idea as how to go about it if only they had contemplated on what Swami Vivekananda had advocated - the Hindu soul in an Islamic body -  to bring about an Indianness in the hopelessly divided polity on the fracturing lines of caste, region, ethnicity, language etc. But yet, India’s shortsighted intelligentsia exploits this postural flaw (since rectified by the sangh parivar) to brand Hindutva as the communal agenda of the Hindu far right, inimical to the country’s minorities, has only steeled the Islamic fundamentalism of the Muslim Indians. It’s thus the vacuum created by the un-nationalism occasioned by Nehruvian idea of India has come to be filled by communalism, regionalism, casteism, favouritism, nepotism, corruption etc. to hurt Bharat but to benefit of mediocre.

While Nehru, blinded by his own sophism, failed to foresee the true merit in Indianness to bring about a political cohesiveness in the majority population to further the national good, neither Hegdewar nor those that subscribe to his ideology failed to dispel the misgivings of the minorities, and the majority alike, about the true intent and character of Hindutva. Be that as it may, though a well-meaning Hindutva would be beneficial to India as a whole, unfortunately, the opportunistic political class that sees electoral benefits in feeding upon the caste and communal susceptibilities of the polity pooh-poohs it, that is even after it acquired a secular tag from India’s Supreme Court. But then that suits a Lalu in Bihar and a Muluyam in U.P to ride on the Hindutva bogie in the Muslim mohallas all the while stitching their caste votes together to own 1/10^th or so of the Lok Sabha. What if more such characters emerge all over India to dominate the sub-regions of its vast terrain by caste combinations? Would ever a national policy be possible with each regional satrap catering to the interests of the caste groups of his own narrow constituency? As if the politicians are not doing enough damage, the so-called spiritual leaders like Chinna Jeeyar are spreading sectarian sentiment amongst the Hindu majority with impunity! Indeed, the British did divide India much less!

What then does Indian Verdict - 2004 mean? The claim of the Congress that it was a mandate for Sonia is understandable though the media’s seconding the same is perplexing. In fact, the media’s dubbing the party’s hold on 145 Lok Sabha seats, out of 543 elected ones, as a people’s mandate for her makes it amusing. The Indian media that never gets tired of heaping praises upon the literate Kerala voters, for once, has muted itself as the Congress came a cropper with a cipher. What did the Kerala voters convey after all? Was it not a nay to Sonia? Then, what about the much-touted Karnataka voters that supposedly differentiate an assembly ballot from the parliamentary franchise? They too would not fit in the mandate for Sonia frame for they did not echo to the Congress tune this time. If the Tamil voters were asked to raise their hands for Sonia’s ‘Hand’, how many hands would have risen but yet, all their MPs were all set to help her rule the Indian roost. The Andhra voters, rightly or wrongly, voted out the incumbent CM’s MLA-hopefuls but by turning the applecart of TDP MP’s, were they clamoring to see Sonia anointed as India’s PM? Doubt for while pressing the EVM’s Congress button in the Parliamentary booth, their ire would have been still on their CM. It’s by such hands as these that the great Indian mobocracy, sought to be glorified as the world’s largest democracy, has come to be nursed! Yet, the lengths to which Indian media goes to build the myth of India’s electoral maturity is exemplified by The Hindu’s editorial that tried to reconcile the victory of the left in Kerala and the drubbing of Sonia’s party there in the same vein as the verdict for a Secular arrangement at the centre!

Above all, as the backdoor to 7, Race Course Road was seemingly nudged open to Sonia by a quirk of fate, wonder at the gall of her backers in making bold to proclaim her ‘non-existing mandate’ to rule. It’s another matter that in the electoral arena, they all were shy to project her as the candidate for the top post. In the final analysis, the very fact that Sonia was able to dream of even grabbing India’s premier political post proves that its democratic curry lacks electoral savvy. Coupled to the caste-obsessed and faith-driven electorate, it is the Left’s ideological Hindu-hatred and the regional satraps’ survival instincts that tried to catapult her to the summit. After all, for the Indian Left that swears by Lenin and Mao, an Antonia Maino on the Indian gaddi is no abnormality. Besides, the regional overlords have to guard their own backyards in the nebulous political environment. If Mayawati ties up with Sonia, won’t Mulayam’s political citadel come crashing down in UP, and how to avert that happening but by himself joining the bandwagon, never mind his principled opposition all the while for her foreign origin. Analyse and see as the compulsions of the eager become crystal clear.

Thankfully, in the end, as it was not in independent India’s fate to suffer the ignominy of being reigned by a foreigner, President Abdul Kalam came up with a constitutional hitch to spike Sonia’s ambition to become its Prime Minister. It’s another matter though that India had to endure her decade-long anti-Hindu reign through the proxy regime of a nerve-less man and unscrupulous collaborators.

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This is the revised edition of my “Irony of Indian Polity” published in Triveni, July – Sep 2004. 

Inventory Department - Enlarged Scope for Stores Function

Materials management is about the functional integration of purchase, storage, and issues that involves planning and control of the material needs of an enterprise. Since all the three activities are independent, yet interdependent, they need to be harmonized for achieving overall functional efficiency. But the hitch lays in the halo of the purchase activity entailing glamorous prominence that the other two lack. This aberration is attributable to the functional characteristics of purchasing as well as to the positional prerogative the department enjoys in an organization.

Functionally, as the purchase activity involves interaction with willing vendors, the buyers come to occupy the centre stage of the materials management arena. Besides, the cerebral scope the purchase activity entails, which besides providing buyers the opportunity for the flourish of thought and expression in file-noting and letter writing also affords them an ego satisfaction the circulation of their signature in the same entails. Moreover, the purchase function being the nerve center of the materials activity, it provides the up-to-date overview of every aspect of the material position to the personnel manning it, thereby making it the most sought after by every other department. This apart, the working atmosphere of the purchase office, manned as such by relatively better qualified personnel, acquires an amount of sophistication, which imparts a sense of élan to the department.

But the division of work, as it exists in most organizations, merely confines the stores function to the receipt, accountal, and issue of materials, thereby making it lacking in glamour, a poor cousin of the exalted purchasing function. While in some larger organizations, the distribution, an allied function, too is brought under the purview of stores management, yet that fails to bring in any ego addition to the store-wallas. However, though co-related to the stores activities, the inventory planning and control, rarely, if ever, is integrated with the stores for the latter is either looked after by an independent entity directly reporting to the top management, generally through the production department, or is loosely associated with the purchase department.

However, the materials management relay team comprises of the inventory planning, purchasing, stores, and distribution personnel with the baton being the materials requisition. No gainsaying that every member of a relay team is as important as the rest for winning the race for the strength of the team is only equal to the weakness of its individual performers, and so are the functional efficiency quotients of various materials management aspects. Thus, it is imperative that all the four functions of the material management setup as cited above have to be rationally organized so as to achieve the desired overall efficiency to help serve the organization to its full potential.

It must be appreciated that the materials management concept is among the youngest in the managerial arena, and generally speaking, it has yet to acquire its optimal shape. Even in those organizations where the concept is put into practice, it is mostly a case of bringing the purchase and stores functions under the materials management umbrella, leaving the inventory planning and distribution outside its gamut. This is attributable, on the one hand to the lack of managers capable of handling all the four functions together and on the other to the reluctance of the top managements to take a bold, yet rational, step in reorganizing the related functions of the materials management under one department.

Be that as it may, in the present setup, functional convenience demands that the materials head has to operate from the organization’s administrative quarters. Needless to say, the purchase office too, for operational efficiency and customer convenience, is essentially positioned under his administrative wings. However, stores, for optimal serviceability, have to be invariably setup nearer to the production and servicing sections of the unit, generally away from the purchase office. This practical impediment of the stores layout distances it from the materials management hub that centers around the materials head. By the same token, the physical proximity of the purchase department to the materials head, besides its functional closeness to him, brings in its wake, a sort of emotional nearness as well. All these combine to make the purchasing activity the blue blood affair of the truly while-collared.

What with the systems and procedures having been laid out for the receipt, accountal and issues, an element of routine inevitably crops up in the stores function that is in contrast to the freshness of approach and the challenge of uncertainty associated with the purchasing work. And that makes it worse for the personnel manning the predominantly clerical nature of the stores function. Moreover, the availability or non-availability of a given material in which the stores has no role to play robs the stores job the sense of participation in inventory management. Even the routine documentation, however well designed it may be, tends the stores job to be monotonous, whereas the very nature of work lends variety to the purchasing process. Besides, as the stores personnel have to deal with materials procured by the purchase department in whose working they have no say, it, so to say, is akin to babysitting for someone else’s child.

The retention, even now, of the traditional name for this function - stores - at a time when functionally appropriate and trendy nomenclature is being adopted for various other organizational activities, in a way illustrates the general nature of neglect of this function. A traditional buyer has come to be regarded as an exalted purchase officer, a salesman is respectfully referred to as marketing executive, a factory hand assumes the designation of an operator of some sort, but a storekeeper is still a storekeeper. And this, in spite of the fact than an appropriate word – inventory - which broadly describes stores activity is available. All these factors combine to make the stores function the less attractive of the materials management activities, which tend to discourage the talented to opt for a career in it.

It is the aim of this piece to propagate the concept of an inventory department as a means of enlarged stores function so as to make it more challenging and rewarding for it to assume greater importance. Since the ego value of designations on the psyche of the individuals in an organization cannot be ignored, we shall begin by suitably re-designating various posts of the department that is after rechristening Stores as Inventory Centre. Accordingly, we shall have Inventory Manager for Stores Manager, Inventory Officer for Stores Officer, Inventory Assistant for Store Keeper, with of course, the prefixes of junior, senior etc., as per the required rungs in the departmental ladder.

That is not all as that amounts only to cosmetics. The inventory department, headed by inventory manager, under the administrative control of the materials head, should be tasked with inventory control in conjunction with the operational heads. Needless to say, as this enables the inventory to share the materials management table with the purchase manager, such a functional reorganization of the materials management would accord enhanced importance to the former. It must, however, be clarified that this is not meant to belittle the importance of the purchase function in any way, but the idea is to enlarge the stores function in its scope, content and importance.

Understandably the nucleus of the inventory department continues to be the stores, nay inventory centre, where the vital material functions of clearance receipt, inspection, accountal and issue are performed. But in order to have a coordinated control of inventory, the inventory planning and control function needs to be integrated with the inventory centre, where the basic material data is generated. Besides, giving a go by to the duplication of inventory effort in multiple departments, this measure gives an element of management aura to the inventory department, as increasingly the inventory is being monitored electronically.

Likewise, the distribution network including sub-inventory centres should be brought under inventory department for effective control and equitable utilization of the inventory. However, in organizations where multipoint material needs exist, requiring sub-inventory centres, attaching the same to the concerned departments leads to the loss of control on the integrated flow of available inventory.  This can only be avoided by bringing the sub-centres under the control of the integrated Inventory department with the necessary logistics for redistribution of materials whenever needed.

In order to remove the feeling in the inventory personnel of having no say in the selection of vendors, and to involve them in this vital aspect of the purchasing activity, vendor analysis should be brought under the purview of the Inventory department. Vendor analysis, as we know, is the scientific method of evaluating the performance of the company’s suppliers on certain parameters that are vital in judging the overall economics of a supply relationship with them. In fact, the inventory centre is well placed to carry out such an exercise as most of the required data inputs for the analysis emanate from there itself. As the suppliers list is prepared based on the vendor analysis, it thus imparts a sense of participation in the purchasing activity in the inventory personnel, and helps in   removing the feeling of ‘no say’ in the selection of vendors.

As was already discussed, there is a necessity not only to make the inventory department more wide based internally but also to accord it external exposure in some measure so as to reduce the monotony and lend variety to its functioning. Towards this end, it is desirable and indeed logical to bring in the activities connected with the follow up and expediting of the purchase orders on one hand and the settlement of the rejection cases on the other under the Inventory department. 

As it is the Inventory department which has the first ‘feel’ of the overall inventory scenery, it is better placed to decide the timing for expediting or even for rescheduling the deliveries from vendors. This dual authority imparts as much   importance in the vendors’ esteem to the Inventory personnel as traditionally is the case with the purchase personnel. This just about fulfills the ego needs of the inventory personnel without inconveniencing the vendors in any way, save an additional call on the Inventory department.

The inventory centre’s jurisdiction over the rejection cases will further enhance its importance in the eyes of the vendors, and gives rise to an equally important external PR opportunity for the Inventory department as is the case with the purchasing department. This apart, it is only but logical that the inventory centre should have an important say in dealing with the rejected material as it is the custodian of the same.

Reorganizing the inventory department on the suggested lines will go a long way in not only bringing in dynamism to the function, but also meets the esteem needs of especially the stores, nay inventory, personnel. Besides, such a move will help remove the existing imbalances between the purchase and stores functions that are heavily loaded ion favour of the former. A fair balance between the two divisions of the materials management can be achieved in this way, which results in the all round development of the function. Moreover, this way, job retention, so essential for job enrichment, can be achieved without giving rise to the feeling of discrimination in the minds of the material management personnel.

Stocktaking of Seminar Programmes

Management seminars, for long, have come to be perceived as the curative mantras of managerial ills, more so of the public sector enterprises. What with the governments too pitching in to improve their administrative functioning, the seminar halls came to be abuzz with activity and that entailed the high priests of managerial training to rub shoulders with the high and mighty. But if one thing is lacking in all this glamorous glitter, it is method. 

But to have the desired effect, even the mantras, as custom ordains us, have to be chanted with appropriate intonation as otherwise they tend to be mere syllables – rhetorical but not impactful. It is apparent that the people organizing or conducting seminars somehow fail to bring this to bear in their managerial recitals. So, the benefits that are supposed to accrue to the participants and their sponsors alike from these expensive exercises are generally not commensurate with the time and money spent on them.

Broadly speaking, the managerial seminar programmes suffer from three structural defects namely, participants’ ill-mix, theoretical orientation, and follow-up lapse that are elaborated as under.

Participants’ ill-mix

As seminars are invariably held in one metro or the other, for the participants from the remotely situated projects, it is an opportunity to breathe the city air, albeit, for a short while and for their managements, it is an opportunity to show their favour to a select few by deputing them to these training melas. What is worse, bosses tend not to disturb their day-to-day working arrangements and thus desist, wherever possible, from nominating to the seminars the vital few who shoulder the departmental burden. This short-sighted though practical approach to managing things tends to keep only the bad coins in circulation in seminar halls at the expense of the good ones. Moreover, red tape and lethargy too preclude correct selection as generally the nominating authority does not have the relevant details either of the seminar or about the participants.

So, it is not surprising that given the random selection not only are the seminar programmes thrown out of gear, but the participants also are kept out of tune with each other. This naturally inhibits programme conductors on the one hand and the participants on the other, and the whole exercise tends to lose its intended course denting its very purpose.

Theoretical Orientation

If practical constraints occasion ill-selection of the participants in a seminar, its theoretical orientation owes itself to the curriculum of convenience. The course designers tend to insert a theoretical leaf or two from all branches of managerial sciences, besides injecting a little bit of psycho-analysis into the tight schedule to make it generalistic in content and elitist in nature. Moreover, the paucity of effort to integrate the course content with the background and experience of the participants not to speak of earmarking the managerial goal to bring the best out of the exercise is palpable.

In this scenario seminar programmes are loaded heavily with bookish lectures that dwell at length upon the theoretical aspects of the subject. However, occasionally case studies, though of irrelevant backgrounds, are interspersed to bring a semblance of practical orientation. Invariably, seminars end up with exercises supposed to be based on simulated models “to help augment the analytical understanding of the participants.”

Seminar programmes, in the structural sense, are a sort of lecture highways with intermittent two-way outlets faculty - participant interaction in which the former is generally unaware of the specific work background and training of the latter, and that constrains the experts to analyse the issues affecting the seekers in their working. The so-called in-house development programmes, supposed to be designed to meet the specific training needs of an organization, are also no different either in content or character, and thus fare no better.

Follow-up Lapse  

Even before the euphoria that a seminar may generate in the participants’ mind about the need to improve their work ethos dies down, they are back in their workplace, face-to face, with the realities of its rigmarole. Soon, as managements do not have a feedback system or follow-up to assess the benefits of the exercise, even for the enthusiasts among the participants the seminar becomes a thing of the past and it is back to square one. 

It also seems to have escaped the attention of the powers that be that the only chance for bringing the seminar benefits back home is to depute the number one and number two officials of a department so that they are exposed together to the same way of thinking and operating back home. Likewise, when it comes to inter-departmental work improvement, proper participant mix has to be evolved based on the interaction levels of various officials.

Seminars can prove to be mere hackneyed exercises unless they are conceptually integrated into the working environment in a concerted manner. A radical change in the approach and execution of these essential exercises is needed to improve the professional outlook and work ethos of the participants on an ongoing basis. This can be brought about by a three-pronged but interrelated approach rooted in in-house training followed by seminar programmes to integrate the organizational working into the training grid.

Restructuring the Exercise

The first-step in making training more effective and equitable is to shift the focus from outstation seminars to in-house training programmes. This can be entrusted either to an outside agency or to the organization’s training department itself. In case an outside agency is involved, and preferably so till the in-house expertise is evolved, the assignment should be in the nature of a turnkey contract that includes the identification of the training needs of various working groups, designing training schedules, imparting appropriate on-job training where needed and monitoring the programme effectiveness in relation to set organizational goals.

It should be appreciated that any organization has its own work culture and managerial ethos. The programmes and goal setting should take this into account in formulating the training courses in a way to bolster the existing strengths and practices than seek to impose some alien systems, first rate though, that are bound to encounter employee resistance. If there is skepticism among managements about the practical utility of seminars in view of their failure to produce tangible gains, it is because the training structures are not built on this valid foundation.

It should be appreciated that any organization comprises people with varied educational and work backgrounds. Besides, their managerial awareness and professional competence vary greatly. Thus, instead of forming heterogeneous groups, by clubbing individuals indiscriminately for the purposes of training, the effort should be to constitute a homogeneous group on the basis of a similar awareness. Then suitable training programmes can be structured for these groups taking into account the representative strengths and weaknesses.

After analyzing the performance of each participant as reflected in his improved attitude and altered approach in the job situation, an assessment can be made about his future training needs. After a suitable time interval, the specific training needs of different individuals can be categorized for the second phase of training. Thus, the ongoing in-house training exercises should continue till a minimum awareness level is achieved.

When the officials acquire adequate awareness level through the in-house training methods then they should be deputed for outstation seminars to expose them to broader managerial perspectives. Once the training needs are identified, instead of embarking upon sponsors-nominating-participants route, the facilitating agency should be provided with the curriculum vitae of the prospects so that, depending upon the course curriculum and the participant mix, it can make informed choices about the intakes. This also enables the facilitating agency to nuance its courses to maximize the outcomes.

That is not all for the logical step is to integrate the organizational working into the training grid in such a way that the training becomes the means to an end, that is, organizational efficiency. A systematic training exercises and seminar programmes like the ones discussed above will enable the managements to effectively remove the grain from the bran and identify the eligible personnel to man the management edifice in various capacities well into the future.

  

Gandhi to Modi - India’s Nationalistic Quest

In his Autobiography of a Yogi, Paramahansa Yogananda, quoted Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s idea of nationalism in his own words thus:

”I call myself a nationalist but my nationalism is as wide as the universe; it embraces all nations. My nationalism includes the prosperity of all nations. I want a strong India able to transfuse its strength to other nations …. Let us look for something new; let us try the power of love and God which are the truth.”

Elsewhere, Gandhi had proclaimed that ‘loyalty to the country is always subordinate to loyalty to God’ and re-emphasized that his nationalism was ‘not exclusive’ but is of ‘intense internationalism’.

His averment that ‘nationalism is as wide as the universe’, indeed, is the upanishadic concept of vasudhaiva kutumbakam but as it does not sync with the absolutist precepts of the Semitic faiths, obviously it is of no avail to further the cause of Indian nationalism. Be that as it may, it enabled Gandhi to ascend the throne on international moral high ground that is while leaving the Indian nationalism bereft of, so to say, any space.

While his proposition, ‘my nationalism includes the prosperity of all nations’, ignored the wisdom of charity beginning at home, his reliance on ‘the power of love and God which are the truth’ failed to take into account the nature of the Abrahamaic Godhead in that while Jehovah in His Ten Commandments had ordained his believers thus:

“1. You may worship no other god than me.

      2. You shall not make yourselves any idols: no images of animals, birds, or fish.

      You must never bow or worship it in any way; for I, the Lord your God, am very

       possessive. I will not share your affection with any other God!”

And it is another matter that the self-same God, in his Quranic avatar as Allah, had turned His new favourites against not only his chosen people but also the followers of his own son, not to speak of others, thus:

“The Jews and Christians say: We are sons of Allah and His loved ones. Say: Why then doth he chastise you for your sins? Nay, ye are but mortals of His creating. He forgiveth whom He will, and chastiseth whom He will. Allah’s is the Sovereignty of the heavens and the earth and all that is between them, and unto Him is the journeying.”

“All they who disbelieve and deny our revelations, such are rightful owners of hell.”

That being the case, wonder on the ‘power of which love and which God’ was Gandhi banking upon to help his nationalism that includes the prosperity of all nations. While one can attribute this loftiness of thought, not grounded in the reality of the God, to Gandhi’s nobility of purpose, what one were to make out of his advocacy that ‘loyalty to the country is always subordinate to loyalty to God’!

It cannot be the case that Gandhi was unaware of the fact that the Muslim loyalty to Allah and the Christian affinity to Jesus, both alien to the ancient Indian ethos, is not the same thing as the Hindu loyalty to the native Rama, Krishna et al. Surely, Gandhi would have known too that the exclusivist Muslim umma and Christian fraternity alike subscribe to ‘intense internationalism’ of their creed through religious conversions in India and elsewhere, but yet, he didn’t care, at any rate seemingly so. And true to his conviction, he lent his nationalistic weight to the Khilafat movement, aka the Indian Muslim movement, post-World War I, to pressure Britain to preserve the authority of the Ottoman Sultan as Caliph of Islam, by which he had sowed the seeds, unwittingly though, of a separate homeland for the Muslims on the Indian soil.

Nevertheless, as he happened to be the philosopher-guide of Indian struggle for independence from the British colonial rule, his confusing presumptions shaped the nebulous nationalism that came to define independent India’s political axiom. While how all this turned out to be an enduring hurt to Indian national integration needs no retelling, we may examine how his wooly views came to prevail to India’s hurt.

True, India was first invaded by Muslims but yet resisted all through and then was colonized by the British but subdued only after the fall of Rani of Jhansi in 1858. So to say, this defeat in its first war of independence was more moral than mortal for India seemed to have lost its fighting spirit once and for all thereafter. Gandhi, having been born eleven years after the morale-ruining defeat, was but a product of that India’s hapless era, and understandably his call for satyagraha jelled with the nation’s psyche then. What is more, once he could galvanize the nation behind him, as his words became Vedas, so much so that his idiocies became the truths belying the nationalist concerns of Savarkar, Ambedkar and such. Amused by his idea of non-violent struggle that is alien to the spirit of their crusades, much of the West, going by the human nature, egged him to undertake that which they themselves would not do at any rate. 

But as Gandhi’s non-violent movement against British went haywire in Noakhali on the Muslim aggressive front and as he remained clueless to the Islamic ways, Muhammad Ali Jinnah was on course to gain a homeland for Indian Muslims in Pakistan. It was another matter that way back in 1937; Savarkar had stated that Congress is betraying the nation by indulging in Muslim appeasement at the cost of Hindu rights and it is better to stand in the last row of patriots than in the first row of betrayers. However, Gandhi’s brainwash of India’s Hindu majority towards his Muslim-leaning ways (he was even crazy enough to advise Hindus to smilingly die if Muslims were to kill them) can be gauged from the fact that they accepted the loss of their ancestral land to the later-day converts without a demur and bore the brunt of the post-partition riots to a fault.

Post-independence, sensing the minority Muslim votes as ready pickings for his congress party at the polling booths, Nehru had contrived to keep the Gandhian non-nationalist legacy alive as a ploy to keep the nationalist forces at bay. That Godse, a Hindu nationalist, felled Gandhi only came in handy for Nehru to malign nationalism per se to thwart the unification of the caste-ridden Hindu polity that’s the avowed aim of Indian nationalism. While Nehru and his progeny thrived politically to lord over India for better part of its independent existence, the national emotional vacuum came to be slowly but steadily came to be filled by communalism, regionalism, casteism, nepotism, favouritism and above all corruption to India’s hurt. However, things came to a nadir during the ten year proxy rule of the Italian born Sonia, when graft became the byword of political power.

When India was thinking enough was enough, came an upright Narendra Modi onto the national political stage to the cheers of the desperate electorate. And as India’s premier he too lost no time to ascend the ramparts of the Red Fort, wearing a Maharaja turban, signaling the return of the native. What with his invocation of the nation’s ancient culture at every turn and showcasing its civilizational glitter on the world stage, India began to experience a sense of itself for the first time in its living memory. Also, his robust military response to Pakistan’s nefarious terror design in the form of a surgical strike on the ground and an air attack on Balakot had bestowed upon the nation a martial sense of achievement. 

Thus, besides cleaning the corrupt public stables, as he gave it nationalism to boot, India, all again, rooted for him to march ahead on the nationalistic path. And promptly he did abrogate the vexatious Art 370 ‘n 35A of the Indian constitution to politically integrate the intransigent State of Jammu & Kashmir and that gave a fillip to the Indian nationalist sentiment as never before. Finally, as of now, he owned up Veer Savarkar and proclaimed that he was the fountainhead of Indian nationalism thereby fast tracking Indian nationalism. Surely, in India’s post-independence history, Narendra Damodardas Modi’s name would be etched in golden letters as the spearhead of Indian nationalism, and certainly he would have earned that for himself.