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Book Review
Sovereigns or subjects?
MANNARAA? MANUDHARARA? — Collection of 34 articles published in "Dinamani" between 1998 and 2001: A. K. Venkatasubramanian; Undhunar Arakkatalai, 2/380, First Main Street, A.G.S. Colony, Kottiwakkam, Chennai-600041. Rs. 50.
THIS COLLECTION of articles, written during a three-year period for the Tamil daily Dinamani, by Mr. A. K. Venkatasubramanian, a former IAS Officer, are disquieting reflections on the existing levels of ethics and behaviour which he must have noticed from very close quarters. When Subramania Bharati, who is being repeatedly quoted by the author (along with Thiruvalluvar), as having sung that all the three hundred millions of his country (at his time and it was inclusive of today's Pakistan and Bangladesh) were its sovereigns, he could never have had the slightest idea of the levels to which its politicians and rulers would sink during the half a century after it became free.
They have all reduced the people of the country to supplicants dependent on the government instead of enthroning them as the monarchs whom Bharathi had dreamed about. It is this distressing state of affairs which has provoked the author to christen his collection as "Mannaraa? Manudharara?''
Right at the beginning, he startles us by recalling a speech made by Jawaharlal Nehru as far back as 1949 in the course of which he had said about the functioning of the erstwhile British administration as a paternalistic government ("maa-baap sircar") assuming full responsibility for the welfare of the people. (If he had really said that, it was an acknowledgement of the British Government having been very benign though this did not prevent Gandhiji from launching the freedom movement to throw it out). Nehru, as he had been quoted by the author, went on to conclude that in a democracy the people should decide what they need and how they should be ruled and the government should be there only to do its bidding.
A rare quotation from the French scholar, Alexis de Tocqueville about the scene in the U.S., where the attitude of the people is that they should be interested only in advancing their own welfare and there could be nothing wrong with the kind of means adopted for this purpose is very revealing since it suggests that popular attitudes and behaviour in India which determine political morals in India are very much the same.
Recalling the Magna Carta which King John of Britain was forced by his people to sign for giving them inalienable rights, the author says that the departments of Government should publish every year the rights which the people are entitled to and ensure that they are enforced.
What he has written in this collection of articles should fill us with gloom over the attitudes of submission among the people born out of a sense of futility over their being unable to change anything. It should also surprise many to know — since very few would have thought about it — that the country's only institution which keeps its word is the Reserve Bank of India by honouring its promise to the bearer of its currency notes of all denominations.
Among the surprises which the author would have for many including those of the older generation is about Mahatma Gandhi's awareness of the very friendly reception to the English East Company when it came to India and its ways of trading and the love which India developed for shaping India as another Britiain but without British rule. This actually filled him with despair because of the sense of dependence it had bred among the people to depend upon the government for everything and made him declare that this was not the swaraj he had in mind.
As an IAS officer, the author had a ringside view of how the government had been functioning with its public distribution system, warehousing and the marketing of foodgrains and essential articles, food subsidies, etc., and he has offered many suggestions for improvements in their performance.
His comments and suggestions on the record of political parties should leave the reader brooding over the none too encouraging scene in the country.
Before concluding this review, one is tempted to draw attention to the word "Undhunar" which would leave even many Tamil-knowing readers puzzled while trying to find out what it means. Surely a simpler and a more widely understood word could have been chosen.
CVG
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