Richard A Posner, in his classic study: “Public Intellectuals: A study of decline”, defines a public intellectual as someone who “expresses himself in a way that is accessible to the public, and the focus of his expression is on matters of general public concern of (or inflated by) a political or ideological cast”.
Arun Shourie (who embraces the BJP ideology but is certainly not a hostage to it) fits the bill as he deals in the present collection of essays, lectures and interviews, precisely with subjects of public concern — national security (terrorism), reforms and political reconstruction.
Shourie has assembled a lot of facts that relate to “terrorist attacks, internal individual liberty versus national security, judicial decisions, India’s Tibet policy, defence policy, foreign policy, economic reforms, economic policies, environment, political parties, analysis of Jaswant Singh’s book on Jinnah and analysis of him as a writer. Sadly, he is discursive in tone, weak in analysis, almost oblivious of giving a historical context and ranting on occasions (especially when it comes to Muhammad Ali Jinnah). In sum, he is more pleonastic than realistic in his assessment of events, people and personalities.
Shourie’s visceral dislike of Jinnah pops up in his treatment of Jinnah, whom he holds solely responsible for the Partition. Jaswant Singh, in his controversial book Jinnah: India-Partition-Independence, is closer to the unpalatable truth about the Partition after being confirmed in his belief that it was Jinnah’s “intractability” and constant change of positions that led to the Partition. But, “certainly Congress leaders were responsible as were the British,” he has added. And yet the jury is out on the real genesis of India’s Partition and the role of personalities involved in the freedom movement.
Arun Shourie deserves high praise for holding up values of freedom and dissent as an integral feature of democracy when he defends Jaswant Singh against the Gujarat government’s hasty ban on the book (subsequently withdrawn) and debunks the BJP’s ill-fated move to expel him from the party after its distancing from the book as totally “politically motivated as no responsible BJP leader had so much as seen the book, let alone read it”.
Therefore, it is hard to understand his splenetic ire and demotic language when it comes to demonising Jinnah. This is not to absolve Jinnah of his prime role in divvying up India nor a plea for toleration but a call for putting the event in a proper historical context.
More From This Section
Such emotionalism also clouds his judgement on China. Shourie has rightly stressed the danger of external threat to the country’s sovereignty. Chapter four details the factors. He thinks China is the main threat in near and long term. Sadly, Shourie often sounds more alarmist than realist when he deals with China and Pakistan. China is an irritant to India even as China perceives India as a nuisance in its way to becoming a “hegemon” in the East of Suez. A glimpse into China’s recent obstreperous behaviour can be found in Orville Schell’s review article “China: Humiliation & the Olympics”.
Volume 55, Number 13, August 14, 2008 (NYReview of Books). Shourie rightly observes in his piece, “India’s Tibet policy”, that “it is weakness that lies at the root”. Sadly, this miasma plagues every aspect of Indian public and political life. Shourie shows punk in dissecting hubris and hypocricy in the functioning of Indian political parties, including his own BJP.
Shourie is passionate about the nation’s security — both internal and external. That is why his patriotic fervour often gets the better of political realism. He shows how the government and the bureaucracy bungled in taking effective steps in beefing up “naval security” despite the fact that various reports had alerted the nation to the possibility of terrorist attacks “via the naval route”.
Shourie is more of a gadfly even as he is some kind of a feuilletonist, the practitioner of a journalistic genre known as a feuilleton; a discursive, personal exploration of a theme. The pieces included in the book smack of a feuilleton. It is a matter of opinion whether he has added to the “literature of fact” in the process.
The Indian state is certainly in “an internal siege”. Growing violence, lawlessness, political opportunism, vote bank politics, religious fundamentalism, growing economic inequalities and economic challenges such as inflation, unemployment and fiscal deficits, the rise of local nationalism as seen in the vociferous demand for a separate Telangana and its fallout elsewhere pose a big question mark before national integrity. He draws on a lot of literature to underline the need for the proper balance between individual liberty and the requirements of national security.
The rise of the Naxalite movement is a direct fallout from an absolutely callous and corrupt political class, indifferent and comprador elites, and possibly the worst bureaucracy in the world that is both venal and oleaginous. Is it any wonder then that India provides a fertile soil for terrorist activities?
Therefore, the anomie that grips the Indian state is very much endogenous. Exogenous factors have only abetted it. Nothing short of a ruthless surgery to the body politic is the need of the hour for the long-term survival and growth of the Indian state. The task is gruelling. But Shourie says “we must learn to eat that gruel”, after quoting Diogenes’ dialogue with a Greek philosopher. Sadly, most of us are used to soft gristles. Arun Shourie’s book, despite weak analysis and pontifical tone, is an important addition to the “literature of facts”.
WE MUST HAVE NO PRICE
National Security, Reforms, Political Reconstruction
Arun Shourie
The Indian Express Group
and Rupa & Co
ppxii+343 pages; Rs 495