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HVK Archives: All that is left of the Congress is rituals

All that is left of the Congress is rituals - The Financial Express

K Govindan Kutty ()
September 23, 1998

Title: All that is left of the Congress is rituals
Author: K Govindan Kutty
Publication: The Financial Express
Date: September 23, 1998

Introduction: The party's ills cannot be cured by a code of
ethics alone. What it also needs is a strong does of character.
In evolving a code conduct for Congressmen, AK Antony has given
primacy to wearing khadi, probably not as an ethical assertion
but as an act of binding a disparate political group by an old
ritual

As the convenor of a committee to draft a code of ethics for
Congressmen, none would have been a more appropriate choice than
AK Antony. In personal life, he has maintained high ethical
standards.

In political work, he has projected a profile of probity, never
sullied even by a flimsy charge of corruption. What he seems to
value most is his reputation for austerity and rectitude. Nothing
hurts him more than a suggestion that his ethical preoccupation
is only a show.

To crave for a reputation for rectitude and austerity at all
costs is unusual among politicians, and not merely among
Congressmen. To be really worthy of it by being steadfastly
austere and correct is almost impossible. What is impossible is
for ordinary and extraordinary partymen to rally round such a
leader.

That is precisely what has happened to Antony. A whole lot of
corrupt and ostentatious Congress workers and leaders rind it as
useful to pay tributes to his austerity and rectitude as do those
who have not had occasion to be so corrupt.

Considering how Antony's ethical posture has won acclaim from
partymen who are not quite encumbered by such lofty thoughts and
ideals, it is easy for the devil not only to quote the scripture
but even to lay it down.

Congressmen have come to be known as more corrupt than all
others. If khadi kurta was once intended to be a symbol of
simplicity, it has long been known as a cover for corruption.
Younger Congressmen, who go by the galling name of youth Congress
leaders, have given khadi no more dignity than their obese elders
by being c a in it.

For all of them to sing Antony's praise for his Fransiscan
approach to life and politics is strange. Most of them enjoy,
unlike Antony, what are generally regarded as good things of
life. It must be said in parenthesis that Antony has lately
agreed that it is not entirely unethical to eat meat and fish,
perhaps as a great concession to lesser mortals among his
partymen.

Most of them, again unlike him, do not mind owning or earning
those good things by means that are not entirely fair.

Their acceptance of Antony as a role model is, at one level,
amusing; at another level, austerity and rectitude still retain a
measure of their potency as great ideals.

Thus it is necessary to examine whether austerity should be
projected as an ideal at all in a community which has for long
been living in enforced austerity.

When Gandhi prescribed a dress for Congressmen, he was
experimenting with a way to redeem the village economy.

More importantly, he was evolving an object and a ritual, which
could form the basis of a new consciousness, around which a
national movement for freedom could revolve.

As an object and as a ritual, if not also as an instrument of
economic growth, khadi's relevance has ebbed after Gandhi.

New cloth material that is more acceptable and perhaps more
easily available has been developed. Khadi no longer inspires in
the wearer the same excitement as it did five decades ago. In the
observer, it usually inspires only distrust and contempt. Why
then prescribe it as a political uniform for reluctant
Congressmen? That is one of the major points of the code of
conduct for Congressmen drafted by a committee under Antony's
leadership.

This should be criticised for three reasons. First, India's
economy is not likely to get a great fillip at its present level
>from khadi. The paradigm of growth India has adopted does not, on
the one hand, give a pre-eminent role to khadi and, on the other,
seems to be irreversible. Secondly, most people who are asked to
don khadi are not quite happy about it. In any case, it has long
lost its politico-moral lustre.

Thirdly, wearing khadi is just a ritual and most people are not
enamoured by it. In evolving a code of conduct for Congressmen,
Antony has given primacy to wearing khadi, probably not as an
ethical assertion but as an act of binding a disparate political
group by an old ritual.

The problem with the Congress is that it has become a prisoner of
rituals, more or less like Hinduism. For instance, that
discredited cap. The Congress lives by rituals, just as it lives
by corruption.

It is all very well to formulate an ethical code of conduct, even
if it is not scrupulously followed by everyone.

That will at least help get the party's sights clear. But it will
hardly help anyone if a moralistic approach is mistaken for a
sagacious political movement.

After a century of assumed austerity and rural serenity, it is
time someone told Congressmen about the virtues of affluence and
the illusory importance of such odd things like khadi. It is good
to look forward, rather than backward, at least in matters that
concern the marginal man.

The decline began when it started forgetting the basic concerns
of the marginal man in its pathological preoccupation with power
politics. instead of the marginal man, a single individual, drawn
>from a single family, was always seen to be the driving force of
the party

The disease became deadly when octogenarians who have worked up
their way from the grassroots over a period of six decades or
more came to the conclusion that the atrophy of the party's
political faculties could be corrected only by surrendering all
authority to someone much younger, to whom the Indian ambience is
still rather unfamiliar, and whose relationship with the poor
illiterate man is one of a distant observer. No party can save
itself from moral and intellectual atrophy once it has such a
syndrome of sycophancy.

No code of conduct will suffice. It needs character.


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