Mayank Chhaya Daily

Sardar Patel : A leader at the heart of the world’s largest democracy

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (Photo: http://photodivision.gov.in/waterMarkdetails.asp?id=11604.jpg

Today marks the 142th birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. It is only appropriate that I republish a piece I had written on this day in 2014 for The Indian Diaspora and IANS wire to coincide with his 139th birth anniversary.

The piece should give you a flavor about an extraordinary life, unrivaled in modern world history in many ways, of a characteristically understated and yet unshakably firm leader.

By Mayank Chhaya

There was once a time, not too long ago in historical terms, that there may not have been India as it exists today but a fractious collection of nearly 600 princely states. If a nation-state called India emerged in 1947 from the staggering ruins of close to 200 years of colonial plunder, to a significant extent the credit settles on one man - Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.

Described by The New York Times as "leather tough", Patel, whose 139th birth anniversary is celebrated today, is in the midst of a major national revival. For someone on whom fell the enormous task of nation-building and political regeneration, Patel has for decades remained in the towering shadows of Mohandas Gandhi on the one hand and Jawaharlal Nehru on the other, "the father of the nation" and the first prime minister respectively of India.

In recent years, there has been growing popular awareness and eminently justifiable celebration of the defining role that Patel played in bringing together sometimes vain, sometimes egotistic, sometimes deluded and almost always utterly self-absorbed rulers of 565 princely states to join the Indian union. A country of some 300 million in 1947, impoverished by two centuries of brutal colonial exploitation and torn asunder by religious and cultural bloodletting, it needed the quietly firm and unassailable resolve of Patel to re-emerge. Patel had to use a combination of statecraft, flattery, coercion and whatever else he was required to muster to forge a nation-state out of what by the time the colonial British rule ended in India was, for want of a better word, a bloody mess.

Vallabhbhai Patel was an extraordinary figure sandwiched between Gandhi's lofty stubbornness and Nehru's urbane western-influenced liberalism. Although closer in age to Gandhi (he was six years younger than Gandhi), for many history has cast Patel as an implacable adversary of Nehru, who was 14 years his junior. There is really no comparable figure in modern world history to Patel simply because there has not been anyone anywhere who was at the center of uniting an undefined geographical entity claimed in pieces by 565 self-serving princes, satraps and kings whose loyalties swung between their self-aggrandizement and crafty but obliging colonial masters.

Born in Nadiad in Gujarat, Patel's early education was split between three nearby towns of Nadiad, Petlad and Borsad. It was his early exposure to an unsettled life to which his tough, no nonsense and in some ways even dour demeanor may be attributed. He rose to study law in London, topping his class at the Middle Temple Inn. On his return to India he chose to practice law in Ahmedabad and became a top barrister.

It was Gandhi's return from South Africa and his extensive tours throughout India rallying the people around the cause of independence that drew Patel into public life. Eventually, he forsook his Britain-influenced lifestyle, including English clothes, for a wholly Indian outlook as defined by Gandhi. Early on, Gandhi saw in Patel a quietly steely resolve and the eagerness to get down to the task of firing up the grassroots. His rise as one of a handful of luminaries of India's independence movement was not necessarily meteoric but steady and solid.

It was a measure of Patel's personality that both Gandhi and Nehru had extremely high praise for him despite the fact that he often diverged from the former's saintly renunciation and the latter's aristocratic urgency. Gandhi called him a colleague who was "most trustworthy, staunch and brave", while Nehru called him "the builder and consolidator of India...a great captain of our forces in the struggle for freedom...a tower of strength that revived wavering hearts". By all accounts, Patel was an equal member of the Gandhi-Nehru-Patel triumvirate in his lifetime unlike the often unfounded assertions to the contrary by new generations of politically dogmatic Indians.

There have been frequent speculations about how different India might have turned out had Gandhi chosen Patel over Nehru to be India's first prime minister but many historians have pointed out that being a near contemporary of Gandhi, he never really saw himself in that role. By the time India became independent and a union of states, the latter thanks in very large measure to Patel, he was already 72 years old compared to Nehru's 58. Patel died Dec 15, 1950, barely a year after it became an independent republic by adopting a constitution Jan 26. Patel was among key players in the Constituent Assembly of India tasked with framing the constitution. If of all the illustrious leaders of the day, there was someone who was a completely hands-on, nuts and bolts figure, it was Patel.

Although Patel was very much in the tradition of pre-independence open-minded consensus man, his views on the formation of Pakistan, the division of Kashmir and generally the question of how to unify the country's Muslim minority were at serious variance with a disillusioned Gandhi and impatient Nehru. Patel was known have taken a characteristically unemotional view of the country's partition and, unlike Nehru, who was for a collective national effort to make Muslims want to stay in India, Patel was in favor of leaving it to individual choice.

It was this approach that has in recent years particularly endeared him to India's political right symbolized by the now ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and its several cultural offshoots. Even before he became prime minister, Narendra Modi, as the chief minister of Gujarat state, had cleared plans to build a 597 feet high statue of Vallabhbhai Patel at the cost of close to $500 million. The construction of the statue is scheduled to begin to coincide with the leader's birth anniversary today.

Although he was deputy prime minister and home minister, Patel was by a wide consensus the man who was involved in every aspect of nation-building. As someone who chaired committees dealing with the rights of the minorities and tribes, fundamental rights and provincial constitutions, Patel was at the very heart of creating a nation-state that is now the world's largest democracy. If Nehru was the articulator of a grand vision of India as a new democracy, Patel was the executor of that idea from so many different and often conflicting vantage points.

He was unflinchingly loyal to Gandhi, often at the expense of his own ideas of operative politics. It was that loyalty to Gandhi's idea of India that Patel, despite his enormous and, in many ways, greater capabilities than Nehru that he chose the role as a behind-the-scenes man. His forging of the Indian union alone guarantees him a permanent position among the country's pantheon but he also happens to have shaped India's destiny in so many diverse but quantifiable ways that he remains without peer.

Some observations about President Xi Jinping’s address

Purely in superficial visual terms the fact that China’s political building infrastructure looks shining new and its top leaders look well-scrubbed feeds into the growing perception of the country’s rise vis-à-vis America’s decline on the world stage.

Both the country and its ruling elite do look the part as those claiming their share of primacy over world affairs from the United States. Some of that may have to do with visual regimentation of regimental political cultures but it is undeniable that Beijing does look the part now.

Add to that what President Xi Jinping said about Beijing’s role in the world and you get a clear sense of the country unapologetically claiming a prime perch internationally. "This is an era that will see China move closer to the center of the world and make more contributions to humankind," he told the 19th Communist Party Congress. on October 18.

He took care of to hedge it a bit by saying that China will not exercise hegemony or expansion over any country "no matter what stage of development it reaches".

"We endeavor to uphold international fairness and justice, and oppose acts that impose one's will on others or interfere in the internal affairs of others as well as the practice of the strong bullying the weak," he said.

A significant dimension to this ambitious approach was what Xi said about climate change, an issue that is as global as any issue can ever get.

“Taking the driving seat in international cooperation to respond to climate change, China has become an important participant, contributor, and torchbearer in the global endeavor for ecological civilization. Any harm we inflict on nature will eventually return to haunt us,” he said in direct contrast to the kind of revisionist and unscientific political bombast one hears in Washington these days about this issue.

Of course, one must resist the temptation of being taken in by the grandiosity of the vision as necessitated by the largeness of the occasion—namely the 19th Communist Party Congress—even while acknowledging the bare facts of China’s global rise as a serious counter to America. That it coincides with the seeming shriveling up of America under the Trump Administration is something that is not lost on the international community.

One prime reason why the Chinese model of global influence could expand quickly is because it comes shorn of moralizing about the importance of participatory democracy with fundamental human rights being its main defining feature. From what one has observed in the way China goes about making its influence felt globally it is clear that its primary purpose is economic and not political even though one of the main consequences of that approach may be significant political impact. Not interfering in the internal affairs of others and avoiding “the practice of the strong bullying the weak” are in keeping with Beijing’s way of claiming its share of primacy.

It is well aware that it cannot replicate the gung-ho reformatory spirit that America has used over the past seven decades because that is just not China’s style. Theirs is a more measured, generational approach to life.

India needs to watch this consolidation closely because it is the only other country in terms of its demographic heft and economic potential that can balance China’s influence. It is a fact that New Delhi is nowhere close to becoming an encompassing power in the league of China as things stand right now. It has never been India’s ambition to present itself as a rival global power center. That may be mainly because it is saddled with such grave existential challenges within its own borders as well as also because that has not been India’s civilizational temperament. Notwithstanding, it would be unwise for New Delhi to helplessly cede that space to Beijing.

Books do get read

It has been ten years since the publication of ‘Dalai Lama: Man, Monk, Mystic’. So far it has been published in over 20 languages and has presumably sold in reasonable numbers.

Although the royalties from the book’s various editions did sustain my family for about four years from 2007,they have now almost completely dried up with an occasional check in tens of dollars showing up. So I was pleasantly surprised this morning to read a brief review of the book in The Seymour Telegraph of Australia.

The review by Lee Stephenson was published just a couple of days ago.  “It is impossible to really understand the man’s mysticism from a Western perspective, and particularly if one is not a Buddhist, but it makes fascinating, sometimes difficult, reading,” Stephenson writes.

The review is a happy reminder that the written word is invariably read sooner or later by someone or the other. Admittedly, this is a low bar to keep for a writer but that’s the way I feel about anything that I write. Of course, my biography has over the years prompted several reviews and interviews. While a majority has been positive, there have been some readers who have described it “dreadful” and “disappointing”.

As I prepare to issue an updated edition with four new chapters soon—titled The Dénouement—the piece in The Seymour Telegraph, which serves the residents of Seymour, Nagambie, Avenel and surrounds since the 1890s, tells me that books do enjoy some longevity.

Weird ways to store and recall visual memory

Countryside--MC

The extent and quality of visual retention/memory have always fascinated me. When my brain stores a visual memory, there is always a particular hook around which this bit is cached. It is possible that that is true of many of us.

What happened yesterday is a compelling instance of my point. I started the digital painting above impulsively. Although I began with the sky I had two bits of strong visual memory that predominated my recollection of having seen it before. One was the yellowish landscape and, more prominently, a blue bar or axle of a horse carriage. After I finished the work in about half an hour, my brain began to make demands on me about the original source of the painting.

I had a vague recollection that I had seen it on Google Arts & Culture but did not remember when and who it was by. There was no way I could have searched any more intelligently than via keywords such as “yellow landscape”. Rather than wracking (or is it racking?) my brain, I decided not to actively look for it. Instead I revisited the works of Claude Monet.

‘At Templestove’ by Sir Arthur Ernest Streeton (1889)

Quite serendipitously, while clicking through individual Monet works, I found some works by a pioneering Australian Impressionist painter Arthur Ernest Streeton. A quick glance at the panel of his works triggered a sharper recollection that perhaps there was something there. A few seconds later, I came upon his 1889 oil on canvas titled ‘At Templestove’. I let out a whistle when I saw it because this was the very painting whose memory had been stored away in my brain sometime ago.

Sure enough, the predominant color is yellow and there is indeed a blue bar/axle under a horse carriage. More than anything else, I felt relieved at having found the deeply subconscious inspiration.

One reason why I had a vague recollection of having seen it before is because a majority of my landscapes—say some 95%—are imaginary. The ones that I either try to consciously copy to sharpen my skills or subconsciously recreate are rather few.

Streeton was quite a remarkable painter whose works do give you a clear sense of being Australian in terms of their light and scale.

Monet on mind

Grainstack--MC

Claude Monet has been on my mind this morning no apparent reason. So let’s do with these two tributes of mine to the great master.

Sunset-bridge--MC

Some observations of President Trump’s maiden China visit

President Xi Jinping’s Mao Zedong-level enshrinement by the Communist Party lends a remarkable dynamic to Sino-US relations barely two weeks before President Donald Trump undertakes his first official visit to Beijing on November 8.

The U.S. president has expressed his own admiration for Xi’s exaltation via Twitter as well as comments in a news interview. “Spoke to President Xi of China to congratulate him on his extraordinary elevation. Also discussed NoKo & trade, two very important subjects!” he said in a tweet yesterday. He followed it up saying, “Melania and I look forward to being with President Xi & Madame Peng Liyuan in China in two weeks for what will hopefully be a historic trip!”

Then in an interview with Fox Business Network anchor Lou Dobbs, he said of President Xi, “He’s a powerful man. Now some people might call him the King of China – but he’s called president.”

From all available indications Trump himself may not be averse to exaltation in the league of Xi if that were possible in America. Absent that he is left with admiring a fellow leader enjoying that coveted status from a distance.

The expectations of “a historic trip” could mean two very different things for Trump and Xi. For the former it may mean a flattering news cycle while for the latter the calculation would be in terms of generations as is the case with Chinese thinking. The two operate on very different timelines.

It is not my case that Xi would be immune to some sanguine praise from a U.S. president because on the heels of his historic elevation at the 19th National Congress of his party, it can only help him with the domestic audience. However, unlike Trump, who might be thinking in terms of his presidency, the Chinese tend to think in centuries. It would be foolish to think that the Chinese president would be taken in by Trump’s fulsome praise even if it gladdens his heart for a short time.

I am not sure how far the Chinese may be willing to go to make the trip “historic”. They are aware that the U.S. president needs it to be historic more than their president.

The three-day visit would be an interesting one to watch for the concessions that Trump and Xi might be willing to make. North Korea will be the nuclear elephant in the room, of course, but Trump would very much like to add a strong economic dimension to it which would seem to favor America for the benefit of his core political constituency.

With some luck, the Chinese might even honor him with a visit to the Great Wall with some sense of irony.

Some observations about Xi Jinping, China and Communist Party

Xi by MC

My knowledge about China’s Communist Party is admittedly derivative, shallow and perfunctory. But even I know enough to say that President Xi Jinping has consolidated his control over the party and therefore his country even more at the end of the 19th National Congress.

As widely reported by the media President Xi has become only the third Chinese leader after Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping to be in the communist pantheon of figures whose “thoughts” have been enshrined in the party’s constitution.

Watching the ceremony in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People as Xi introduced six other members of the politburo standing committee the painter in me was awakened. The result is the digital artwork above. Although the seven men are roughly of the same physical stature, it was unmistakable of who was first among not-so-equals.

Apart from Xi Jinping, the other six are Li Keqiang, Li Zhanshu, Han Zheng, Zhao Leji, Wang Yang,and Wang Huning. The fact that all seven men are 60 and older has been interpreted to mean that Xi has avoided naming a successor to him. By the time Xi’s second five-year-term ends in 2022, none of the other six would be young enough to take over as the successor for the next ten years. Hence the clear signal that no successor has been named.

As Tom Phillips of The Guardian reported, “Such is the secrecy that cloaks Chinese politics that the identities of the standing committee’s incoming members were known only as Xi escorted them out onto a scarlet-carpeted stage.”

Xi’s intentions for the next term and perhaps well beyond were clear when he said this, “We should never entertain the idea of taking a breather or halting our steps. Instead, we must continue to rid ourselves of any virus that erodes the party’s fabric, make great efforts to foster a healthy political environment of integrity and generate waves of positive energy throughout our party which can build into a mighty nationwide force driving China’s development and progress.”

He is now seen as the most powerful leader since Mao. While that is manifestly true, what is more important is the complete sway of the Communist Party over Chinese polity. Interestingly, it was during Xi’s second term that the party will celebrate the 100th anniversary of its founding in 2021.

Although apart from Mao and Xi Deng Xiaoping too has had the distinction of being enshrined in the party charter as ‘Deng Xiaoping Theory’, in his case the honor came after his death. Mao was enshrined during his lifetime, quite like Xi. What this also demonstrates is the Communist Party’s comfort with singular leaders.

From many indicators this approach of cult-like reverence appears to have worked in China’s context. The question is whether it is healthy for some 1.3 billion people in terms of individualism. That is, of course, a question for the people of China and not an ordinary journalist like me to debate. I still do it because I can.

From my limited interest from the prism of what Xi’s consolidation might mean for the future of Tibet, I can safely say that it will be more of the same.

I continue to marvel at how such a mass of humanity—1.3 billion in China’s case—can broadly remain in thrall of essentially a single individual. Of course, the power equations with the Communist Party are way more complex and broad-based than what my simplistic description suggests. However in the ways it matters the singular person of Xi Jinping does tower above the rest as my artwork shows.

That all seven politburo grandees are men is striking and deeply troubling but nothing at all can be done about that other than by the people of China.

Stephen Hawking’s 1966 thesis breaks the Internet, sort of

Stephen Hawking pictured with Isaac Newton's own annotated copy of Principia Mathematica. Credit: Graham CopeKoga/Cambridge University Library

As a rule, scientists, especially pure theoretical physicists, do not achieve stardom. The first exception was Albert Einstein. Stephen Hawking has been his worthy successor. Perhaps not to the same degree but just as those who do not concern themselves with physics would broadly know about Einstein, they also know about Hawking.

So it is hardly surprising that his 1966 doctoral thesis titled ‘Properties of Expanding Universes’, which was released by Cambridge University as part of its open access repository, Apollo, has caused a veritable physics rush. The Guardian reported that the only scramble to freely download the thesis was so much that the university’s website crashed.

Some 60,000 downloads occurred in 24 hours, according to a university spokesperson. Professor Hawking has been quoted as saying, “Anyone, anywhere in the world should have free, unhindered access to not just my research, but to the research of every great and enquiring mind across the spectrum of human understanding.”

“Each generation stands on the shoulders of those who have gone before them, just as I did as a young PhD student in Cambridge, inspired by the work of Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell and Albert Einstein. It’s wonderful to hear how many people have already shown an interest in downloading my thesis – hopefully they won’t be disappointed now that they finally have access to it!” he said.

The Guardian reported that the thesis consider “implications and consequences of the expansion of the universe, and its conclusions include that galaxies cannot be formed through the growth of perturbations that were initially small.”

I tried accessing the thesis this morning but could not. I will try again after a few days when the frenzy has subsided.I am curious to read Prof. Hawking’s take on expanding universes.

Quick memories of Phoolan Devi

Phoolan Devi (A frame from the documentary ‘Phoolan’)

Being a journalist I have led a tangential life. It is in the nature of the profession that one forms many tangents. ‘A Tangential Life’ is in fact the title of my upcoming memoirs whenever they come up; if at all they do.

Speaking of tangents, I chanced upon the trailer of a documentary about Phoolan Devi, one of India’s most written about and in some quarters even celebrated bandits. Subjected to the grotesque cruelties of India’s notorious caste system, including repeated rape, Devi rebelled against the social order with spectacular violence as a bandit leader before renouncing that life and becoming a Member of Parliament, only to be assassinated in July 25, 2001.

My tangent with Devi occurred sometime in 1995 at her home in New Delhi when I interviewed her for India Abroad, the New York-based weekly, and India Abroad News Service. Watching the trailer, memories of my encounter with her came back. Two things had struck me immediately—her petit body and piercing eyes. Hers were the eyes of someone who had been watchful for a very long time. Her gaze was that of someone who sensed an impending danger and hence measured anyone who came into contact with her.

Although she had long renounced the life of banditry and violence by the time I met her, she told me she sensed everyday that she would be killed. Some six years after that meeting she was assassinated.

Directed by documentary filmmaker Hossein Martin Fazeli, ‘Phoolan’ is in the process of raising funds via a Kikctstarter campaign.

“What excites me most about Phoolan is the opportunity to explore the resilience of human spirit in the face of incredible odds. This is an issue that is close to my heart. What makes people rise above their circumstances? What message can such as act give to tens of millions of people around the world who are denied dignity on daily basis? How empowering can such an act be?” Fazeli says in director’s statement.

“Despite being born to an environment of extreme poverty and abuse, Phoolan Devi refused to be silenced into a life of subordination. She fought back and demanded to be counted. As a result of her sense of justice and uncompromising demand for respect, she eventually prevailed against forces far more powerful than she was,” he says.

In her conversation with me, Devi spoke of her gang rape with both seething rage as well as detachment. She told me she asked her attackers to kill her but they did not. Throughout the interview she appeared to size me up but looked at my wife Kesumi, who had accompanied me out of curiosity,with amiability. I suspect the presence of another woman helped put Devi at ease somewhat.

I vividly remember thinking how razor sharp she was despite her ordeal and subsequent life of extraordinary violence. She also said she was conscious that while she may have renounced violence her antagonists had not. “Kabhi na kabhi mar denge (They will kill me some day),” was how she had described it.

Her killing came nearly 18 years after she surrendered in 1983. When you consider that she had led a life of extraordinary brutality and violence by the time she was just 19 (She was born in 1963), you begin to get a measure of her life.

I look forward to watching the documentary.

Two sunsets

That’s all for today.