The Coup India Missed: A Political Quest through the Fantasies of Statecraft

By Lt. Col. K. Gopinathan

We are drawn irresistibly into the book as obstinate Indian politicians challenge the intrepid Baba to fight elections and enter Parliament to enact his anti-corruption law. The people of India pick up the gauntlet and in the General Elections that follow, they catapult his greenhorn political party into power. Baba appoints a maverick politician, Professor Murthy, as Prime Minister, to lead the country.

Under Murthy, the country sees revolutionary change, both to its economy, as well as its political structure. An amended Constitution brings in the Presidential form of government. The revamped education sector becomes the driving force of the country’s socio-economic renaissance. India becomes a developed country with a potent military and world presence. As Pakistan-sponsored terrorism continues to hurt Kashmir, the Indian armed forces move in to bring the RAW-incited freedom struggle to its logical end. Baluchistan, Sindh and the Pakhtunkhwa, become independent countries. The world applauds as the cradle of terrorism is destroyed forever.

A book that reflects the ideas that live in the minds of Indian citizens, like grass seeds sown by the wind..

• Language: English
• Publisher: One Point Six Technologies Pvt Ltd
• Release date: May 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9789352019038

Lt. Col. K. Gopinathan

Kozhikot Gopinathan, a Masters in Economics from the University of Jabalpur, is a retired Lieutenant Colonel of the Indian Army. During his 27 years high-octane career as a commissioned officer with the Regiment of Artillery, he saw action during the 1971 Indo-Pak War, and the botched peace-keeping operations in Sri Lanka. His three tenures in the Himalayas ignited his inherent poetic traits, adding magic to soldiering in the rugged mountains. On retirement, he settled in God’s Own Country, where he has pursued his passion for writing. Gopinathan is a keen observer of the murky Indian political panorama and finds it difficult to remain a passive spectator while self-seeking politicians and bureaucrats exploit a gullible public. In The Coup India Missed, his first book, he shares his thoughts on how to challenge the deep-rooted perversity in Indian polity.

Book preview

1

THE INDIAN PERSPECTIVE

The military takeovers in Pakistan, Myanmar and Bangladesh sent shock waves down the supple spines of the Indian political class and bureaucracy. Would the Indian military brass get ideas from what was happening in the immediate neighbourhood? After all, the armed forces of these countries belonged to the same British stock, so their genotypes could not be very different. There was nothing to stop the Indian Generals from emulating their power-hungry counterparts. Would there be major political upheavals in the country, military or otherwise, bloody or bloodless?

To ward off any military adventure, the Indian politico-bureaucracy played on two fronts – through overhyped propaganda, they pushed the esteem of the armed forces high on the pedestal of patriotism, and on the flip side, ingeniously degraded their social standing vis-a-vis their civilian counterparts. The Indian politico-bureaucracy excelled in playing such contradictory strategies, to the detriment of the nation’s security. ‘Cut them to size,’ was the unspoken buzzword of post-independent administration. Through cleverly structured administrative tools, they guillotined the career of those who demonstrated any intellectual propensity or political worth, foreclosing their quest to top military leadership.

They earnestly believed what right-wing French politician, Le Pen had said: ‘If you sleep through democracy, you wake up in dictatorship’ and zealously kept awake, guarding their version of democracy. The subjugation of national security to political expediency and bureaucratic narcissism led to the great Himalayan Blunder of 1962, which gifted thousands of square kilometres of the motherland to China on a platter. Even in this ramshackle rout, they saw opportunity to further tighten bureaucratic control over the defeated and demoralised military.

In living room conversations, enlightened Indian society discussed the better aspects of military dictatorship in the neighbourhood and felt such a system could perhaps bring some order to the politically and administratively befouled country. Intelligence inputs, which suggested that mis-governance had pushed a large section of society to think admiringly about military dictatorship, unnerved the politicians and bureaucrats.

In that moment of fearful fibrillation, the politicians and bureaucrats forgot that if the military had any idea of taking over political power in the country, it would have happened when popular Generals were at the helm and some undesirable events and issues were festering in the public mind. The military’s loyalty to the Indian Constitution, which they had sworn to uphold when they stepped into the armed forces, and their obsession with not sullying one of the finest fighting machines in the world with politics and its concomitant evils, forbade any such ideas from implanting themselves in the military psyche. The suggestion that one of the factors for lifting the Emergency in the seventies was the armed force’s advice to the political leadership to stick to constitutional norms, reinforced the army’s commitment to the Constitution, and its faith in democracy. So the blessed Indian citizenry never woke to the rumblings of tanks and gunfire in the streets, as the people of the neighbouring countries did. If it had happened, Indian democracy would have lost its last bastion.

The pig-headed politico-bureaucratic nexus, in their obsession to ward off military takeover, forgot the larger constituency – the people – who, in a democracy, had a more potent weapon than the military – their votes. The rulers blithely overlooked the deep socio-economic inequities that had crept into society during more than six decades of maladministration. The convoluted and pathetic justice delivery system, the constantly turbulent law-and-order situation, accentuated by terrorism, and an irresponsible mass media, were deep fault lines that could lead to tectonic political quakes. These were the harbingers of regime change, which, depending on the proponents, could be peaceful or violent. The disappointed and disillusioned people of India would have welcomed either.

Shoddy implementation of the utopian political agenda the country had adopted since independence, had failed to deliver on the dreams of millions of middle and lower-middle class Indians, who constituted 65 percent of the population. India would change when this sleeping giant finally woke. More than half a century of ineffectual administration had set the fuse on fire.

2

THE GREAT INDIAN POLITICAL COUP

26 JANUARY 1950

India was celebrating its first Republic Day. The entire country was on a roll. The people had cast off the last vestiges of colonial rule as well as the Government of India Act 1935, under cover of which the British had lorded over the natives. A new Indian Constitution was in place. Celebrations in the national capital were subdued, befitting a lingering colonial hangover; in glaring contrast to the ceremonial military bash that was later to become the norm on Raj Path.

In the holy city of Varanasi, it was a double whammy for the Brahmin couple whose first child was born on this eventful day in the history of the nation. Going forward, this baby boy would reinvent the very essence of the freedom the country was celebrating on the day of his birth. Dedicating their newborn to the presiding deity of the holy city, Shiv Narayan Chaturvedi, a Mathematics teacher in the Government High School in the suburbs of Varanasi, and Kamala, a simple homemaker, named him Shankar Narayan Chaturvedi.

Shankar Chaturvedi followed the footsteps of his father and studied Mathematics in Benares Hindu University. In keeping with family tradition, he landed a teacher’s job in the Government Primary School in Rampur, a backward village about 100 kilometres east of Varanasi. But Shankar was not content to stand between his starry-eyed students and the easel. He considered teachers to be social reformers. They had a job inside and outside the classroom.

He took it upon himself to transform nondescript, backward Rampur into a forward-looking, vibrant and modern village in rural India. He emphasised proper education to get rid of exploitative social practices and beliefs, self-reliance through rural development and setting right the upturned social equity. His successful model of social activism was emulated by others in the country and caught the attention of the international community.

His long journey as a social scientist had been rough and tough, but intellectually gratifying and spiritually rewarding. His outstanding contributions to society fetched him many laurels. Recognising his services in Rampur and its surrounding villages, the President of India honoured the intrepid reformer with the Padma Shri. Two years later, the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership came in search of him. Shankar became a very well-known personality in India and abroad for his selfless humanitarian service. He attended numerous international conferences on social backwardness and undertook lecture tours in the Far East, Europe and America.

In the early 2000s, Shankar gave up his teaching job and immersed himself full time in social service. An ardent social worker, heading a couple of successful NGOs, Shankar understood that to take on pervasive ignorance, deep-rooted sloth, and mass hunger in society, the size and strength of an organisation mattered. He worked towards bringing likeminded NGOs onto a single platform that could make organised social work a potent force to fight entrenched and repugnant social evils.

India’s squalor and backwardness attracted a large number of national and international NGOs, both genuine and spurious, for large scale humanitarian work. Shankar identified a few genuine indigenous organisations, met their Heads, and fraternized with their humanitarian activities. Each of these NGOs was active in its chosen fields, that varied from livelihood concerns of marginalised sections, healthcare, environmental degradation, child abuse, to women’s empowerment. He advocated the need to synergise their efforts and brought many NGOs in the country under an umbrella organisation named Voice of People or VOP. Through this newfound organization, the philanthropist fought for human rights, civil liberties, and launched a nationwide crusade against corruption.

VOP argued that like the right to life and liberty enshrined in the Constitution, the people’s right to know about the actions and inactions of the Government system was also an intrinsic fundamental right of the citizen. Through intense street agitations, intellectual discourses in the media, PILs in courts, and lobbying in the corridors of power, VOP was able to persuade a few State Governments to pass a Right to Know legislation. After prolonged procrastination, the Union Government gazetted the Right to Information Act (RTI) in 2005. This was VOP’s first major political achievement.

By the time he turned sixty, the weather-beaten sexagenarian sported a graceful salt-and-pepper beard, and well-kempt long grey hair. With a laptop slung across his body, denim trousers, and knee length jubbah, he looked like a modern digital guru. This saintly-looking, erudite and obdurate social scientist was full of fire and had an insatiable hunger to fight for the poor and downtrodden. His clear understanding of Indian aspirations and the ease with which he related to the dreams of the masses, earned him the unremitting respect of the people, who began addressing him as Shankar Baba, which time abridged to just Baba.

With the mighty RTI sword in its scabbard, VOP became more confident and strident. They stepped on the pedal – a comprehensive anti-corruption legislation. Despite the prolonged hunger strikes, peaceful agitations across the country, moral and material support from Indians abroad, VOP could not get the anti-corruption legislation enacted by Parliament. The political class stuck to the stance that in a democratic regime, proposing legislation was the exclusive prerogative of the elected members, and no one from the ringside could dictate to them. The political Lilliputians threw down the gauntlet, challenging VOP to choose the electoral route into Parliament if they wanted to bring in legislation.

Cutting across political philosophies, if at all they had any, the entire political class scorned VOP’s demand for anti-corruption legislation. The moneybag-controlled media also questioned the legitimacy of VOP, a conglomeration of nondescript NGOs, to demand such legislation. Further aggravating the gloom, ‘presstitutes’ spread the canard that the agitations across the country were losing momentum. This sowed doubt in the minds of civil activists, and the intensity and passion of the popular movement wilted. Disenchantment percolated into the minds of supporters of the enthusiastic campaigners. However, the pan-India spread of the agitation, and the unprecedented public turnout at the agitation venues, indicated the movement had the overwhelming support of the common people. The civil society leadership refused to cow down to media disinformation and misinformation, and decided to fight it out in the people’s court.

In May 2012, to take stock of the situation, the Executive Committee of VOP met at Baba’s ashram, on the banks of the Ganges, in Varanasi. The social scientists never had any intention of entering politics, but now decided to take up the gauntlet flung at them by the mainstream political parties. The Executive Committee, the apex body of VOP, decided to enter the murky waters of politics. Circumstances pushed these virtuous social workers into the game polluted by dirty gamers.

VOP metamorphosed into a political movement to fight the plethora of social, economic, and political evils which had robbed the common man of his right to a decent livelihood, human dignity, personal security, and a sense of belonging, and most of all, a sense of pride. In keeping with its purpose to revamp the socio-economic and political environment in the country, they named the new political movement National Resurgent Party or Rashtriya Punarudhaan Sangh. It became known by the simple acronym, RPS.

On the banks of the holiest of the rivers, in the same city where Baba was born sixty-two years before, a new political Party was born. A new contender had arrived to grab the crowded political space in the country. There were nearly two thousand registered political parties in India, promoting the personal agenda of a single person or that of a few. About one fourth of them never contested elections because they were in the arena for economic self-promotion. Now here was a new political Party, formed by dedicated nationalists and committed social workers, with the sole aim of meaningfully serving the people.

Birth is the first step in cosmic life, human, animal or an organisation. Nurturing made it into a full-fledged, self-exerting, independent entity. This needed time, resources, and effort. But RPS had to mature into a unified robust institution in a very short span of time; elections were just a couple of years away – the barometer that would test its acceptability among the people.

In fact, the Party was not new born. It already existed on the horizon as a group of non-political entities fighting for social causes dear to the people. The birth had already taken place years ago, when the NGOs that constituted the Party, gave birth to their ideas to serve the people. But this conglomeration of many vibrant NGOs, who had focussed on different social themes, and worked in different verticals, lacked homogeneity. Baba and the executive committee members concentrated on a seamless integration of the different social perceptions into a homogenous and aggressive political movement.

They needed reorientation and refocusing, to break away from their stance as conservative NGOs. They had to transform into a full-fledged political movement with all the trappings of an Indian political Party. However, RPS could ill afford to ignore its core human sensitivity and sincerity of purpose, which was the hallmark of the constituent NGOs. It had to assimilate the sophistry and resilience of a mature political outfit. RPS’s commitment to social service was intrinsic, reflected in the ethos and working of its members. With sincerity, dedication, selflessness and nationalism, the Party workers sought to obtain for India an exalted place in the comity of nations.

Baba endeared himself to the people with his sincere and selfless approach to the main issues they faced. Once he put on political attire, the weathercock media extolled his courage in taking up the cudgels against well-entrenched politicians, a headstrong bureaucracy, and bloodsucking business czars. Baba believed religion and politics had their own domains in society, which should never be mixed, and distanced himself from religious and spiritual leaders. He was no atheist, but considered religion a private affair, to be practiced in privacy.

The unfathomable strength behind him included an array of dedicated social workers, legal luminaries, famous writers, educationists, retired defence personnel, former bureaucrats, police officers, journalists, senior business executives, and above all, the hearts and minds of the disillusioned middle and lower-middle class. The Indian diaspora abroad pinned great hope on his commitment to setting right the Indian polity and gave him their unstinted support.

RPS found it difficult to get through the high-flying media who preferred the established and super-rich political parties who liberally feasted them with advertisements. Baba and his core group had to depend on the few independent print and visual media, to propagate their thoughts to the people. They wrote extensively in newspapers and magazines, and often their opinions attracted controversies that led to wide, welcome debates. Members of the executive committee communicated the thoughts of the Party to the electorate in the vernacular they understood. In a newspaper article, Baba discussed the undying urge in man to exploit his fellow humans, and spoke of the need for compassion towards the underprivileged, women, and children.

‘Physical, mental and emotional exploitation of the weak is a complex human behavioural pattern, and is as old as civilisation,’ he wrote. ‘Even in a backward village like Rampur, I witnessed how agricultural landowners exploited the poor, and how the poor labourers organised themselves and held the landowners to ransom during the critical phases of cropping. The strong exploited the weak at will, while the weak had to organise and time their retaliation. Human craftiness kept the seesaw game of exploitation going.’ He discussed the role NGOs could play in reducing such human conflicts, as he could do in Rampur.

In another newspaper article, Baba wrote: ‘All humans come from the panchabhutha, the five elements the world is composed of – Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Space. Once life departs the body, it goes back to the same elements. All humans have the same features; the blood that runs in their veins is the same red; everyone is born after nine months of gestation. They have the same five external senses – sight, sound, touch, smell and taste, laugh in joy and cry in sadness. Everyone dies when breath stops. What then is the basis of the differential treatments of humans when we all belonged to the same stock? Why should we discriminate people as lower and upper caste?’

Penning his thoughts, Hare Krishna Sastry, the retired Supreme Court Judge and a member of Baba’s core group, wrote in Bharat Tomorrow: ‘Man is just one of those myriads of animals that roam this planet. He stands out from the rest because nature has blessed him with ‘common sense’. He is expected to use it for his own and society’s betterment. Nature did not bestow common sense on other animals. Had it done so, man would perhaps have had better models to emulate.’

The Hon’ble Judge continued: ‘Through common sense, man is able to understand the repercussions of his actions and inactions. The intensity of these perceptions is not the same for all, though they follow a general trend. According to situations and circumstances, human intellect gives perceptions various meanings and importance, and this has led to conflicts in society. To soften the rough edges, societies nominated or elected fellow citizens, or the physically strongest suo moto took charge, and made laws under which they would be governed. This was the origin of modern constitutions.

Most citizens followed the laws of the land, but some always found it difficult to fall in line. The tumults we see in our everyday life are the reflections of such conflicts. Governments, elected or otherwise, are mandated to ensure compliance with the law by every citizen, fairly and squarely. Whenever they have failed to do this, people have protested and revolted.

Our country is currently in the throes of such uncertainty. Elected Governments have forgotten their cardinal duty towards the citizens, and are deeply involved in sloth and sleaze. To remain in power, the Heads of Government have compromised their integrity and looked the other way as cronies pillaged the exchequer and looted the people. Across the spectrum, politicians, bureaucrats and the super-rich, have fleeced the people. If the country did not revolt under such circumstances, history will record this generation as being ineffectual zombies,’ concluded the legal luminary.

In another fortnightly tabloid, Meghana Pandit, an active social worker and core committee member, blamed some politicians for having hijacked the electoral system and eroded democracy. ‘Politics is the ballgame the super-rich play with pliable politicians. National and regional political parties collect thousands of crores of rupees for election purposes. Business magnates even set up shell companies to launder the ill-gotten wealth of politicians. Nobody bothers to find out from where this money came and where it went. Political parties would love the people to believe these are petty contributions from Party sympathisers and the public. The truth is these are well thought out investments by selfish businesspersons and criminals as rent-seeking, who, post elections, demand favourable policy frameworks and lucrative contracts and licences. They spread their dragnet intelligently to land copious catches. Political parties win or lose, but these manipulative fishermen always won. After the elections, candidates file sham statements of accounts with the Election Commission to complete the legal formalities. Everybody is happy with it. But the RPS will not allow this to go on. We will make sure such statements of accounts are scrutinised for authenticity, and the people responsible for inappropriate bookkeeping punished.’

In a much-publicised TV interview, Baba was asked what he considered the biggest problem the country faced.

Baba: Just go to the streets and ask the common man this question. His cryptic reply will be ‘corruption’. This English word has kept the Indian dream away from its people.

Interviewer: Corruption is a universal phenomenon, but in India it is alleged to be part of its culture. Your comments, Sir?

Baba: The word ‘corruption’ has wider connotations. It is morally degrading and a great spiritual incongruity. Of course, corruption happens all over the world. It exists even in modern societies such as Europe, America and Japan, but their laws deal harshly with such cases, and the people severely punish defaulting politicians at the hustings. There corruptions usually take place in the higher echelons of society. Irritating petty corruptions, as we experience in our day-to-day life here, do not exist in those modern democracies. Yes, in our country, corruption has seeped deep into the very bones of our society. But, considering it a part of our cultural ethos is ridiculous. Our ancient history is not replete with corruption stories to warrant such a general comment. This social evil, in its present avatar, is a recent phenomenon, aggravated by the Moghul and colonial regimes, and thereafter ardently espoused by an unscrupulous bureaucracy, and politicians.

Interviewer (voicing a straight question): What about corruption among the top political class and bureaucracy in our country?

Baba: It is shocking to hear that close relatives of authorities at the highest levels, such as the President, Prime Minister, Chief Justice etc., take money in return for State favours. We have snatched this nimbus from certain African dictators. Indian politicians and bureaucrats have twisted the very meaning of corruption. They consider accepting bribe as their legitimate right for performing the onerous job of looking after the people. Politics is no longer public service, or an overflow of emotion fired by nationalism, as we saw in pre-independence times. Today, it is a platform to make illegitimate money and perpetuate nepotism.

During the independence struggle and the period immediately after, the country was proud of its politicians, even worshipped some of them. Today, politicians are the most despised class, considered criminals and thieves. I know of cases where families have refused to give their sons and daughters in marriage into political families. This speaks volumes about the standing of politicians in society.

Interviewer: Sir, you have been talking about various forms of corruptions in the country. Could you please elucidate?

Baba: Corruption transcends beyond the exchange of goods and services for favours. That is the most rudimentary form of corruption, found amongst the lesser devils in the power hierarchy. Today, corruption money has assumed gigantic proportions, and hops from account to account, and even flies out of the country to safe havens. When the volume of money involved is so large, it becomes ‘kickbacks’. The multibillion defence deals with foreign countries that kicked in millions of dollars in sleaze are the most brazen example.

We see another innovative method of corruption called social corruption. Selfish politicians, to garner vote banks, abuse their legislative powers to institutionalise caste and community based reservations in jobs, education, and for other state benefits. State policies, appeasing certain sections of the population, have become justifiable formats of social appeasement. Every major Political Party has indulged in this social architecture. People must unsheathe their ballot swords to counter this form of social sniping from behind the protection of the Constitution.

Blue bloods fight one another for membership into the favoured Reservation Club. New social equations have come to exist where bloodline overawes intellect. Academic qualifications for the pursuit of higher studies, or to find job, has become unimportant; what matters is one’s lineage in the ever-increasing list of castes and communities enumerated in the Constitution. A fledgling society can ill afford such intellectual apocalypse of society, where ignorance and social antipathy steer the destiny of the nation. We are standing amidst the most dangerous, abominable, intellectual degeneration of our society.

It is perhaps ironic that conflict has risen within the reserved categories as well. The socially mobile and financially better-off amongst the so-called lower castes, have hijacked most of the education concessions, jobs, and privileges reserved for the community. This has defeated the very aim of reservations while adding intra-caste jealousies to existing inter-caste tensions. What were we trying to achieve through reservations, and where have we ended up? Discrimination based on caste and community has played havoc with Indian society. For the idea of India to flourish, these fiendish self-righteous ameliorators of castes and communities must be shown the door.

The most virile form of corruption is political. A black money driven Indian economy has kept the political system dependent on the crutches of moneybags, criminals, mafias, and black marketeers. Political parties have surrendered their independence in bringing welfare legislations for the common good of the people; propitiating their godfathers by enacting policies favourable to them. Such treacheries are unacceptable from democratically elected legislators, and the people must electorally confront such political betrayal.

Interviewer: Why is this not happening?

Baba: Well analysed thought does not develop on concave stomachs. People are worried about their next meal, which keeps them on a perpetual food hunt. Politicians and bureaucrats ensure the poor struggle for their daily bread, denying them time and space for any logical analysis of their life.