Hope and Tragedy: Two Faces of Indian Liberalism

Ramachandra Guha

The Times of India

Among the most highly-educated, and certainly the best-read, members of the current Parliament are Mani Shankar Aiyar and Arun Shourie. They were classmates in St Stephen’s College, Delhi, but later went separate ways. Aiyar studied at Cambridge University before joining the Indian Foreign Service. Shourie took a doctorate in economics from an American university before joining the World Bank. Both choices were characteristically Stephanian, but not what they did subsequently. Aiyar threw up the chance of becoming foreign secretary to join the Congress. He has fought three elections in Tamil Nadu and won two. Shourie gave up on a dollar salary to become a journalist in India. Then he entered politics and the Cabinet through the Rajya Sabha.

I have met Aiyar once, and Shourie never. But I have followed the course of their careers with interest and fascination. Some of this is doubtless due to a shared social background. For I too studied economics at St Stephen’s. And I too express myself rather freely in public print. The difference is that whereas I merely pontificate, they have taken the heroic plunge into the dirty world of Indian politics. Mani Shankar Aiyar and Arun Shourie have entered politics not to taste power but to implement their ideas. As intellectuals-turned-politicians, they are representatives of a breed quite common in the UK and France, but rare elsewhere. Especially in India, where most MPs would never have opened a book after they finished with school. By contrast, Aiyar and Shourie are widely read in economics, and in politics and history as well. A lifetime of reading has, in each case, resulted in a set of ideas firmly held and passionately articulated. Here are politicians who are idealists rather than careerists.

While studying the work of Aiyar and Shourie, I have come to the conclusion that what India needs today is a new political philosophy named ‘Aiyrieism’. This would take from Mani Shankar a sturdy commitment to cultural pluralism. For years now, Aiyar has vigorously promoted the cause of inter-religious harmony. His idealism has rubbed off on many, not least on his family. After the murderous riots of 1992-93, one of Aiyar’s daughters made a speech in defence of minority rights at her school in Delhi. It was a very brave thing to do, for she was only 13 at the time; besides, her classmates were all under the sway of the Hindutva wave then sweeping northern India.

This new philosophy I propose would take from Arun Shourie a commitment to economic liberalism. Where other ideologues within his ‘parivar’ are paranoid about globalisation, Shourie has a robust faith in the technical capabilities of the Indian entrepreneur. If some of our firms can take on the West and beat them, he says, conditions can be created so that the others can win as well. At the same time, Shourie has tried hard to hasten the process of the privatisation of our over-staffed and under-worked public sector. Some say he is going too fast, but at least we can be sure that none of the money that changes hands will end up in his hands.

The problem with Mani Shankar Aiyar is that he takes his Nehruvianism too literally. This means that he follows the master both in his political secularism and in his economic socialism. The first remains vitally relevant, but the second is an anachronism. Aiyar’s defence of the public sector is perhaps a legacy of his Cambridge days. Among his teachers there were men who, without ever being to the Soviet Union, described it as an economic miracle. Perhaps it is time Aiyar talked to some ordinary Russians.

Likewise, Arun Shourie’s political beliefs are 50 per cent wholesome, 50 per cent indigestible. Ever since he joined the government he has restricted himself to speaking (and writing) on economic matters. This, given the amnesia of most Indians, is very wise. For the years before he joined politics were spent by Shourie in articulating cultural views of a decidedly dangerous kind. This gentle-mannered man wrote a series of bitter books excoriating Sikhs, Christians, Muslims, Dalits — in other words, everybody apart from the upper caste Hindu. His economic views are open, outward-looking and progressive; but his cultural and religious views remain insular and reactionary.

Mani Shankar Aiyar represents the hope, as well as the tragedy, of the Indian Left. Consider the communists of West Bengal, under whose aegis the minorities are safer than anywhere else, but whose blinkered economics has destroyed the industry of the state. Arun Shourie, meanwhile, represents the hope, as well as the tragedy, of the Indian Right. Shourie and his colleagues recognise that the market and technological innovation can eliminate poverty much faster than the state. But they also shake hands, and break bread, with the likes of Narendra Modi and Bal Thackeray. And so I offer a simple surgical solution: Unite the left half of Aiyar’s brain with the right half of Shourie’s. Call this new synthesis ‘Aiyrieism’ or ‘Shouyarism’; or, if you want to be both accurate and neutral, call it ‘liberalism’. A liberal economics and a liberal social policy; it is the union of the two that India needs, and which the present political parties cannot easily provide.