“CHITRAGUPTA”
Early
in 1926, when C. R. Reddy, Member of the Madras Legislative Council, was named
Foundation Vice-Chancellor of the new
The
Justice Party Ministry, headed by the Raja of Panagal,
was frankly relieved to be rid of a thorn in the flesh. For, Reddy was one of
the most articulate and effective spokesmen on the opposition
benches and the Government was glad to have a troublesome man away from
the political scene in
The
naming of the new Vice-Chancellor was hailed by friends and admirers of Reddy
who know his rich academic background and educational experience as the choice
of the right man for the right job. “A loss to politics and a gain to education”, was the chorus of comment in the Press and among the
public. “A gain to politics and a loss to education “, quipped a cynical way in
a nationalist English dally.
At
a more serious level, these varying reactions lead us to the question: Was C.
R. Reddy better as a politician or as an educationist? Not in terms of actual
achievement, but in his intrinsic talent and uncalculated potentialities.
This
ambivalence in the contemporary public mind is also vividly captured by Prof.
K. R Srinivasa Iyengar (in
his learned introduction to Essays and Addresses). He recalls
some people saying, in their characteristic, might-have-been manner: “You see,
Reddy’s real forte is in politics; there he would have achieved wonders,
he would have gatecrashed the everest of achievement!”
But,
when he did actually take an active part in politics in the early ’Twenties,
there were others who used to say, in an equally well-meaning way: “Oh, C. R.
Reddy! He is really cut out for leadership in education. The acerbeties and asceticisms of
politics are not for him.”
If
he were to be guided by his admirers’ conflicting wishes rather than by his own
instinct, should Reddy be a politician or an educationist? Actually, he was
both, as far as his intellect and inclination were concerned. His resourceful
mind comprehended both, not to speak of literature, with special reference to
poetry and criticism. His intellectual life could well be described as a triple
stream of poetry, politics and education. Here we are concerned with politics.
Before
we discuss Reddy the politician, and try to understand his political ideas, it
will be useful to recall his political career, which was quite significant,
though chequered. It was in 1920 that he resigned his
post as Inspector-General of Education in
That
was the time when the Government of India Act, 1919, popularly known as the Montagu-Chelmsford Scheme (Montford
Scheme for short) was being launched. “Dyarchy” was
just born in Madras Presidency; and the Raja of Panagal
as a leader of the Justice Party began to play a vital role in the
‘transferred’ half of the Government. Subbarayalu Reddiar was the first Chief Minister (who died soon in
office). Ramalinga Reddy joined the ruling justice
Party, obviously hoping to play an important part in the affairs of the
Presidency. But he did not have to wait too long for a
disillusionment.
For
a student of history and politics, whose mind was full of the working of
Cabinet Government in England, the picture that presented itself before Reddy
was a grotesque caricature, with struggle for places and jobbery of all kinds,
dominating all else. He broke with the Ruling Party led by the Raja of Panagal, and in alliance with like-minded men in the
opposition, moved a no-confidence resolution against the
Government. He said, in the course of his speech: “Appointments result
in attachments, while disappointments lead to detachments.”
The
motion was lost, not unexpectedly, but the mover made his mark; Reddy the
urbane parliamentarian, the resourceful debater, the polished wit, established
his place in the hearts of an informed, admiring public. It may almost sound
like saying–the operation was unsuccessful, but the surgeon won the prize!
This
was the first sojourn of Reddy in provincial politics, lasting about five
years. It may even be called Reddy’s First Five-year Plan of Political
Development, 1920-25. As in some other aspects Reddy’s career, this was notable
more for its promise than for its achievement. The first start really proved a
false start. Beginning from the Ruling Party, he gravitated to the Opposition
and in due course found himself in the wilderness. The Government to his rescue
and the new university project not only came in handy, but it stimulated his
enthusiasm and engaged his resources to the ful1. It left him no
time or scope for politics. It was the early stage of the university needing
all his attention.
Reddy’s
second sojourn in politics started in 1930-’31 at the time of the Salt
Satyagraha in the Civil Disobedience by the Congress under the leadership of
Mahatma Gandhi. It lasted till 1935 and can be called his Second Five-year Plan
of Political Development. The country as a whole was in a ferment and the
foreign bureaucracy was at its most vindictive and ruthless, after the
unequivocal rejection of the Simon Commission. Reddy was not the kind of
non-political, ostrich-like, evasive, insensitive, mercenary, educational
administrator, unaffected by the events outside the university campus.
Though a constitutionalist by training, Reddy did not choose
to sit idly by, watching the reign of terror let loose by the Bureaucracy to
put down the Non-Cooperation Movement. He, therefore,
resigned his Vice-Chancellorship as a protest. The
impassioned letter that he addressed to his Chancellor, the Governor of Madras,
remains a memorable document. It was hailed by the eminent journalist, Khasa Subba Rau, as “a classic of
the country’s patriotic literature.”
In
the course of his summing-up, Reddy wrote, outlining his stand:
“…It
is, I think, the clear duty of all Indians, irrespective of their political
affiliation, to rally round and foil the attack. Even those who differ from the
Congress have to recognise that it is the greatest
laboratory of national character installed in
The
sacrifices and sufferings of my countrymen and countrywomen make it impossible
for me to continue in my present position. I find the Vice-Chancellorship
neither a pleasure nor honour in the midst of these
agonies...”
During
this period of patriotic fervour, Reddy did
everything to promote the nationalist cause, delivering speeches, issuing
statements on the Round Table Conference, Non-cooperation Movement, etc., and
in all other ways, short of going to jail. In a moving tribute to the Mahatma
(who, incidentally, was his target of attack many times, before and after this
period), Reddy said:
“Mahatma
Gandhi appears to be more concerned with nation-building from within than
constitution-building from
It
was a pity that he was later to speak of the Gandhian
philosophy of Satyagraha in very different terms. Was it due to a change
of circumstances or change in Gandhi or change in Reddy? May be a bit of
everything, but mostly of the last, according to some. It was also passing
strange that a man who threw away the Vice-Chancellorship
of a university without batting an eyelid, was soon eager to have his finger in
the pie of local politics. He was elected President of the Chittoor
District Board in 1935, that too by the fluke of a decision by the drawing of
lots. He was also later returned to the Legislative Council. But there was not
much to do there, with the bulk of the Congress members keeping out of it.
Meanwhile,
the Vice-Chancellorship of Andhra University fell
vacant (with the departure of Dr. Radhakrishnan for
England to take up his Oxford assignment) and Reddy was once again the natural
choice. There was nothing much for him to do in politics, except occasional
interventions in the Legislative Council until the war broke out in 1939.
The
years, late 1939 to early 1945, could be described as the Third Five-year Plan
in Reddy’s Political Development. He was not in active party politics then, but
there was a definite change in his political views, almost a right-about turn
as far as Indian affairs were concerned. It was the war which brought this
change about. Reddy honestly believed that unless Britain won the war, there
would be dire disaster in store not only for Britain and her dominions, but for
India and the entire democratic world. Even Congress leaders like Nehru and Rajaji
hoped for the victory of Britain and her allies, but they all came to very
different conclusions, on India’s attitude to Britain and her war effort.
While
Nehru finally fell in line with the bulk of Gandhiji’s
followers in their individual Satyagraha in 1940 (to mark their non-cooperation
with the war effort), Rajaji took a line of his own and parted company with
Gandhi by August 1942. As for Reddy he felt that India must support Britain’s
war effort, in her own interest. He became leader of the National War Front,
and received the knighthood in 1942, and along with it a lot of obloquy from
the Congress ranks. He was very critical of the Congress attitude, which he
thought was destructive and shortsighted. His reasoned appraisals of the
changing political situation were made in his contributions to The Mail (under
the pseudonyms, “Indicus” and “Politicus”)
and to the Twentieth Century.
For
the duration of the war, he wanted Indian policy, especially the war effort,
guided by a National Directorate, on the model of the British War Cabinet,
presided over by the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. His pleas on this count
fell on deaf ears as there was no rapport between the British rulers and the
Congress leaders. But undaunted, he continued to throw new ideas on the
political situation, the Indian Constitution, the Hindu-Muslim problem, the
position of the Scheduled Castes and allied matters to be dealt with before
India could win her freedom.
He
took the Congress to task for its monopolistic tendency in its insistence on
being the sole representative of the minorities, for its authoritarian attitude
in its refusal to share power with others and for its intolerance of criticism
from within or from without. But he was realist enough to grant that the Indian
Federation envisaged under the Government of India Act, 1935, would vanish into
thin air unless the Congress as the major national party, chose to come in. He
saw no reason why the Congress, which had accepted ministries in the provincial
autonomy scheme, and enjoyed exercising power in office should fight shy of the
Federation.
As
a liberal democrat, schooled in the British tradition, Reddy was severely
critical of the Congress’s intolerance, which he summed up in the words: “Those
who are not with us are not only wrong, but sinful.” A holier-than-thou
attitude, in modern parlance! He severely denounced the Congress High Command
for its refusal to admit the Muslim League into Congress Cabinets, and thereby
giving a handle to Jinnah to fan the flames of Muslim
communalism. He was among the earliest to assess the hardening influence of
office on the psychology of Congress leadership.
In
his own subtle and incisive analysis of Congress policies, before Independence,
not untouched by sarcasm, Reddy identified three main
characteristics:
1)
Its nature as an army fighting British
Imperialism;
2)
Its nature as a salvation army redeeming
India and Mankind; and
3)
Its passion, acquired, since office
acceptance, for an arithmetical, as opposed to the ethnic, federalism, demanded
by the Muslims, with full powers to impose its will and policies unilaterally.
At
a time when the Congress and the Muslim League were poles apart in their
conception of minority interests, and were not on talking terms, as it were,
Reddy proved one of the most sympathetic and articulate spokesmen of the Muslim
point of view. He stood for the right of Muslim MLAs
and MLCs to decide which organisation is the
spokesman of the Muslims.
Does
the Congress seriously mean to swallow up the princes and Muslims and all other
organisations?”, he exclaimed once at a reception at
Woodlands in Madras. In his anxiety to avoid the catastrophe of partition he
was never tired of counselling a spirit of compromise
to the Congress leaders who turned a deaf ear to him. “My endeavour”, he said more in sadness than in pride, “has
always been for compromise, adjustment and preservation
of unity at all costs, without which freedom could neither be won nor
retained.”
His
basic ideas, canvassed in his speeches and writing of the years immediately
before Independence, could be summarised under the
following main heads:
1)
Constitutional unity of the country; with
an all-India State as the first in the order of Possibilities;
2)
A Central Government on the basis of
Provinces and States, not populations;
3)
Composite, irremovable cabinets following
as a consequence; and
4)
Separation of powers and functions between
the Legislature and the Executive.
Composite
Cabinets in a pluralist society and a confederation to provide for regional
variations were two of his favourite, recurring
themes, which he chose to express in terms of a new political dialectic. His
words can hardly be improved for their brevity or brilliance:
“In
a non-party cabinet, party leaders cannot have a place and it will lack some
amount of influence; in a coalition, all the ministers will be partymen and the academic mind and the princes will have no
place; in the composite, party and non-party may be combined–If party is
thesis, non-party anti-thesis, their composite is the synthesis!”
“Federal
or unitary constitution is thesis; partition of country is anti-thesis; and
confederation the available synthesis!”
Synthesis
is, in fact, what we in this country have been striving to achieve through the
ages, in matters religious, social and cultural, not to say political.
It
is too late in the day now to speculate on what would have happened if the
Reddy Formula had been considered and the Rajaji Formula had been discussed on
merits. Suffice it to say that Reddy’s emphasis had always been on
reason and realism rather than on sentiment and emotion. Can a practising politician, then or now, do without appeal to
emotion in a country such as ours with a high rate of illiteracy? He would feel
himself seriously handicapped. But then Reddy was more of a political scientist
than a politician as we understand the term now-a-days.
“I
am neither an optimist nor a pessimist, but a scientist” he would quip, in a
gathering of admiring academics.
Reddy
was too much of an individualist to allow himself to be put in the
strait-jacket of a rigid monolithic party machine. Nor had he the toughness and
staying power or mass appeal to lead a party of his own. But he had the
originality and intellectual resourcefulness of a political thinker, and what
is more, a sparkling wit and a gift of phrase, all his own.