What Modi could learn from an honest conversation I had with Sonia Gandhi after Gujarat 2002

I sat suffused with nostalgia, watching Rajdeep Sardesai interview Sonia Gandhi. Memories came flooding in of meeting her many a time in the early years of her assuming the reins of the Indian National Congress.

It is not just a matter of the number of times we met. But of quality. Of significance. Of what now, in retrospect, looks like part of an age that has gone with the wind.

I limit myself here to just one of those meetings. Gujarat riots (2002) were raging and showing no signs of abating. It was clear to me that that it was far more than a law and order situation. Riots are political. Riots happen as and when desired. They are an investment. And are planned elaborately and executed with precision.

The doctrine of "spontaneity" is a joke.

Riots are as spontaneous as a man, dead-drunk, throwing up. The throwing up is spontaneous. But the swilling down of several pegs is not.Religions for Social Justice - Swami Agnivesh, the late Nirmala Deshpande, and a few others - decided to go to Gujarat on what we called "pilgrimage of compassion to Gujarat". Religions for Social Justice was a multi-religious movement, meant to project a non-partisan, spiritual perspective on issues of human importance. It was founded in view of the fact that public discourses are drowned under partisan voices. It is a shame that neutral voices are either absent or not heard.

We decided to seek endorsement from parties of all hues, including the BJP and the Congress. Vajpayee was our PM then.

I had met Sonia Gandhi on several occasions before that. The duty to obtain her endorsement fell to my lot. She granted an appointment instantly. After preliminaries, she asked me:

"Why are you, a Christian, so concerned about an event in which your community is not affected?"

"Precisely because I am a Christian," I replied. "A Christian who does not feel the pain of others as his own is bogus. Jesus' teaching is, "Treat others as you would want to be treated." Who wants to be abandoned in the hour of peril? I don't. Then, how can I turn my back on a traumatised community? They are not Christians, but they are fellow human beings, my brothers and sisters."

Sonia became thoughtful.

An aside is warranted here.  In my many meetings with her I had notice two rare qualities in her. She is an exceptionally good listener. She makes you feel that you are worth listening to. This is rare among politicians. As a class, they make a virtue of arrogance. They assume that they have a right to be heard with respect. Correspondingly, it is below their gravity to listen to others. The more rudely a politician treats you, the greater, you think, his standing.I used to be astonished at how good and keen a listener Sonia was. As an educator, I knew what this meant. She is a keen student. Not surprisingly, she is the most improved politician in our country today.

Second, she is an avid reader. Of course, she was ridiculed by the BJP for being a reader. They taunted her, "A reader, but not a leader;" as though reading harms leading!

I wonder how we can worship Saraswati and ridicule reading in the same breath! Doesn't Saraswativandana enjoin on us to develop a culture of reading?

How are we to worship the goddess of learning? By not reading? By ridiculing reading?

On my very first meeting with Sonia Gandhi, I had asked her how I - a non-political person and utterly insignificant in vote bank politics - came into her ken.

"I have read every one of your articles. And I am aware of each of your initiatives." I was astounded.

"Moreover," she continued, "I need to listen to people like you who are non-partisan; people who think for the common man. And have no axes to grind. So, feel free to come as often as you can."

It was obvious to me that Sonia respected me all the more for looking beyond my parochial borders and for identifying myself with the plight of a beleaguered community. Political compulsions, however, did gag her, alas, from speaking out on that burning issue.

"What do you want me to do," she asked me, soon after I apprised her of our plan to undertake a pilgrimage of compassion to Gujarat.

"Religions for Social Justice will be beholden to you if you endorse this initiative," I urged.

"Pilgrimage of compassion..." she repeated the phrase to herself. Then, after a moment of reflection, "Surely, this is precisely what needs to be emphasised: compassion. I would do that right away."

I was asked to wait. In less than ten minutes I had her statement in my hand, signed "Sonia Gandhi".

The operative part of her statement read, "The need of the hour is to substitute the politics of cruelty with the politics of compassion."

The relevance of her statement is writ large even on the demonetisation imbroglio, where the overriding metaphor is that of an attack, a "surgical strike ".

As long as this metaphor of cruelty dominates national outlook, we must, as Mukul Rohtagi says, be ready to accept collateral damage.

I am puzzled by the chorus, "Good move, but badly implemented." Why not ask why it is badly implemented? Is it really because we are so stupid that we cannot do something of this magnitude without traumatising a billion and more people?

If you love your family, would you cook a good meal and throw the dishes on the faces of your loved one?

Let us say, cooking a delicious meal corresponds to demonetization. If you have cooked it out of love for your family, wouldn't you also serve it with care and affection? Why is this missing? Have we effected a permanent divorce between means and ends? Don't forget, even the Holocaust was justified invoking ends. It was the final solution! Just as we now think that we have found the final solution for all our woes!

Means and ends cannot be separated. Means expose ends. Or, the means are a clue to what the ends portend. Treating the common man like dirt is no way to prove that you love him or think for his good. The one reality that grins all the way through the turmoil is cruel callousness towards the common man.

All of us know how carefully every prospective measure is examined in respect of adversely affecting the dominant interests, before it is adopted or implemented.

The politics of cruelty, I'm afraid, is now at large nation-wide. From callousness to cruelty, it is a small step.

Cruelty cripples caring. I cannot believe that a whole army of experts who had been working on this humungous enterprise for "ten months" could not have imagined the hurt and humiliation the process would entail to "savasau karod" citizens. Ignorance is a fig-leaf that a government should not wear in public.

So, we have thick-skinned spokespersons who mouth the unthinkable. They want us to believe that the failures of the Congress will wash the dirt on their faces.

No! We are slaves to no party. We are interested in our dignity. In our fundamental rights, our right to live unharassed. We do not want to be punished for the corruption of others. We know that the corrupt will continue to thrive at our expense. We are suffering for them. We don't want to.

By the way I have no problem if some Reddy gets his daughter married off at Rs 500 crores. I thank God, I could marry my daughters more humanely. I spent Rs 45,000 on my elder daughter's wedding in 2008 and Rs 1.9 lakh (inclusive of tips) on my second daughter's wedding in 2004. Ask anyone in St Stephen's College, if you are not convinced.

The ultimate cruelty is to treat the common man as an ass. And to assume that a party can thrive on his naïve credulity. This betrays a hybrid of cruelty and cynicism.

We are not experts. We do not know what economic bumper harvests await us in five or 50 years. All we know is that we were never allowed to come anywhere near whatever harvests there were in the past. Your "trickle-down effects" do not trickle down enough to reach our lips. We live cheated.

Your demonetisation has, so far, taken the last rupee out of our emaciated hands. What we have gained with our sweat and blood has now become your charity. This is not fair!

If some 50 of us have died, it is not merely because of queues. (The BJP spokesmouths are right here). Anxiety too is killing us. Some of us could lose our balance tomorrow and streak through the streets, perhaps shouting "Black money, bachao..."