Daily Times

Even two swallows may not make a summer. But the couple of high-profile half-pronouncements of political retirement heard over the past week promise many more such resolutions from a class of India’s celebrity citizens that few associate with renunciation.
I know this putative titan in the terminal stage of his political career has kept returning to this column, which, consequently, has begun to read like a one-character play. This time around, however, Lal Krishna Advani features as only one of the many figures promising or preparing to fade away.
On September 28, the leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party, a target of tongue-lashing from his own ex-lieutenants over the past month or so, let it be known that he was ready to leave it all behind. Seeking solace and sage counsel from a saffron-clad guru in New Delhi, Advani was reported to have spoken of “sanyas” (renunciation). The seer, we were told, understood the shadow prime minister’s spiritual yearning but asked him to stay on as a guide for the younger party honchos if the people won’t have him as the government’s head.
Pundits have been puzzling over the report ever since. Did the “renunciation” mean Advani was going to retreat in the battle inside the BJP and resign from his post as Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha (the Lower House of India’s Parliament)? Was he waiting to do so until the winter session of Parliament, beginning in late November or early December? Or would he do so on November 8, the historic day on which he was born 82 eventful years ago?
Or, again, was the promise of renunciation only the last resort of a losing politician? Was he walking into the sunset only to provoke tears and theatrics — as well as pleas to return? Or was he just envisaging an honourable exit, after all those post-election polemics inside the party? Time will tell.
The answers are easier to attempt in the case of Sharad Pawar, a political heavyweight of Maharashtra, which will elect its State Assembly on October 13. The supremo of the Nationalist Congress Party, the Union Agriculture Minister, and the President of the Board of Control for Cricket in India to boot, nearly 69-year-old Pawar has won or wangled more posts than his age might suggest. At an election rally on September 27, he expressed a preference for premature retirement from politics.
Pawar asked his audience: “It is time for the younger generation to play a greater role and for me to slowly step back. Isn’t that a good idea?” To himself and to the top echelon in his party, it might have seemed a good idea for two reasons. In the first place, the line promised to be lachrymose enough to win back some of the support he had lost among the once loyal farmers, who had expected more favours from him as the agriculture minister. Secondly, at least a section in the NCP read his “younger generation” as a reference to his daughter Supriya Sule, who made it to the Lok Sabha in the general election earlier this year.
On the other side of the barricade stands another political retiree, Bal Thackeray of the Far Right Shiv Sena, whom his flock is beseeching to address one last poll rally. The 83-year-old leader’s election-time oratory is deemed to ensure the dynastic succession of his son Uddhav Thackeray. 49-year-old Uddhav faces his main challenge not from Congress and its allies but from his cousin Raj Thackeray and his split-away Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (Maharashtra Reconstruction Army).
While Bal Thackeray had built his Shiv Sena initially upon a campaign against South Indian immigrants in Mumbai, his nephew has made a big name as the nemesis of North Indians. To both, meanwhile, the minority community remains the main enemy. There is little difference between what the retiring fuhrer represents and what the recent entrant in the Far Right’s epic battle against the internal foe does.
(An aside: the Congress-NCP alliance depends in the elections not on the rather dismal performance of its State regime, but on the division in the regional-chauvinist vote between the two Senas. This provides yet another explanation of the enigma of how secular parties win elections in India while secularism itself loses.)
Not all political veterans retire, of course. 95-year-old Jyoti Basu, the Marxist Chief Minister of West Bengal for 23 years until 2000, said not long ago: “Revolutionaries don’t retire.” Ailing Basu has not reportedly taken active part in inner-party discussions for quite some time. But his statement is true in the sense that there is no turning away for someone committed to the cause of social change out of conviction.
It was way back in 1946 that India lost a leader who refused to retire, whether in words or deeds, and had to be put forcibly to rest the age of 78 by communal fascism. And how is his birth anniversary on October 2 being observed?
Mont Blanc, the Swiss pen-maker, has unveiled a gold and silver fountain pen, which will cost about 25,000 US dollars, to commemorate the Mahatma Gandhi, who sought to identify himself with the poorest of the poor. At home, where textbooks and trite tributes call him the “apostle of non-violence”, the eve of the anniversary is enlivened by a debate on whether India can unleash the destructive powers of a 200-kiloton nuclear bomb or not.
Such poignancy will not mark the political retirement of Advani, Pawar and company.

The writer is a journalist based in Chennai, India. A peace activist, he is also the author of a sheaf of poems titled At Gunpoint