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Wednesday, Sep 01, 2004

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National

Death of a Gandhian

By Harish Khare

NEW DELHI, AUG. 31. The end came early this morning to Jinabhai Darji, a veteran Congress leader of Gujarat. But the 85-year old Jinabhai Dari was more than a Congressman. He represented that vastly depleted breed called ``the honest politician.'' Rather than compromise with the new and rougher forces that have taken over almost all political parties, Jinabhai, as he was fondly called, chose to retire from active politics and devoted the last few years of his life to spreading the idea of organic farming among the rural folks in and around Viara taluka in Surat district of south Gujarat.

Jinabhai was a Gandhian in the Mahatma's tradition. He patronised a number of ashrams, took up social causes such as girls' education, upliftment of the adivasis, and skill upgrading for the backward castes. Above all, he believed in the Gandhian notions of simple living, moral integrity and political decency. He once threatened to go on fast against a younger colleague who was planning to eliminate a political rival. Unlike most other Gujarat Congress leaders, Jinabhai practised austerity and simplicity; when in Ahmedabad, he was happy to make do with the bare minimum facilities available at Khet Bhavan, the modest bungalow that housed the Gujarat Khet Vikas Parishad, an organisation he had set up to mobilise the small and landless peasants as a counter to the Patels' organised presence in the Janata Party.

Loyal Congressman

Jinabhai was also a loyal Congressman. He joined Indira Gandhi when the party split and remained with her throughout, that too at a time when the bulk of the Gujarat Congress had sided with Morarji Desai. After Indira Gandhi's defeat in the 1977 Lok Sabha elections, it was Jinabhai who had organised the first public meeting for her in Surat in 1978. More than a lakh people turned up. Indira Gandhi's political come-back had begun.

Author of KHAM

Jinabhai was also the author of the most innovative political strategy ever devised by the Congress in Gujarat: the idea of KHAM, an alliance of backward castes of Kashtriyas, Harijans, Adivasis and Muslims. The Congress swept the assembly polls in 1980 and 1985, each time winning more than 140 out of 180 seats. It is a different matter that the massive mandate bred arrogance and factionalism, twin afflictions that corroded — and continues to corrode — the Congress in Gujarat.

After the Congress' massive victory in 1980, he was appointed the chairman of the 20-Point Implementation Committee with Cabinet rank, and he used the perch to try to ensure that the Madhavsinh Solanki Government remained a friend of the poor. He was hailed as a super chief minister, much to the displeasure of the incumbent Chief Minister. Soon that experiment in open and responsive Government came to an end when bureaucrats and the busy-bodies created a rift between him and Mr. Solanki. Darji resigned from the 20-point committee; but he continued to raise his voice against Mr. Solanki's successor, Amarsinh Chaudhary, who had struck a Faustian bargain with the very forces that were opposed to the KHAM idea and aspirations.

A vacuum

By 1990, Jinabhai Darji had ceased to matter less and less in the party affairs as the Gujarat Congress became more and more dependent upon money and muscle power. His marginalisation within the Gujarat Congress was a reflection of the party's divorce from Gandhian values; this divorce created a vacuum in rural Gujarat that later got filled by the Sangh Parivar.

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