A Great Symbol of Democratic Potentiality
FRANK MORAES
IN a recent book on India I wrote that "with a few rare exceptions, such as Bombay's Chief Minister, Y. B. Chavan and the Finance Minister of Madras, C. Subramaniam, no new leaders have developed or emerged from the Congress ranks". Since then Bombay State has been divided into Maharashtra and Gujarat, and as Maharashtra's Chief Minister, Mr. Chavan has consolidated and reinforced his reputation.
To speculate on politics is almost as hazardous as to speculate on horses. There are no set rules to the game, and temperament, timing and the shifting elements of chance and luck all play their part in this incalculable business. Every soldier, it may be true, carried a marshal's baton in his knapsack but Napoleon was in the habit of inquiring when one of his commander's name came up for promotion, "Is he lucky?"
Given, therefore, the very vital element of luck I venture to predict that someday Mr. Chavan will achieve the office of Prime Minister of India. He has the requisite timber which mellows rather than hardens with experience and keeping, He has the Maharatta's down-to-the-ground earthiness but also a resilience and flexibility not always associated with that forthright race. Courage is a quality identified with his people, and perhaps calculation. He has both as he pre-eminently proved during his underground days which followed the historic Congress resolution of August 1942. With his peasant shrewdness he combines not only a positive purposefulness but something which I have rarely encountered in India's politicians and businessmena love for books and good reading. This suggests that contemplativeness marches alongside practicality.
All this might conjure up visions of a superman, flexing his muscles for the opportunities that lie ahead. No one of us, preeminent or humble, is a superman. And Chavan, I am sure, would not like to be consigned or condemned to that category, which really a dustbin, for he is too human to pretend to supermanship. His doom will come the moment he believes he is one, and attempts to climb high moral pedestals or political pinnacles in order merely to look down on his fellowmen. But of that there seems to be no danger.