Gopalkrishna Gandhi has just ended a five-year tenure as Governor of West Bengal, refusing repeated offers for another nomination. He left for his Chennai home the same morning his tenure ended, something his grandfather, Mohandas, would have approved. It was things like this that earned him a lot of approbation, apart from speaking his mind on issues which needed it, even when it would have been more comfortable to have looked the other way. We mention this to give the other reason why his farewell statement from Raj Bhavan is worthy of a minute’s reflection. As for the first, while it was addressed to the people of Bengal, the words could well apply to the rest of India, too. Bengal has been and is, a very polarised state, with much recourse to verbal and political violence; this finds its way into other spheres, vitiating these, too. And so, on the eve of his departure, Gandhi pleaded for both a ceasefire and a reflection on the damage it was doing. The “distrust between different political entities and personalities, and also within institutions such as our universities is disfiguring life in our state,” he pleaded, “calling for a change in “our conditioned mindsets”.
Bengal, went his statement, will suffer “irretrievable damage” unless “all inter-party, inter-cadre or inter-supporter violence is halted…no party should countenance the use of unauthorised arms…the choice before West Bengal should not be between the wrong-doing of one and the counter wrong-doing of the another…not between the vengeance of one and the return vendetta of another.” The choice is, he underlined, “between chaos and civility, disorder and decorum.” Wisely spoken, and is it not just as apt a description for every other part of India? Yes, we do have a functioning democracy, which we have also learnt to take for granted. Yet, much of the institutions, sub-systems and culture of that democracy are in poor shape. It is a society with much to despair at, and the manner of intercourse between its parts is one of these. We do not need to go into details; reading Gandhi’s observations will strike a ready echo in any Indian. We do not mention here, even as Gandhi did not, the physical problems of poverty, hunger and the like; these are identifiable and addressable, if there is a common trust and will to get together. Gandhi was, in fact, addressing all of us, and we should acknowledge its validity.