Ancient India’s best-known strategist was Chanakya also known as Kautilya – he advised emperors on not just administrative and military affairs but also on how to become good politicians and responsible rulers. His treatise, the Arthashastra, considered by many to be the world’s first comprehensive exposition on governance and statecraft, was written some two millennia before The Prince was written by Italy’s Niccolo Machiavelli, considered by the West to be the “founder” of modern political sciences and political ethics. The book being reviewed is an attempt by a former diplomat-turned-political adviser to speculate what Chanakya, who lived more than three centuries before the birth of Jesus Christ, would have done if he was confronted with the challenges being faced in today’s India.
Machiavelli believed in the now-derided dictum about ends justifying the means. Chanakya avenged the killing of his father by a brutal king, prevented the Greeks under Alexander from annexing the subcontinent and adopted a young boy who went on to become the most benevolent and best-known emperor of his era, Chandragupta Maurya. Author Pavan K Varma, who took voluntary retirement from the Indian Foreign Service to work with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, makes it clear at the outset that to invoke Chanakya “is not to take refuge in India’s glorious past and hope that magically those days will return”.
On the contrary, the author writes that his intention “is to derive inspiration from the past, since the past tells us that India is capable of new and audacious thought”. Varma believes that nations can derive the right lessons by leveraging the past, not being mesmerised by it. He argues that unlike Machiavelli “whose only aim was to ruthlessly perpetuate political power through any means”, Chanakya believed a polity should draw its inspiration from dharma or right conduct without becoming impractically idealist. Yet he also argued that in furthering “national interest” or in countering threats to it, the ends did in fact justify the means. So we go back to Machiavelli again in an exercise in circular reasoning.
Author Varma is a man of many parts. Having studied history in St Stephen’s College and law in the University of Delhi, he became a diplomat/bureaucrat who held influential positions such as press secretary to the President of India, spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs and director general of the Indian Council of Cultural Relations. Before opting for premature retirement from the IFS, Varma served as India’s ambassador to Bhutan in Thimpu. His official duties did not prevent him from writing books on Mirza Ghalib and Lord Krishna, besides the Great Indian Middle Class. He has also written on why the 21st century will be India’s and translated into English the poetry of Kaifi Azmi, Gulzar and former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.
His latest book is arguably far more ambitious in scope than his earlier works and this is where he treads into familiar territory, often unable to break out of the ordinary and the banal while providing predictable prescriptions of what needs to be done to improve the quality of governance and the working of democracy in India. Then follows the author’s suggestions on what needs to be done to curb corruption in public life, make society more inclusive and also more secure. Each chapter on these topics concludes with a list of what Chanakya’s “new manifesto” would prescribe. This is where Varma’s contentions becomes commonplace.
At one level, the author claims that the new manifesto “proposes a comprehensive blueprint for change” but he is also quick to acknowledge that it is not flawless. While appealing with “great humility” to the “good sense” of those in positions of power and authority, Varma nevertheless sounds incredibly preachy – like a school teacher – when he concludes the penultimate paragraph of his book with the following: “If we are more ethical in our conduct, all of us will lead a happier life. If the threats to our security are dealt with more effectively, we will be safer. If the lot of our poorest improves, all of us will prosper. Let us, therefore, act in cohesion, unison and wisdom to bring about the much-needed change India needs.”
Varma seems to suffer from a syndrome that is not uncommon among bureaucrats and diplomats after they demit office, voluntarily or on account of the passage of time. Having spent a substantial proportion of a professional career being part of the status-quo establishment and occasionally trying to change the system “from within”, my friend the former babu becomes free of the shackles of his masters and starts doing what government officials are discouraged from doing. That is, speaking their minds fearlessly and frankly while proposing radical-sounding solutions to break the backs of age-old “vested interests”.
Yes sir, who does not want a corruption-free country, a security-conscious nation, good governance, reduction of glaring inequalities, accountability of leaders and truly inclusive economic and social development? That’s a no-brainer. But achieving all these undoubtedly laudable goals is easier said than done, and author Varma will be the last person to deny that a long distance needs to be traversed which will not be covered merely by uttering homilies and home-truths.
“Chanakya’s New Manifesto to Resolve the Crisis Within India” by Pavan K. Varma, Aleph, 2013, 248 pages, Rs 295