Whenever there is a conversation of our drawbacks, there is always a cry that we need a strong leader. Forget talking about national leadership even among communities, there is always a lament for not having a strong leader to lead them. Is a strong leader a cure for all our ills, will one singular strong leader change the fortunes of 1.2 Billion people. The answer has to be an empathetic no.
Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, Sukarno, Marcos were strong leaders and I do not need to write about their legacy, history says it all. Coming to India, Pundit Nehru and Indra Gandhi, Morarji Desai would definitely qualify as strong leaders but we are still wanting.
Forget everybody else, India had the strongest leader ever of the 20th Century, Mohanlal Karamchand Gandhi, also known as Mahatma Gandhi. A lot is said and written about his fight with the British for India’s Independence, his bigger fight was with his own people. He hated his own people’s communal attitude, he also hated the caste divide prevalent in our society. While Pundit Nehru was giving his “Tryst with Destiny” speech from the Red Fort, the Mahatma was in Calcutta fasting and praying, he was shattered by the communal violence and deeply saddened by the partition of his beloved India, because of religion.
Was the Mahatma religious, yes, he was but in a philosophical way and not a ritualistic way, for him religion was a tool to gain self control and self understanding but he never became a tool of a religion. He used religion but was never subservient to it, just like a scientist will use a computer to do his calculations but is never a slave to the computer.
Was the Mahatma dictatorial, of course he was but not like we understand, dictators punish anyone who do not accept their fiat, the Mahatma punished himself when his followers did not comply with his wishes. Other dictators ruled by creating fear, the Mahatma served by creating compassion. Lately attempts are being made to high light the role of people who took to militancy during the freedom struggle, perhaps the idea, that even Indians are Macho is attractive to us. True the people who took an alternate route to what Gandhiji adopted were also great people and deserve recognition but The British were very apt in dealing with any armed rebellion and they came down heavily and effectively against it. The Mahatma’s tactics completely bewildered them, they had no answer to counter him and actually started to admire him. Why did a leader of Mahatma Gandhi’s stature fail to change our outlook, it was because we were too stubborn and entrench in our archaic ways. The failure was not of the leader, he tried his best, it is we people that failed.
We are so fed up of all the mess which is of our own making that we do not mind a dictator taking over. I know where this yearning comes from, it is mainly because we feel overtaken by China. Let us not forget that under their supreme dictator Mao, China was no great power, it is only after Mao and when the leadership was collective that China set on a road to development. Does China, Japan, Germany have strong dictators to lead them, of course not. Perhaps more than the leadership it is the peoples of these nations that is taking these countries to the forefront.
No strong leader or dictator can work miracles nobody has a magic wand, on the contrary a dictator would want to subvert all the institutions and plunder the nation even more. Wanting a strong leader, even a dictator shows our weakness as a people, it exposes our herd mentality. More than a strong leader we need a leader who is a listener and has concern for democratic values and is dedicated to uplift the poor. Let us not be under an illusion that the Prime Minister and his cabinet pull all the ropes in this country, the real power is with the advisors and bureaucrats and sadly some of them are corrupt. In our present system the cabinet members and the Prime Minister come from the Lok sabha or the Rajya Sabha and are mainly politicians who have little or no knowledge of the portfolio given to them. It is mainly the secretaries and other bureaucrats that advise the Prime Minister and his cabinet colleagues. These bureaucrats are the ones who hobnob with lobbies and top industrialists and come up with allocations and policies that are shoved to the ministers who sign on the dotted line. It would not be fair to paint all the bureaucrats with the same brush, there are some excellent and very intelligent people who do a great job.
There is always a chance that a megalomaniac, a strong man with dictatorial tendencies would be advised by these bureaucrats as how to subvert all and sundry just so that all opposition is strangled and the leader is held supreme, which is a sure recipe for disaster. Do not forget the emergency, even at that time, a strong leader under the advice of some over smart advisors subverted the whole democratic system. I for one would definitely prefer a strong democracy with a hundred faults than a strong dictator.
Co-owner of ES Patanwala, a Mumbai firm that makes soaps and face creams, Ebrahim, did his MS in Chemical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburg and BS from University of California Berkeley. Now retired, he spends time at his Alibag villa – a lush green area across Bombay harbor.
A very well analysed perspective. We constantly make the mistake of conflating a “strong” leader with good governance whereas history has repeatedly shown that this is an illusion. What a democracy needs is strong institutions which can function autonomously under a stable constitution. Unbridled power without accountability to the people is a recipe for disaster. There are no quick fixes such as the yearning for strong leaders. This misconception is the primary reason for the backsliding of democracy all over the world since the mid 90s. There is a lesson in this for India too.