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Death and beyond

Nine years ago, almost to the date, when Rajiv Gandhi was blown to smithereens by a human bomb, the newspaper I was working for at that time spoke to a cross-section of people to gauge their reaction to this unexpected bereavement.

Among the slew of quotes that the tabloid ran, one has stuck in my gullet, for it articulated what I had myself felt at that time. "At Rajiv's death," said Alyque Padamsee, "I grieve not so much for myself or for the country. I grieve for my children, for they now have no identifiable face left among the present set of politicians. There is no one young enough among the politicians left behind, to fire their imagination."

Nine years may have dimmed my recollection of the exact words Padamsee had used, but I am sure I have recalled accurately the sentiment, even if not the text, he sought to convey then.

Nine years to the day, the sentiment came rushing back at me, on hearing the news about Rajesh Pilot's untimely death. In the gerontocracy that India has become since 1991, the relatively youthful Pilot, one had hoped, would be a little more than a footnote.

What is it about death, I cannot but wonder, that shatters dreams, that disrupts lives, that mocks men silently for believing in their immortality? On a personal level, all of us have been touched, grazed, or brutalised by the cold claws of death; what amazes me is that at a collective level, too, the great leveller often strikes at an unexpected moment.

Rajiv Gandhi, to go back again, was on the comeback trail to what I and many others believed would have been a better, second tenure in office when death showed pundits how wrong their calculations were.

Similarly, Rajesh Pilot's end has come at a time when he appeared set to challenge Sonia Gandhi for the presidentship of the Congress party. Heaven knows that what India's grand old party needed was someone like him - someone whom the rural as well as the urban folk were comfortable with - at the helm to reinvigorate it. Who knows, if he had succeeded in this first battle, perhaps he could have made a run for that part of the electorate that is not fully comfortable with the BJP's brand of politics but is forced to align with it for the lack of a better, viable alternative.

For the Congress party itself, Pilot's death could not have come at a worse time. The party is rollerskating its way to the morgue, and Sonia Gandhi, after deceiving a handful of us hacks early on, has showed little or no proof to either inspire or enthuse one about her capabilities.

Pilot's legacy within the Congress party has been presented to be one of a dissenter, not an outright rebel, and this is an image that does not do justice to what he represented. To me, he seemed more of the conscientious objector, and when you consider that one of the prime requisites for enrolling in the Congress party is to leave one's conscience outside the party office doors, his achievement is significant.

He has consistently raised issues that go to the core of the Congress party's existence, and I daresay that had they been addressed, at the proper time and in the proper manner, we may well be governed at this point by another prime minister.

For his party, survival will have to mean grappling with the issues he sought to raise. The Congress party ceased to be a political party when it gave up issues and internal democracy in exchange for its leader's charisma. Now that it is evident that its president has little in the way of electoral mystique, it will have to fall back on the values that make political parties around the world relevant to the masses.

And, ironically, a beginning in this regard will have to made by party president Sonia Gandhi. Ironically because, had Pilot been alive he was certain to have challenged her to the post she has assumed to be hers by birthright. In order to justify her claim to the post, she will now have to address the very issues Rajesh Pilot wanted to raise.

Thus, in his death as he did in his lifetime, the MP from Dausa will have remained true to his image: a conscientious objector.

The only loser in this is the nation, which could have done with a few years of his helmsmanship.

Saisuresh Sivaswamy