The Hindu Business Line : India’s rich leadership lore

Gandhiji’s 60th death anniversary on January 30 was observed in the customary manner with passing references and visuals in the media and public functions here and there at which the speakers held forth on the all-too-familiar highlights of his life.

Falling within three months of his birth anniversary on October 2, it evokes only a ritualistic interest. Whatever that be, a sad omission in all that pertains to India’s homage to Gandhiji is the scanty corpus of scholarly literature giving a scientific and critical analysis of the many facets and ingredients of his leadership.

Here was a frail, unprepossessing human being with no claim to eloquence and no structured source of power or means of enforcing authority who fired the masses of India with the passion for freedom and mobilised them in their millions to take part in a novel kind of struggle to put an end to the mighty British Empire.

It was almost a miracle when it is remembered that he did not have the modern-day advantages of instant facilities of mass communication.

The few newspapers there did not have much of a circulation to speak of and were predominantly in English. There was no radio, TV was unheard of and telephones were scarce.

Surface mail took days to reach addressees and all writing, typing, copying and despatching involved time-consuming and laborious effort. Travel too by conventional modes of rail or bus was a long and painful process. There was no ‘hospitality industry’ and those taking part in any movement had to fend for themselves.

Gandhiji surmounted these insuperable handicaps and still could rouse the fighting spirit of a whole sub-continent.

Not only that, he left his imprint on everything that contributed to the building of the nation, by propounding a holistic vision of freedom as now embodied in the Preamble to the Constitution. Jawaharlal Nehru spoke no truer words when he said that Gandhiji represented something more than the immediate present, exemplifying the living, eternal truths.

Gandhiji’s leadership in all these respects was unique, but it is yet to become a universally recognised course of study in management institutions.

Colonial mindset

There have no doubt been a number of publications in the public domain comprehensively expounding his values of truth, non-violence, civil disobedience, prohibition, constructive programme and the like that he stood for, and some universities have also set up Departments of Gandhian Studies which deal with his writings and teachings.

But few management institutes in India have gone for a case-study exclusively devoted to an exhaustive description of the substance and style of his leadership.

In fact, they are still under the influence of the colonial mindset spending plenty of time on discourses on the leadership and work habits of a Jack Welch, Lee Iacocca, Steve Jobs or Andy Grove, but hardly any time on India’s great leaders of the past and present.

For instance, kingship as elaborated in India’s epics and the rich tapestry of concepts and postulates contained in Arthashastra, Panchatantra, Thirukkural, and so on, can fill several semesters and provide a comparative frame of reference for the evaluation of contemporary situations.

There has been a galaxy of leaders nonpareil in India — Ashoka, Bhoja, Chandragupta, Vikramaditya, Akbar, Raja Raja Chola, Narasimhavarma Pallava, Krishna Devarayar and Vivekananda — from whose achievements it is possible to build a whole management philosophy.

Coming to recent times, leaders of the likes of Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Indira Gandhi, Narayana Murthy, Azim Premji, Ratan Tata and Rahul Bajaj can be of greater relevance and inspiration to the budding managers than persons who belong to an entirely different milieu and culture. The sooner the management institutions realise this, the better.

B. S. RAGHAVAN

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