The Hindu Business Line : A Governor with a social conscience

In December 2006, when Ms Mamta Banerji of the Trinamool Congress was on a long fast over the acquisition of land at Singur for the small car project of Tata Motors, Mr Gandhi visited her twice appealing to her to end the fast. Immediately following t he second meeting, he issued a statement declaring a dialogue with her to be ‘imperative’ for ‘the balancing of land used for agriculture with land conversion for industries, evolving long-term norms with a clear prioritisation that does not lead to avoidable displacement and human distress’.

His expressions of sympathy with the cause espoused by Ms Banerji and his eminently sensible suggestion for ending the confrontation caused only a muted reaction from the ruling establishment at the time.

On March 14 this year, there was police firing at Nandigram to disperse a crowd protesting against the earmarking of the land for special economic zone; 11 were killed and 34 (including 14 police personnel) were injured. Describing the tragedy as one filling him with ‘cold horror’, Mr Gandhi issued a strongly worded statement the same night in which he gave expression to ‘the thought in my mind, and of all sensitive people’, as to whether this spilling of human blood was avoidable and what public purpose was served by the use of force witnessed that day.

He further said that the use of force against militants, extremists, insurgents and anti-national elements was one thing, but those at the “receiving end” that day were not among them. While he left it to the “conscience of officials responsible to atone for the event in the manner they deem fit”, he made it clear that the State Government “must do what it thinks is necessary to mitigate the effects of the bitter March 14, and to do it visibly and fast.”

Class apart

This statement had a stunning effect. It was seen as an indictment of the Government of the State of which he himself was the head. It expectedly raised the hackles of not only the leaders of parties constituting the Left Front in West Bengal, but Constitutional pandits everywhere as they viewed the Governor’s action to be out of sync with his strictly circumscribed Constitutional functions.

Mr Gandhi has once again come out on November 9 with a statement on the situation in Nandigram. Pointing out that it had been compared by the State Home Secretary to a ‘war zone’, he has demanded ‘immediate and effective’ action by the State Government to put a stop to the ‘unlawful and unacceptable’ state of affairs prevailing there. This time he has become the target of the wrath of the CPI(M) and the CPI which have castigated him for overstepping his Constitutional boundaries.

The Governor himself has justified his public exhortations by drawing attention to the duty cast upon him to be true to his oath by which he has pledged himself to ‘preserve, protect and defend the Constitution and the law,’ and ‘devote himself to the service and well-being of the people of the State’. He has said, “I can’t be so casual to the oath I have taken as to restrict my reaction to a pious expression of anguish and outrage”.

Assuming that a Governor is an eminent person of solid stuff, there is no point in expecting him to behave like a mindless dummy. In extraordinary situations he should act as the conscience-keeper of the tribune of the people. In that sense, Mr Gandhi has proved himself to be a class apart, besides being true to the Gandhian heritage.

B. S. RAGHAVAN