Gandhi: Different

Calcutta, Dec. 22: Bengal has had governors who sought to don other mantles in times of political or other crises. More often than not, such gubernatorial interventions, instead of helping matters, sucked the Raj Bhavan into controversies.

Gopal Krishna Gandhi has so far achieved something unusual — he seems to have earned the confidence of both Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Mamata Banerjee without having to assume any pro-active or mediatory role.

Those who know him well say this has been possible because Gandhi is an unusual governor who would do everything to help matters that are brought to his notice and would do nothing that impinge on the constitutional propriety of his office.

Even politicians from opposing camps who have interacted with him on the Singur issue over the past few days testify to this. Neither Mamata nor the government, therefore, has had any cause for complaint so far.

Just as Gandhi’s sense of constitutional propriety is seen as unusual in a country where Raj Bhavans often function as camp offices of political parties, so is the acceptance of his “role” on both sides of the Singur divide.

Gandhi himself would perhaps object to it being described as a “role”, let alone a pro-active or a mediatory one.

The Raj Bhavan statement last evening makes it clear that Gandhi is keen to project his visit to Mamata at Chowringhee and his meeting with Bhattacharjee and commerce and industries minister Nirupam Sen as calls of duty, rather than anything else. Seeing the episode as an attempt at mediation between the two sides would be reading it wrong.

Political observers argue that it is not easy for a governor to do what Gandhi has done and to yet remain true to his constitutional role.

He could not have been a silent spectator to the events that are unfolding over the Tata group’s proposed car project in Singur and the political controversy surrounding it. He could not simply afford to remain inactive in a situation in which the leader of t he principal Opposition party in the state was on an indefinite fast.

But then, what could he do in order to ease the situation? His constitutional role does not leave him much scope for action. Another governor in a politically charged atmosphere could be tempted to take on roles unwarranted by the Constitution.

Former governor A.P. Sharma got himself and his office embroiled in several controversies by just doing that. It was generally argued that Sharma, a Congress leader and trade unionist, was not one to go by the rule book.

How a governor would act in a politically tense situation may not, however, be determined by his original calling.

If Sharma’s blatantly pro-active interventions could be attributed to his political background, there were other cases in which bureaucrats-turned-governors, too, acted in controversial ways. The most controversial of them was, of course, Dharam Veera, who was Bengal’s governor when the first two United Front governments were dismissed in 1967 and 1969.

Even B.D. Pande, an otherwise non-controversial civil servant-turned-governor, was drawn into some controversies, during his term in the early 1980s, especially over the political tussle at the Asiatic Society and the state government’s move to merge two post-graduate medical colleges in Calcutta.

But no governor, since Dharam Veera and to a lesser extent, S.S. Dhawan after him, has had to face a situation Gandhi finds himself in over Mamata’s agitation over Singur. An unusual governor — unusual for his commitment to constitutional norms and propriety — can, therefore, find a better acceptance for his “role” than the usual suspects of Raj Bhavans.