Last week I finished reading Ramesh InderSingh’s Turmoil in Punjab — Before and After Blue Star. I also read MorarjiDesai — A Profile in Courage by Arvindar Singh. Since the author and I had acommon friend in Chaman Lal, a remarkable IPS officer (long retired) from the MP cadre, I read it. I had another personal reason for refreshing my memory of Morarjibhai, which I will recount later.

But this week I will concentrate on a 64-pagebooklet in Kannada (a language I do not know) that has been brought to mynotice by an old retired IB officer. He tells me that it has made a solidimpact in Karnataka, where the BJP is making deep inroads, dividing thepopulace on communal lines in the bargain. The booklet titled RSS — Aala Matattu Agala (RSS — its Depth and Breadth) is written by a well-known Dalit writer, Devanura Mahadeva, whose novel KusumaBaale won the Centre’s Sahitya Akademi award. If someone other than this writer originating from the deprived classes had written the booklet being discussed here, it would not have shaken the right-wing ecosystem now prevailing in this BJP-ruled state.

Several leading right-wing publications in Karnataka have promptly come out with rejoinders, emphasising the fact that thebooklet and its author have made a sure, probably deep, dent in the prevailing beliefs of recently converted citizens of the state. The book has already sold 10,000 copies in its first published edition. Orders for printing another 70,000 copies are pending. The author has given publishing rights to six publishers and has forgone his royalties. This gesture has further enhanced the sale of the booklet. It has also demonstrated that his main intention is not profit but to bring about the necessary correction in people’s concept of the ‘new India’ they wish their children to inherit.

The writer has in mind the readers whose politics has recently been affected by the right-wing propaganda that is being so freely bandied around. He emphasises in his treatise that the Modi-Shah government, egged on by the RSS, aims to get rid of Dr Ambedkar’s secular and compassionate Constitution and replace it with the Manusmriti that is based on the chaturvarna hierarchy!

Mahadeva fears that this step will be followed by discarding the federal structure of the Constitution and replacing it with a unitary one, the signs of which can already be seen in the call for the ‘double engine’ governments at the Centre and in the states simultaneously and the unethical use of Central agencies to demolish duly elected governments. This will be followed, he feels, by the disenfranchisement of the minorities, imposition of Hindi in southern states, and consequently establishment of Aryan racial superiority.

The most powerful contribution of this booklet is the critique it offers to the general masses to the social engineering strategy of the RSS-BJP and the support it was gaining from all sections of society in the state. The booklet appeals to all progressive forces and Opposition parties to forego their personal ambitions and egos and realise the enormity of the threat they all face. They will all perish if they do not unite.

The booklet ends with an impassioned plea to‘identify, stand with and become a part of the unifying forces at a time when divisive forces are presenting “adharma” as “dharma”, hailing social injustice as social justice and cleaving our society apart instead of holding it together’.

His message has had a tremendous impact on the people of Karnataka. It is being translated into Hindi and other vernaculars, and also English. It should awaken the rest of the country’s population, and particularly political leaders vying to become the next PM.

The book on Morarji Desai attracted me because the former PM and my father were friends and Fellows of Wilson College, Mumbai’s first established college. My father died at the age of 42 when I was eight years old. When Morarji Desai as CM of the composite state of Bombay visited the Central Police Training College at Mount Abu in 1954, I was under training there. Officers allotted to Bombay were separately introduced to the CM, and it was at this meeting that he made his connection with my father known, not only to me but also to all the probationers.

The author mentions the former PM’s‘addiction’ to principles and the truth. The contrast with many of those who preceded or succeeded him, including those who hailed from Gujarat, is so stark that I could not help comparing these old-time politicians with the present crop who jail those who check facts as doled out by the authorities, or speaktruth to power, as people are expected to do in a democracy.

I used to receive him whenever he arrived in Mumbai as he used to detrain at the Dadar Railway Station, which was in my jurisdiction.When the UK Deputy High Commissioner was shot during my tenure as Police Commissioner, I happened to be sitting with Morarji Desai at his home in South Bombay, and since he lived next door to the scene of the shooting, I happened to be the first to reach the spot.

Whatever Arvindar Singh has said about Morarji bhai is substantially correct. Similarly, Turmoil in Punjab, by former Chief Secretary Ramesh Inder Singh, is substantially correct. The author has classified me with KPS Gill as a ‘war cop’. KPS would not have liked being described in the same breath as me. He felt that I was not meant to be a cop, and definitely not in Punjab.

Ramesh Inder says that I once discarded sage advice of Tejinder Khanna, the then state Secretary, Relief and Rehabilitation. If I did so, I would have noted the reasons on the file. Tejinder was anoutstanding officer. We remain friends. Another critic, says Ramesh Inder, was Kirpal Dhillon, my IPS batchmate and a friend. I did not read of such views in Kirpal’s book, but if Kirpal has so opined, so be it!