Like man, like book: brutally honest, upright and scathing towards democracy's "menials"
In 1947, the sahibs went home, but paternalism persisted. The IAS was not quite a replica of the ics but there were many boy scouts who were equally driven in their desire to do a good turn to India’s mute millions. If the old India hand turned red at the sight of the loquacious babu, the new paternalist fumed silently at the self-serving crassness of Bharat’s new rulers. The politicians, he gleaned from experience, were "menial". They were a "cancer". India deserved better.
Such a man is James Michael Lyngdoh. A gentleman of integrity, education, refinement, a dog lover, he just can’t come to terms with the messiness of democracy. Constantly tormented by ethics, he has contrasted his own uprightness with the politician’s crookedness. What must have begun as simple irritation with netas turned into hatred as harassment followed one punitive transfer after another in his civil service career. By the time Lyngdoh escaped into the Election Commission in 1997, he was a rebel.
An understanding of Chief Election Commissioner Lyngdoh for what he was is central to a rejection of what he was not. First, he was not, as Narendra Modi suggested, a toady of Sonia Gandhi. Had the Congress been in power when he was cec, his spats with the government would not have had an element of shadow-boxing. In taking on the BJP and Modi in Gujarat, he had the discreet encouragement of some PMO officials. In Jammu and Kashmir, as Lyngdoh grudgingly concedes, prime minister A.B. Vajpayee favoured an honest course. But for the government’s weight behind the EC’s elaborate measures, Lyngdoh may have found his project derailed by compulsions on the ground.
Second, unlike T.N. Seshan who nurtured political ambitions and made the EC a vehicle of self-publicity, Lyngdoh had no personal agenda, just a strong sense of right and wrong. He believed the people of Kashmir had a right of free choice. He didn’t believe that the Abdullah family was the repository of patriotism, and he disliked those who did. To him, having a free and fair election in Kashmir was important in itself. He couldn’t give two hoots for its outcome or consequences. It’s clear from his detailed documentation of the bandobast that he viewed the elections as an administrative challenge. To him, it was probably similar to a major flood relief operation.
Third, despite the EC’s role as the custodian of democracy, Lyngdoh loathed politics and politicians. His detailed exposition of the EC’s powers is very instructive for its underlying mindset. Like some of his predecessors, Lyngdoh saw himself as a policeman guarding against the transgression of rules. The spirit of democracy didn’t excite him. When Vajpayee announced he wanted free and fair polls in Kashmir, he churlishly understood it as an encroachment on the EC’s autonomy. He took exceptional steps to trace 20,000 Muslim voters who had fled Gujarat after the riots. In Kashmir, he snarled at officials who sought a good voter turnout.
Lyngdoh was not a neutral player. He had clearly identified the good, the bad and the ugly. Politicians, predictably, were vile. The favoured ones were ngos, other do-gooders and NDTV reporters. Lyngdoh is not even apologetic about admitting that he delayed the Gujarat election after meeting a delegation of nosey-parkers who had no stakes in the state. He does not wince confessing he told Arun Jaitley that he would disregard the views of Gujarat’s "discredited government". He turns poetic about how the sight of cameras and reporters made the riot victims pour out their woes. But he imperiously brushes aside the question that dogged him throughout Gujarat: if elections can be held in Kashmir, why not in Gujarat?
It is a question he doesn’t deign to even consider. For the sheer insolence of certitude, Lyngdoh is truly a burra sahib. He just happened to be in the wrong century.