Gurcharan Das on being a liberal in these times

Civil Society Reviews

THIRTY years ago, Gurcharan Das decided to give up his life in the corporate sector, to be a writer. He was at the time managing a multinational company’s business in consumer products. Becoming a writer, he hoped, would make him a better human being.

Over the years he has written quite a lot and spent his time in intellectual pursuits. But he is not so sure that he has made the personal transition he was hoping for from the cut-throat, status-conscious world of business that he left behind.

At Bahri Sons in Khan Market recently, he got so worked up about not seeing one of his books in the window display that he strode into the bookshop to demand that it be placed there. And when it was placed a little behind other books, he insisted that it be placed right in front.

Das recounts the clearly embarrassing episode with complete honesty. A life of letters may actually have made him less respectful of others than when he was running a business. He says his neighbour, a small businessman, would never take his clients for granted in the way Das behaved with the staff of one of Delhi’s few surviving bookshops.

We are talking to Das about his latest book, The Dilemma of an Indian Liberal. And one of our questions to him is about how he sees Indian business leaders. Does he find liberals among them? It is important because of the significant impact that industry and the decisions business leaders take have in an unequal economy.

Das tells us that businessmen are interested in certainty and profits. They have companies to run and wrap themselves around situations rather than trying to shape them. When we ask whether he would call them “value neutral”, he finds the term interesting enough to stay with it for a bit.

But “value neutral” Das certainly is not. One of his earlier books is The Difficulty of Being Good in which he deals with modern-day ethical dilemmas in the context of the Mahabharat.

Das has been and continues to see himself as a liberal. He believes liberal values have served the modern world well and allowed it to progress. If now there is a dilemma, it is because of the extreme positions that are being taken. What room remains, then, for a liberal? Especially so when liberalism is getting redefined and hijacked from time to time.

Now in his eighties, Das is a gentle, thoughtful, public-spirited soul who retreats into his book-lined study from early morning so as to write as much as he can. His wife complains about him being in there so much, but there is no time to be lost, he says.

One of his major concerns is what to do with his vast collection of books. We suggest handing them over to Ashoka University, of which he is a founder, or some such institution. But it is not as though he is entirely a recluse. When residents in Jor Bagh, the upscale neighbourhood where he lives, hold a protest against dogs being walked without a leash, we notice that he is present in the crowd.

The Dilemma of an Indian Liberal, in Das’ easy-flowing style, is a good read. It is as much about him and his life as it is about liberalism as an idea and the many avatars through which it has transitioned. It can serve as a primer but it is, above all, his personal journey. Das is shaped by ideas from childhood and then through an education and exposure to influential teachers in America. He has studied Sanskrit.

Liberalism as a philosophy and a way of life has had its ups and downs. But it has survived to come back and be useful over 250 years. In that sense, it isn’t an outdated ‘ism’ to do a book about — polarized as the world is in these times.

Das argues that Indians are inherently liberal and tolerant of different points of view. He goes into religious texts and mythology. Divisions in India, of the religious kind or otherwise, can’t be lasting even if they get whipped up on occasion. People are accustomed to living together and giving each other space in harmony.

Interestingly, the book comes at the time of the general election results in India. People, it would appear, have voted against a communal divide. Narrow obscurantism too has been rejected for a bigger canvas of progress. A quiet liberal tradition has asserted itself when most needed.