| | | Good morning! | | Exit, pursued by rumour. The only people who seem to be perturbed by Jagdeep Dhankhar’s surprise resignation as Vice President are some opposition leaders, the very people who faced the brunt of his actions when he was chair of the Rajya Sabha. Whether this is prompted by a genuine desire for transparency and upholding democratic values or is mere political posturing is a matter of debate. The posts of Governor, Vice President, and President are all filled by political appointees (even if the person in question is a retired military officer or judge), and one would have to be extraordinarily naive to believe that all appointees perform their constitutional duties without displaying their political preferences. Some do, and perhaps because they are remembered for this reason, the general public expects everyone in such posts to behave the same way. But many others do not; there are enough instances of Governors resigning to re-enter electoral politics to buttress this argument. But to return to Dhankhar, as Governor in West Bengal, and as Vice President, he was a reminder that the posts are political, if not in nature, then at least in disposition. Indeed, Dhankhar’s success in West Bengal — he was more of an opposition to the Mamata Banerjee-led government than the Opposition was — may have contributed to his promotion. It’s a fact that hasn’t gone unnoticed among many other Governors who likely see this approach as a route to career advancement, an approach that has resulted in several states approaching the Supreme Court, which prescribed a timeline for Governors and the President to clear state bills — an order that is the subject of a Presidential Reference that a five-judge Constitution bench is now hearing . Appointments that are political in nature sometimes result in terminations that are equally political in nature, and the real reason for Dhankhar’s exit as Vice President will perhaps never be known. It’s entirely possible, as he mentioned in his letter, that poor health prompted him to resign. But if that’s the case, the government’s response to his resignation has been strange. The first government reaction came almost 15 hours after Dhankhar went public with his resignation, and it took the form of a terse message from the Prime Minister. Dhankhar’s resignation was not just accepted promptly , but also announced through the Official Gazette equally promptly. There have been a raft of reports that have since explored the reasons for the exit. Some say the trigger was Dhankhar’s move to deal with the impeachment of a high court judge in the Rajya Sabha, while the government wanted to do this in the Lok Sabha. The former VP saw himself as a legal expert, and often held forth on the judiciary and its failings; it is likely he saw the impeachment as an opportunity to leave his mark in history (no judge has been impeached before; there have been attempts, but they have either failed, or the judge in question has resigned before the completion of the process). Had the motion to impeach the judge been admitted in the Rajya Sabha, Dhankhar would have effectively been in charge of the process. Others point to his growing closeness with the Opposition. To be sure, Dhankhar has always taken the government’s side in the Rajya Sabha, often intervening to counter arguments put forth by Opposition lawmakers, and his move to improve his relationship with the Opposition may well have come after that with the government soured. That last seems a given; Dhankhar has not had a one-on-one meeting with PM Modi in months. And still others speak of his desire to make the post bigger than it is, if only in terms of the trappings, and his angst at not being allowed to meet JD Vance during the US VP’s visit to India in April. Most theories are likely to have a kernel of truth, but none explains what happened. We may never know. In India’s parliamentary system, the elected government is all powerful. Contrary to the phraseology of the council of ministers “serving at the pleasure of the President” or, in the case of a state, “the pleasure of the Governor”, it is actually Presidents, Vice Presidents and Governors, who serve at the pleasure of the elected government at the Centre. Whatever the story behind it, Dhankhar’s exit is another reminder of this. | | There are Governors, and there are Governors… India has thus far had 484 Governors: some have been governors of multiple states; others have held multiple stints as Governors; and in all, people have taken an oath to be Governor 843 times. This data is from Hindustan Times’ database on Governors, the fifth such put together by my colleague Nishant Ranjan, after databases on the Union Council of Ministers, Chief Ministers, Deputy Chief Ministers and Supreme Court judges. You can see the three-part series here , here , and here . A digression may be in order here: Nishant’s work, under the supervision of Roshan Kishore, the head of our data journalism team, is among the output of this newsroom of which I am truly proud. It is, literally, back-breaking (given the multiple sources that have to be tapped, and the due diligence required to ensure that no one’s caste is misidentified). But it is also unique, and a rich lode of information for political scientists and researchers. But back to the database. It shows that a majority of people appointed Governors are politicians, Hindu, and from the so-called upper castes; only 4.5% are women. The trends are secular — across appointments made by both the BJP and the Congress when they were in power at the Centre. The data shows Governors are becoming older — suggesting that such appointments may be a way for a party in power at the Centre to reward senior leaders who cannot be accommodated in the Union Council of Ministers or state governments (for whatever reason) . | | … but no decibel Governors. At least, not for last weekend and the first three days of the week . And, not in Delhi or many parts of north India. Given the increase in outward (and loud) expressions of religiosity, and rise in unemployment (or under-employment), it isn’t hard to understand why so many young men (and some young women), mostly from peri-urban and rural India, participate in the Kanwar Yatra, the pilgrimage to bring back holy water from the Ganga, ostensibly on foot, and also why most of them prefer to travel in trucks bedecked with speakers blasting music that isn’t always of a religious nature. Nor is it hard to understand why Delhi Police is loath to act against the infractions of the pilgrims: noise; general rowdiness; obstruction; often, vandalism; and sometimes, assault. But even by the standards of police forces across the northern states, whose chief ministers seemed to be in a contest to see who would be nicest to the pilgrims, the UT of Delhi stood apart. Not one FIR was registered against the pilgrims. But there’s another layer to the yatra itself and its yatris. Citing work by anthropologist Satyendra Kumar and reportage from 2017 in Hindustan Times by Snigdha Poonam, Roshan Kishore wove together several economic and social strands in his weekly column Terms of Trade to highlight “the sense of power, if only temporary, the participants draw from such activities”, the factors behind this, and why the Indian state “knows better than to prevent” their “pent-up anger from” being released. | | Welcome noise The late 1960s saw the birth of heavy metal, and one of three bands widely seen as pioneering the genre was Black Sabbath. One of its founding members, vocalist Ozzy Osbourne, died this week aged 77. Strangely, the two other bands found critical acclaim well before Black Sabbath did, although the third was as successful as the first two. It’s difficult explaining Black Sabbath to anyone not familiar with the band — although John Darnielle makes a valiant attempt in his monograph on the band’s Master of Reality for the 33 1/3 series of books (what, you’ve never heard of these ?). This takes the form of a long rant by a young man locked up in a psych ward in the 1980s, and deprived of his Walkman, trying to explain the band to the people who have locked him up, hoping that they will understand enough to give him back his tapes and Walkman. Master of Reality isn’t the band’s best album, though it comes close; that honour will have to be shared by Paranoid and Vol. 4 . | | Too young to die 77 isn’t young; although given Ozzy’s excesses, it is an almost Methuselahesque age (but Keith Richards is still going strong at 81). 114 is definitely not young, and that’s how old Fauja Singh was when he was killed last week by a SUV while crossing a road near his village in Punjab. Our columnist Rudraneil Sengupta recollects a run he went for with Singh over a decade ago. “We went for a run together, past mustard fields full of yellow flowers, wheat fields shimmering under a light breeze, sentinels of poplars and groves of mangoes. Singh was in his trademark tracksuit, a slight man with a flowing silver beard, positively wizard-like. He spoke of his most recent race, a 10K he had run in Hong Kong a few months earlier. Chuckling, he recounted how he had a fall just past the halfway mark. “People rushed to help me, because every time I fall nowadays people think I won’t get up again,” he said, slapping his knee. “But my time has not come. I got up on my own and just ran. When I crossed the finish line, I felt so light, so painless, I thought: God was running with me.” Reading that piece reminded me of two things. One, it reminded me of a line from Alan Sillitoe’s classic The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner: “It’s a treat being a long-distance runner, out in the world by yourself with not a soul to make you bad-tempered or tell you what to do…”. And two, it reminded me of what Gopalakrishna Gandhi once said: “In the rest of the world, pedestrians have rights; in India, they (have to) have luck”. | | A way with words Gandhi, our columnist — his father was also Hindustan Times ’ longest serving editor, so I feel a sense of kinship with him; and I am currently reading Narayani Basu’s book on KM Panikkar , a man who, among other things, was also the first editor of Hindustan Times — has a way with words. So does Rudraneil. But there are times when I find myself using ChatGPT or Google (increasingly the first; and I think this is the beginning of the end of search) to understand a term someone has used in a message to me (I work with a lot of young and hip people). Which is why I was delighted to see the cover story in the latest issue of Brunch . From Mog to Coldplayed to NPC Energy to Fridge Cigarette, if I’m suddenly with it, I have only Sneha Krishnan to thank. | | | | Were you forwarded this email? Did you stumble upon it online? Sign up here. | | | | | | Get the Hindustan Times app and read premium stories | | | | | | View in Browser | Privacy Policy | Contact us You received this email because you signed up for HT Newsletters or because it is included in your subscription. Copyright © HT Digital Streams. All Rights Reserved | | | | |
