The collected silences of MMS: The spider weaves its web widely

Singh opened up the economy without fanfare or chest-beating. Neither did he react when the BJP went overboard when attacking him during UPA II.

After the post-war guilt when a distinguished German professor converted to Catholicism, he had second thoughts about the tapes he had made for broadcasting on German radio that he felt might add to the prevailing religious overtones in the public discourses and he wanted some changes made in the script. There were 27 mentions of the word ‘God’ in the script which he wanted to amend to ‘that higher being whom we revere’, which, he felt, was consistent with his pre-conversion beliefs. Editing the German script was not easy grammatically because there were five datives, seven genitives and one vocative in that phrase, adding to the irritation of the professor. For Murke, the editor at the radio station, this was a challenge as well as a moment of amusement. The tape had to be cut and spliced to take out the offending word and accommodate the extra words. He sliced the cut portions and pasted them into a tape that was 30 minutes long. Thirty minutes of silence.

Heinrich Boll’s story, ‘Murke’s Collected Silences’ is an account of the 30 minutes of silence that the German radio official had taped and used to play in the evenings after a hard day’s work. When PV Narasimha Rao was suddenly called upon to take over as prime minister and he was deciding on the cabinet formation, he was in a dilemma over whom to allot the crucial portfolio of Finance. Waiting in the hall were prospective candidates -- P Chidambaram, Pranab Mukherjee and Yashwant Sinha. The previous evening, Rao had consulted former President R Venkataraman about a suitable man who would help the economy recover from the balance of payments mess. Venkataraman, who had handled Finance, mentioned Manmohan Singh, who had been RBI Governor and a rank outsider to politics. He had also worked in the IMF and knew the set-up there. Singh was also non-controversial and unflappable.

When Rao announced the name of Manmohan Singh, there was hushed silence in the hall, the three prospective candidates were duly shocked. Pranab remembered seeing Singh wait outside his office with files when he was Finance Minister. Chidambaram was also sulking.

The opening of the economy under the quiet Dr Manmohan Singh is now history. From a basket case, the country’s leap into an economic power has been remarkable. Singh carried out his reforms, fully confident that Rao would back him to the hilt. “If the reforms click, I will take all the credit for it; but if they fail, then you would be blamed for it,” Rao had joked with him. From a Licence Raj regime, India was launched into a modern economic power centre. Investments began to pour in, the IT sector opened up and the soft power of the country began to be noticed and respected. Manufacturing picked up and the innovative and creative skills of the people were getting noticed everywhere. All these, Manmohan Singh carried out without any fanfare or beating of the chest. In fact, he rarely opened his mouth, and the one break he made was to quote Mirza Ghalib in his first budget speech. Rao, too, was a practitioner of the mysterious art of silence and it was said he could be silent in 12 languages.

Singh clarified that the economic reforms he had initiated were not meant to “give a fillip to the mindless and heartless consumerism” we see in affluent societies. He said that “we must combine efficiency with austerity,” which he exemplified in his life. Austerity did not mean “a negation of life, or a dry creed that casts a baleful eye on joy and laughter.” He invoked Gandhi to say that the challenge “of our times is to ensure that wealth creation is not only tempered by equity and justice, but is harnessed to the goal of removing poverty, ignorance and disease.”

This vision came to fruition when, in 2001, a Goldman Sachs team identified India as one of the BRIC countries likely to be the main source of global growth in future.

During a crisis US President George HW Bush was facing on the Troubled Asset Relief Programme (TARP), a major initiative to face the 2008 financial crisis, he invited Manmohan Singh and a few members of the Indian delegation that was visiting the US to a working lunch at the White House. At the lunch, Bush paid Singh a touching compliment, “Mr Prime Minister, I cannot think of anyone else I would rather meet at a time of crisis like this. You have a very calming effect on people.”

That was why when the Opposition went overboard to attack him during UPA II, Singh rarely lost his cool and took it all in his stride. Equally, when Rahul Gandhi publicly tore up a document his government had drafted for adoption by Parliament, Singh did not react, though there was wide speculation that he would resign at this humiliation.

The Apostle Peter wrote, in the Philokalia, that when you feel uncertainty and doubt whether God cares for you, think of the spider. It has no possessions, makes no journeys, does not engage in litigation, does not become angry, and amasses no savings. Its life is marked by complete gentleness, self-restraint and extreme stillness. It does not meddle in the affairs of others, but minds its own business, calmly and quietly it gets on with its own work. “The spider is far more silent than Pythagoras, whom the ancient Greeks admired more than any other philosopher because of the control he exercised over his tongue.” Although Pythagoras did not talk to everyone, he did speak occasionally, in secret, with his closest friends...“The spider achieves more than Pythagoras, it never utters a single word...Nevertheless, the Lord extends His providence even to the spider, sending him food every day, and causes tiny insects to fall into its web.”

In practicing this silence, like the German broadcaster with his 30 minutes of silence on tape, Singh retained his equanimity and composure. Which other political leader can claim to have achieved that?

(The writer is a senior journalist)