What does Dhankar’s departure tell us about this government?

Yes, it’s okay to feel bad for Jagdeep Dhankar no matter what your views on his performance as Chairman of the Rajya Sabha or as Governor of Bengal before that were.

No Vice President of India deserves to end his tenure in this strange and abrupt way. It diminishes a senior Constitutional office and that is never good for Indian democracy.

 

It’s clear that Dhankar did not leave happily. And that ill-health was not the primary reason for his sudden departure. He was either pushed or quickly jumped just before he could be pushed. The sequence of events makes this clear. At five thirty pm, his office was releasing details of his program for the days ahead. In a matter of hours after that he suddenly resigned.

 

   Any doubts about the circumstances of his exit were removed when the Prime Minister, who is notably prompt and polite on social media, did not post an affectionate good bye message on X when Dhankar announced his resignation. In fact Narendra Modi waited till the following day before posting an unusually cool message. Noting that Dhankar had had many opportunities to serve the country, the Prime Minister wished him good health. An unkind observer might summarise the post as saying ‘you got lots of good jobs; now run along.’

 

   What does Dhankar’s departure tell us about this government and how it functions?

 

   Well, I reckon it tells us three things.

 

   The first is that Dhankar clearly committed some cardinal sin - at least in the Prime Minister’s eyes. We don’t know what this was but judging by the organised leaks that have followed his exit it may have had something to do with the effort to impeach Justice Varma from whose home a large amount of cash was allegedly recovered. As the judge has refused to resign impeachment proceedings were the logical next step. The Opposition submitted a notice for the removal of Justice Varma and Dhankar, as Chairman of the Rajya Sabha accepted it.

 

   This seems fairly unexceptionable except that, according to the leaks, by accepting the Opposition notice Dhankar disrupted one of the government’s best-laid plans. The idea had been for the government to move against the judge and to use his example to launch a broader attack on the judiciary. By letting the Opposition take the first step, Dhankar disrupted this scheme. And, say those leaking, someone in a position of authority called Dhankar that evening and berated him. Angry words were exchanged and Dhankar was either told to quit or put in a position where he had no other choice.

 

   Though this version of events has been systemically circulated I find it hard to believe. The only two people who could berate the Vice President of India are the people Dhankar has spent a decade pleasing. Given his behaviour in the recent past it seems unlikely that he would get angry with them when they berated him. He is more likely to have grovelled and said sorry.

 

   Moreover would anyone as powerful as our country’s top leaders have been so agitated over a relatively minor issue that they would have forced the Vice President of India out of office? It just doesn’t add up. On the other hand, stranger things have happened in politics. But it’s hard to escape the feeling that there was more to Dhankar’s exit than this issue.

 

   The second lesson from this episode is that no matter how hard you try to please the powers that be, your position is never secure. I know and like Dhankar who, contrary to his public image, is actually a sharp and amiable fellow who is able to laugh at himself and has friends across the spectrum. Despite the caricature he is not a humourless Hindutva stormtrooper. He was part of the Chandrashekhar government, and later, a member of the Congress. He only joined the BJP in 2003 when he was in his 50s.

 

"A guy who spent a decade as the government’s hitman is suddenly out and the Prime Minister does not seem at all sorry to see him go."

   The reason he got so far in the Modi era was because he was willing to function as an effective hatchet man for the government. Sent to West Bengal as Governor to create problems for Mamata Banerjee he performed with admirable zeal, regularly getting into tussles with the state government and throwing obstacles in its way.

 

   Most Governors restrain themselves in their public utterances believing it is improper to criticise the government of the state or to attack the Chief Minister.

 

   Dhankar saw no need for such restraint. Not only was he vocal about what he regarded as Mamata’s failings, he had no hesitation in travelling around the country to tell people how badly the state was being governed and how unreasonable Mamata was being with him.

 

   I once chaired a panel in Mumbai where Dhankar and Shashi Tharoor were the guests. Both Shashi and I were a little startled by how eager Dhankar was to rip into Mamata. But because he can be sharp and witty he pulled it off, dismissing our efforts to suggest he was breaking with the convention that the office of the Governor should be above politics.

 

   At election after election the BJP has failed to stop the Trinamool Congress. Dhankar remained the source of its only successful attempts to needle or deter Mamata.

 

   That is probably why Modi made Dhankar Vice President.

 

   Till Dhankar came along most of us focused on the ceremonial nature of the Vice President’s job but Dhankar’s performance reminded us that the real importance of the post lay in the Vice President’s role as Chairman of the Rajya Sabha.

 

   Once again, Dhankar did for Modi what he had first done in the Kolkata Raj Bhavan, picking fights with MPs (including a famous exchange with Jaya Bachchan), being unperturbed by allegations that he was clearly biased in favour of the central government and breaking with precedent by launching frontal attacks on such targets as the judiciary.

 

   I thought that he had performed even better than Modi could have expected, risking his own reputation and stature while cheerfully trampling over all conventions and standards of propriety for the sake of the government.

 

   And yet, here we are today. A guy who spent a decade as the government’s hitman is suddenly out and the Prime Minister does not seem at all sorry to see him go.

 

   There is a third lesson from Dhankar’s exit; and it is one that we should all have learned by now. When it comes to what is really going on in this government, nobody knows anything.

 

   While the search for a Vice Presidential nominee was in progress, political observers and commentators came up with lists of potential candidates. I don’t think Dhankar’s name even featured on most of those lists. And even if it did, he was never a front runner. Most journalists kept looking for potential future Presidential candidates or focusing on identity politics. (As in: which community does the government want to please?) Few people worked out that Narendra Modi had made a shrewd calculation: the job is about managing the Rajya Sabha so let’s find a hatchet man who can do that.

 

   If has been the same with Dhankar’s departure: no commentator had noticed that Modi had tired of Dhankar or had figured out what the Vice President had done to displease his masters. All of the theories being offered now are post-facto attempts to find explanations that fit the facts and frankly, none of them is entirely convincing.

 

   Narendra Modi is the only Prime Minister in Indian history to run a government that is so opaque that nobody knows what is really going on or what will happen next. There are no unwitting leaks and even now, after he has been in office for over a decade, nor does any political commentator have enough of an insight into how the Prime Minister’s mind works to be able to accurately predict the flow of events. Every prediction about a cabinet reshuffle is always wrong. Every nominee to a Constitutional post is always a surprise. And every one struggles to find explanations after events have passed us by.

 

   Perhaps one day we will find out what Dhankar did wrong and why he was forced out. Till then I will feel a little sorry for him. He tried so hard to please his political masters by throwing all conventions to the wind. But somehow even that was not enough for the powers that be.