Reading Speeches

I watched three events in youtube yesterday: the speeches of three successive Indian prime ministers: Jawaharlal Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shastri, and Indira Gandhi. All the three speeches were incidentally related to Kashmir conflict. I watched these video clips to divert my attention from hectic schedule, but found myself involved thinking about the speeches and related dimensions: what the leaders spoke, their style of speaking, their tonal expressions and implications. All these I have referred in this piece reading speeches. I am aware that I am a novice in this disciple, and many universities have special departments to study and analyze speeches. But there is nothing, I suppose, in hazarding this analysis in a blog, which for me an open space to express myself. In this adventure, I do not mind considerations of specialization, expertise, and all those stuff.

All these three clips hardly continued more than 20 minutes. These clips were random selections. As I was thinking of ways of comforting myself, a random thought appeared that I should listen to Shastri’s speech. And when I watched the video of Tashkent summit and his brief speech there, I could come across other video clips in the same webpage containing speeches of father-daughter duo – Nehru and Indira. To my amusement all the speeches were related to Kashmir conflict. Nehru was speaking at the UN and at a press conference in New Delhi and Indira was speaking to press during her whirlwind world tour during Indo-Pak crisis in 1971.

Let me start with Indira Gandhi. She was visibly tense during interviews. I could fathom her visible frustration. While speaking at the Panos show, or at other interviews, mainly in the UK, her face was stiff, at time contorted, as she was confronting barrage of questions from journalists. Journalists were perhaps delighted to see India’s prime minister in such a tense posture. And they bombarded with questions: will India attack Pakistan? Will India initiate a dialogue with Pakistan to bring peace in West Pakistan? Will India support Mukti Bahini of Shiekh Mujibur Rehman in its war against Pakistan? Indira was visibly upset, and trying to articulate Indian position that India has nothing to do with Pakistan crisis. But what about millions of refugees crossing over to Indian territory, she asked journalists? What about if Pakistan in order to persecute Mukti Bahini crossed international border and follow the refugees, she argued? My point is she could have articulated this point without displaying her frustration at non-support from the Western powers to her diplomacy. At one point she said, Kashmir is not our problem; it is created by Pakistan.

Shastri at Tashkent was forthcoming. I saw in video clip that he displayed at the same time a child-like innocence and statesmanlike demeanor. The meeting was organized by the Soviet Premier Alexi Kosygin, who introduced Shastri and Ayub Khan at the round table. As I could identify Shastri was accompanied by Sardar Swaran Singh, then Foreign Minister of India, and Jagjivan Ram, and Ayub was accompanied by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Shastri read out the printed speech, it was clear and audible. His manner was straightforward, without any trace of gullibility, and simple. He was wearing dhoti and kurta. His small physical stature was sufficiently compensated by his demeanor. After the summit, he went to an educational center and glimpsed over some of the old texts and talked to the staff of the institute. It was a great opportunity to see Shastri walking and talking. The government dominated public media display speeches of Nehru and Indira, but I have never come across Shastri’s speeches, not even on his birthday which falls on the same day as that of Mahatma Gandhi. This video was created by the Soviet government.

Coming back to Nehru he appeared articulate and at ease while speaking to journalists or while speaking at the UN. His long years of experience during freedom struggle and also in post-independent politics must have been assets for him. While speaking to journalists in Delhi, in the context of Kashmir, he said Kashmir has acceded to India. It is Pakistan which should withdraw its forces, and make peace with India. He argued that he went to the United Nations because he wanted to tell the world the aggression of Pakistan. He squarely blamed Pakistan, and said the onus lies on Pakistan how to make peace in the region. He said India has not occupied Kashmir illegally; rather Pakistan has occupied parts of it by invading it. Indira too echoed her father during one of her interviews with a journalist named Chris Panos. Nehru, I think, can be graded the best speaker among the three. His foreign upbringing, his mastery over language, and his casual approach are his assets. In case of Shastri, it is his straightforwardness that can be considered his asset. He had not upbringing as that of Nehru, he rose from the grassroots. Perhaps he was the most upright politician India ever witnessed in its post-independent history. In case of Indira, she was perhaps not that astute in political affairs by that time (1971) as was her father in early 1960s. She was known as a ‘mute’ politician in her early political career (one socialist thinker Rammanohar Lohia described her as ‘ghunghi gudiya’). She might have unsurpassed shrewdness as a politician, but she was less articulate in comparison to her father and Shastri. I have not seen clips of her later speeches, which, I am sure, must be better in terms of composure.