On Political Villains... And Academic Saints

Madame Soniaji Gandhiji has spoken: “It is difficult to remain a saint in politics,” she says.

Simultaneously, ET has a detailed report on a “land grab” by our President’s husband. She is the Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. The report also details many unsaintly acts committed by her, including robbing her own bank.

Speaking of saints, I forgot to mention the name of a great Indian in yesterday’s post on altruistic intellectuals: Professor BR Shenoy. He was on the official panel of economists set up to examine the Nehru-Mahalanobis ambitious Second Five-Year Plan (the plan that followed the Soviets by initiating “heavy industrialization” in India under the Chacha Nehru State) – and he goes down in history as a hero for submitting a “Note of Dissent.” This note was, of course, ignored. But what followed for Shenoy was a horror story: he was hounded out of academia and died in obscurity.

Peter, Lord Bauer paid a great tribute to Shenoy after his death, calling him a “hero and saint.” This essay is to be found in the new festschrift to Bauer, titled Peter Bauer and the Economics of Prosperity. This is jointly published by Cato Institute of Washington DC and Liberty Institute, New Delhi.

The Cato book is available here.

The Liberty Institute book is available here.

My own tribute to Bauer is also contained in this book, but that can be freely downloaded here. It contains a brief quote from Bauer's tribute to Shenoy.

Do read Bauer’s tribute to Shenoy in the above-mentioned festschrift if you can. Shenoy was a true “hero and saint.” I dedicated my first book, Antidote: Essays Against the Socialist Indian State, to the memory of Professor BR Shenoy. Professor Shenoy prophesized that socialist Indian planning in India would result in “planned chaos.” It has.

We began with Soniaji Gandhiji on the difficulty of saints surviving in Indian politics. Shenoy’s career shows that saints had difficulty surviving even outside politics. Socialism, central planning and public education make for a totalitarian state, where dissenters are harshly persecuted.

Yet, it is only if these voices of dissent are widely heard that we can cure the system of its ills. The socialists are wrong in theory; hence they are wrong in practice.

Professor BR Shenoy was a true blue classical liberal. His daughter, Sudha Shenoy, was a pioneering libertarian, editor of that classic work of Hayek on Keynesian inflationism, Tiger by the Tail (pdf here). Both are gone now. Both were heroes. Both might be considered saints when compared to evil politicians.

And look at the cost of ignoring these voices: look at our President and her family. Look at Soniaji Gandhiji and the CONgress. Look at Sharad Pawar. Look at Chacha Manmohan, the inflationist, who must have played a big part in ensuring that Shenoy was hounded out of every Economics course.

I have a personal memory of Shenoy. When I enrolled into a BA (Hons.) Economics programme in Hindu College, Delhi University, in 1974, Professor BR Shenoy’s young son, Siddhartha, was my classmate. It was rumoured that his father was an eminent economist, but we never studied any of his works, and were not even made aware of the famous “Note of Dissent.” Siddhartha dropped out after the first year. Probably his father decided that the course was not worth pursuing. Lucky man. I wish my father had done the same for me.