Review by Selma Carvalho

It is relevant that the Manohar Parrikar biography titled ‘An Extraordinary Life’, (Penguin, 2020) makes note of Parrikar’s ‘obviously handsome’ looks, likened by his friends to the on-screen idol Amol Palekar. Leaders are not made, they are born to greatness. They have certain qualities—a certain charisma—which instils in the masses hope and confidence. It is his good looks, his easy charm, his quick wit which endeared Parrikar to Goans, and it is impossible to think of him without feeling for him a certain admiration and affection. In many ways, Parrikar was the first unifying chief minister of Goa, drawing support from both Hindus and Catholics, managing somehow to get the endorsement of that behemoth who can direct politics from its pulpits, the Catholic Church.

Sadguru Patil and Mayabhushan Nagvenkar who co-wrote the biography bring with them decades of journalistic experience and an almost forensic knowledge about Goa’s electoral politics. For the first time, unfolding before us is the breadth of Parrikar’s life and career. Of his early years, the biographers are thin on detail, much of it based on anecdotes recalled by Parrikar’s close family and friends. Despite this limitation, we do glean the essential nature of Parrikar’s childhood, as being one of rebellion against authority, something he would carry into adulthood.

But the biographers come into their own when they recount Parrikar’s political life. Most Goans dismiss Parrikar’s involvement with the RSS as peripheral to his politics and bearing no influence on his policy decision-making. This biography shatters forever that myth. What is revelatory is the extent of Parrikar’s involvement with the RSS and how deeply entrenched the RSS itself is within the Goa BJP. By the mid-1980s, Parrikar was fully engaged with the RSS from recruitment and rallies to housing sangh workers and fund-raising, being himself enormously charitable. The extent of his devotion can only be described as that of a disciple devoted to the cause. What exactly did Parrikar believe the cause of the RSS to be? Even if as a youth, Parrikar genuinely thought that the RSS was a benign welfare, social and sporting organisation for Hindus, surely as a self-aware adult, it would have been impossible to ignore the RSS’s core ideology, that of creating an exclusionary Hindu rashtra. Parrikar rose in the RSS ranks mentored by its top brass. Early on, he caught the eye of RSS sanghachalak Subhash Velingkar, and Parrikar considered men like Durganand Nadkarni as his guru. Nadkarni as per the biography was arrested by Pune Police in 2014, for a previously filed FIR relating to communally-charged pamphleteering. Nor can it ever be erased from our collective memory, that Parrikar in 1992, travelled to Ayodhya as a karsevak in solidarity with the sangh. Back home, Parrikar’s sangh activities were also fairly militant from overturning a municipality jeep to charging on the Mapusa police station with a mob. It is unsettling to discover that Parrikar’s rise to political power was at every turn backed by agitations which in any civilised quarters would be considered undemocratic with total disregard for due process. Much as in his youth, he showed a marked disdain for authority, in later life, he also believed processes could be thwarted to achieve an end. Whether it was not paying Indian Railways his fare to protest a penalty which he felt he didn’t deserve or countering a mess workers’ strike by galvanising IIT students to cook a meal, what becomes obvious is that his defiance was steeped in stubbornness rather than foresight or broad vision.

Once in office, the RSS followed Parrikar there—not a sinister, shadowy presence but a full-fledged alliance which at times influenced communally sensitive policy making. On 24 October, 2000, when Parrikar was sworn in as chief minister, mentor-turned-acolyte Velingkar wept, overwhelmed by the momentous nature of the occasion. It was history in the making for an organisation which barely had a foothold in Goa and a party dismissed as the ‘Bhaji Pao Party.’

How did Parrikar manage to convince Goans that he was a man of the people, a politician who could see beyond identity politics? His success was largely due to Goa’s twisted electoral arithmetic and Congress’s abysmal failure of governance. From 1994, almost without interruption Parrikar would hold the Panjim seat as MLA, a position that essentially pivoted on the support of Panjim’s Catholic and Hindu elite. He knew full well he could draw on this groundswell of allegiance from the Gaud Saraswat Brahmin clan. His partisan politics, power brokering, and numerous U-turns were glibly explained away with excuses. Repeatedly the Catholic polity would forgive him, largely because the alternative—a Congress government, inefficient, disinterested, and hideously corrupt—was far worse. What cannot be denied was Parrikar’s work ethic, his aversion to blatant corruption, refusal to suffer fools, implementation of schemes which touched the lives of the younger generation, building of infrastructure, his ability to imagine a future for Goa which was modern and progressive, and eventually as his understanding of Goa’s secular fabric grew, to put considerable distance between himself and RSS ideologues. We are at a point in history when the world demands we re-interrogate our icons. Statues have been demolished because the men put on a plinth no longer represent the values of the 21st century. It is fitting perhaps that as Goa proceeds with building a monument to commemorate Parrikar, that this biography lets us interrogate his legacy with unflinching honesty.

Selma Carvalho is editor at JRLJ.

An Extraordinary Life is available for purchase here.

Banner picture of Parrikar at IIT Bombay convocation, 15 August, 2017.