Obama and The Man

Obama and The Man

By Sachidananda Murthy for THE WEEK

As Barack Obama won the nomination of the Democratic Party, an excited reader of THE WEEK called me, recalling a book he had read more than three decades ago, which had foreseen an African American in the White House. It was The Man written by Irving Wallace, a journalist-turned novelist who spoke of the convulsions caused by a non-white man becoming the president of the most powerful country. Wallace picked up controversial subjects for his novels, like the debate over pornography (Seven Minutes) and the intrigues and joys of the annual Nobel Prize business (The Prize), which pushed him into the bestseller lists of the 1960s and 1970s.

Even Wallace could not foresee that a black man would come up through the electoral office. His hero Douglas Dilman comes into the office by accident as a series of deaths makes a senator become president, under the succession rules. But the United States and the world have moved from that era when the civil rights had to be won through hard battles by leaders like Martin Luther King, and enforced by an activist Supreme Court led by the legendary Chief Justice Earl Warren. Now Obama has come through affirmation of his party, getting endorsed by delegates in state after state.

He still has a difficult contest against Republican nominee John McCain that has to be won, if Obama has to be sworn in on January 20, 2009. King had led the Civil Rights March in Washington on August 28, 1963 and made his epochal "I have a dream..." speech. One such dream was "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character." Obama's character has shown throughout a campaign where, more than his detractors, it was his old friends who caused some embarrassment.

The United States broke a smaller, but at that time formidable, barrier when it chose a Catholic in John F. Kennedy in 1960 as president, during the period Black Power was making its presence. This time's Democratic contest also had a woman who fought until the last but failed to get the endorsement. America will have to wait for another woman to break the glass ceiling. The much younger Indian democracy, too, has seen a series of wonders in the last six decades. Eyebrows had been raised in 1998 when a columnist asked whether Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the last Brahmin Prime Minister of India. But then Vajpayee was succeeded by Manmohan Singh, the first Sikh Prime Minister. Just before that, Sonia Gandhi had made global headlines by being elected by the Congress and UPA as their nominee for the Prime Minister's post, the then President was ready to appoint her to the topmost executive post , but she declined the job as advised by her "inner voice"!

When K.R. Narayanan was elected President in 1997, a journalist asked how he felt as the country's first Dalit President. The scholar-diplomat replied "I am the President" and that was the most fitting answer, with neither caste, religion nor region defining the custodian of the Constitution. Statesmanship demands that an elected leader has to break out of narrow stockades.

The constant social churn in the country is seeing more and more barriers being broken, even while newer conflicts on the divisive issues of religion, caste and region are coming up. Amid the backdrop of violence over the agitation for reservations in Rajasthan, the Gujjars celebrated that a candidate from their social group cleared the All India Civil Services Examination with a high rank and would now be eligible to become an IAS officer. V.S. Naipaul saw a million mutinies in India, in his third book of the India trilogy. And 17 years of economic liberalisation has triggered newer kinds of mutinies, even as it smothered the older eruptions.

As Obama girdles up for the last mile to the White House, there is excitement not only in his own land, but around the globe, too. The Indian fascination for this contest would zoom if Bobby Jindal, the Indian American governor of Louisiana becomes the Republican vice-presidential candidate. Jindal is yet another American success story, but he has avoided any identification with the Indian American cause in a big way, as he wants to be a total American.
sachi@the-week.com