Yes, it’s okay to feel bad for Jagdeep Dhankhar, no matter what your views are on his performance as Chairman of the Rajya Sabha or as Governor of West Bengal before that. No Vice President of India deserves to end his tenure in this strange and abrupt way. It diminishes a senior constitutional office, which is never good for Indian democracy.
It’s clear that Dhankhar did not leave happily. And that ill-health was not the primary reason for his sudden departure. He was either pushed or he jumped just before he could be pushed. The sequence of events makes this clear. At 5:30 pm, his office was releasing details of his programme 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 Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is notably prompt and polite on social media, did not post an affectionate goodbye message on X when Dhankhar announced his resignation. In fact, Modi waited till the following day before posting an unusually cool message. Noting that Dhankhar 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 Dhankhar’s departure tell us about this government and how it functions?
Well, I reckon it tells us three things.
Disruptor of plans
The first is that Dhankhar clearly committed some cardinal sin—at least in the Prime Minister’s eyes. Judging by the organised leaks that have followed his exit, it may have had something to do with the effort to impeach Justice Yashwant 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 Dhankhar, as the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, accepted it.
This seems fairly unexceptionable——except that, according to the leaks, by accepting the Opposition notice, Dhankhar disrupted one of the government’s best-laid plans. The plan 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, Dhankhar disrupted this scheme. And, as per the leaks, someone in authority reportedly called Dhankhar that evening and berated him. Angry words were exchanged, and Dhankhar 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 Dhankhar has spent a decade pleasing. Given his behaviour in the recent past, it seems unlikely that he would get angry with them for berating him. He is more likely to have grovelled and said sorry.
Moreover, would anyone as powerful as our country’s top leaders be so agitated over a relatively minor issue that they would force the Vice President of India out of office? It just doesn’t add up. Stranger things have happened in politics, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that there was more to Dhankhar’s exit.
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 Dhankhar—who, contrary to his public image, is actually a sharp and amiable fellow. He’s able to laugh at himself and has friends across the political spectrum. Despite the caricature, he is not a humourless Hindutva stormtrooper. He was part of the Chandrashekhar government, later joined the Congress, and only came to the BJP in 2003 when he was in his 50s.
The reason he got so far in the Modi era was that 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 state government or to attack the Chief Minister. Dhankhar saw no need for that. Not only was he vocal about what he regarded as Mamata’s failings, but 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 Dhankhar and Shashi Tharoor were guests. Both Tharoor and I were a little startled by how eager Dhankhar 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 a Governor should rise above politics.
In election after election, the BJP has failed to stop the Trinamool Congress. Dhankhar remained the source of its only successful attempts to needle or deter Mamata. That is probably why Modi made Dhankhar Vice President.
Till Dhankhar came along, most of us saw the Vice President’s role as largely ceremonial. But his tenure was a reminder that the real importance of the office lies in the role of Rajya Sabha Chairman.
Once again, Dhankhar 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 biased toward the central government, and breaking with precedent by launching frontal attacks on institutions like 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.
Also read: Report leak, global headlines pinned Air India crash on dead pilots. But nothing adds up
India’s most opaque government
There is a third lesson from Dhankhar’s exit; 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 Dhankhar’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.
It has been the same with Dhankhar’s departure. No commentator had noticed that Modi had tired of him or figured out what the Vice President had done to displease his masters. All the theories now doing the rounds 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 insight into how the Prime Minister’s mind works. Predictions about cabinet reshuffles are always wrong. Every nominee to a constitutional post is always a surprise. And everyone struggles to find explanations after events have passed us by.
Perhaps one day we will find out what Dhankhar 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.
Vir Sanghvi is a print and television journalist, and talk show host. He tweets @virsanghvi. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)