JB Patnaik: Odisha Congress strongman leaves behind a mixed legacy

Bhubaneswar: The political legacy of Janaki Ballav Patnaik, who passed away at a Tirupati hospital in the wee hours today after straddling Odisha’s politics for four decades, remains a mixed one. There are as many people who admire him for his political acumen, his equanimity in the face of adversity and his literary exploits as there are detractors who blame him for the degeneration of the political culture in the state.[caption id=“attachment_2205864” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Former Assam Governor JB Patnaik. PTI[/caption] But no one, except perhaps the congenital JB hater, can deny him his place in the politics of the state in general and Congress politics in particular. It is a measure of his standing in the Congress that the party never came back to power after he was unceremoniously shown the door by Sonia Gandhi in the wake the Graham Staines murder in January 1999. The farther he was taken away from the helm in the state Congress, the deeper it sank, to be reduced to just 16 seats in the 147-member Odisha Assembly in the 2014 elections. Detractors would argue that the party had done worse after his two back-to-back stints as chief minister from 1980 to 1989, having been reduced from a steamrolling majority of 117 to just 10. But it took JB just five years to plot the downfall of a bulldozing Biju Patnaik, who had returned as chief minister in 1990 after a gap of 28 years with a stupendous majority of 123 and bounce back to power in March 1995. JB was not a leader in the Biju Patnaik mould, who always led from the front. He was not a great orator either. But he was the master of political manoeuvring who read political signals much faster and better than any of his contemporaries, something that earned him the sobriquet ‘wily old fox’. The fact that he was among the very few governors appointed by the erstwhile UPA government who were allowed to complete to their full terms by the Narendra Modi-led NDA government tells something about his ability to read the political winds. JB was 89 when he returned to Odisha after completing his five-year stint as Governor of Assam in December last year, an age when most political leaders are either too frail or too busy writing their memoirs to be politically active. But he was made of different stuff. The tumultuous welcome that Congressmen gave him on his return had to be seen to be believed. It was as much an affirmation of faith in his leadership as a commentary on the sad state of the party in the Congress. JB did not disappoint his supporters and made it clear that he was in no mood to hang up his boots as yet. “I am in politics and will remain in politics,” he announced to thunderous applause from his fans. Despite his achievements in politics, however, JB could never really bury the charge of corruption and sexual perversion that dogged him for the better part of his political life. There is no dearth of people who still attribute the Congress’ failure to return to power on the large scale corruption during his three stints as chief minister. Detractors also peddle stories about his alleged sexual escapades, even after he had gone past the age of 80. But they have not been able to explain why the Congress has gone steadily downhill after he was sidelined by the party leadership. From 27 seats in the elections in 2009, when he was shunted out as the Governor of Assam, presumably to keep him away from the politics in the state, the Congress was reduced to just 16 in the last elections. JB, the politician, has more than his share of admirers and detractors. But it would be unfair to judge the man purely on his politics. He was an extremely erudite person, who wrote some wonderful books in Odia. He won the Kendriya Sahitya Akademi for his Odia translation of Bankim Chandra’s collected novels in 2001 and the Odisha Sahitya Akademi award for his translation of Bhartruhari’s Bairagya Shataka in 1996. He was a great scholar of Sanskrit who could speak extempore and non-stop in the mother of all Indian languages. That is why he was appointed the Chancellor of the Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeeth in Tirupati where he was to have addressed to convocation ceremony today. JB Patnaik was a man of many parts and it would be unfair to judge one part without taking into account the others.