C. Rajagopalachari - Criticism

Criticism

Even though Rajaji was considered one of the most able statesmen in the national arena, his provincial and later his state administrations are seen as having fared badly. Critics opine that he completely failed to gauge the thoughts and feelings of the masses – his introduction of Hindi and the Madras Scheme of Elementary Education have both been extensively criticised while his pacifist stance during the Quit India Movement and his "C. R. Formula" angered the majority of his colleagues in the Indian National Congress. P. C. Alexander, a former governor of Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, once wrote:

The most conspicuous case of constitutional impropriety by the Governor in the exercise of discretion to choose the Chief Minister, took place in 1952 when the then Governor of Madras, Sri Prakasa, invited Rajagopalachari to form the government in the composite State

Referring to Rajaji, Sarojini Naidu, who was never on good terms with him, remarked that 'the Madras fox was a dry logical Adi Shankaracharya while Nehru was the noble, compassionate Buddha'.

Although his popularity at the regional level fluctuated greatly, it is believed that Rajaji was able to exercise his stranglehold over provincial politics mainly because he was favored by national leaders such as Gandhi, Patel and Nehru. Critics feel that when the President of the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee K. Kamaraj and a majority of the provincial leaders turned against him in the 1940s, Rajaji clung on to a position of influence in regional politics through support from his colleagues at the centre.

Rajaji was always an archetypal Tamil Brahmin nemesis of the Dravidian movement. Deeply religious, a pious Hindu and a follower of the Vedas and Upanishads, he was accused of being pro-Sanskrit and pro-Hindi, a stigma which Rajaji found difficult to erase despite his vehement protests against the imposition of Hindi during the Madras Anti-Hindi agitations of 1965. He was also accused of attempting to heavily sanskritize Tamil vocabulary through the inclusion of a large number of Sanskrit words in his writings. His vocational education policy was seen as an attempt to reinforce the Varnashrama dharma of the caste system, while his Indian nationalist and anti-secessionist leanings formed the inspiration for Periyar's coining of the term "Brahmin-Bania combine".