MS Swaminathan’s wife, Mina, is your father’s first cousin. Were you not worried about the book being hagiographical since you were writing about your uncle?
No, I wasn’t. But I’ve had some readers say that he has been portrayed as mostly white, with very slim shades of grey. At the same time, many people have told me that they learned new things from the book. I have accepted that you cannot please them all. And, honestly, I wasn’t aiming to
MS Swaminathan’s wife, Mina, is your father’s first cousin. Were you not worried about the book being hagiographical since you were writing about your uncle?
No, I wasn’t. But I’ve had some readers say that he has been portrayed as mostly white, with very slim shades of grey. At the same time, many people have told me that they learned new things from the book. I have accepted that you cannot please them all. And, honestly, I wasn’t aiming to please anybody. I just wanted to put the facts out there, in terms of the political compulsions behind the Green Revolution and everything that he did. My greatest belief is that he was far more than an agricultural scientist, and wore many hats with great aplomb. It is time we recognized him for his colossal contributions. That’s why I wrote the book. He was a diplomat and institution builder, and the first non-white Director General of the International Rice Research Institute. His work extends beyond India to Pakistan, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Myanmar, the Philippines, and several other parts of the world.
Tell us about the first time you met him at the age of seven. Why did you refuse to eat the mangoes that he offered you?
He told me, “They are the king of fruits”, hoping that would convince me to eat one. But I told him that I found them too sweet, and went on to ask, “If mangoes are the king of fruits, then who is the queen?” He was amused but not dismissive. He wanted to know if I had a fruit in mind that could be crowned as the queen. “Apple!” I said, because I used to think that of it as the most elegant fruit. Its spherical beauty caught my eye, apart from the fact that it was red, ripe and taut. He found me interesting because of the questions I asked.
Once, I remarked, “You say you work with farmers but you don’t look like one.” He did not take that as an affront. He said, “What do you think farmers look like? Have you seen one?” I had. I grew up in Kolkata, and one always saw farmers on train journeys to Durgapur. When he probed further, I told him that I saw only men. He said, “A lot of farmers are women. They do most of the work but do not get credit for it.” I was fascinated. I think he used to enjoy the fact that I was a chatterbox though other elders found my chatter irritating. He treated me like an equal, which is something that adults rarely do. I liked that very much.
You write about how MS Swaminathan was deeply moved by MK Gandhi’s statement “There are people in the world so hungry that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.” What was it like for you to learn about this, especially at a time when Gandhi has ceased to be inspiring for many people because of the critical writing around his life choices that are viewed as misogynist and casteist?
I have a BA (Honours) degree in History from St Stephen’s College in Delhi. With the academic training that I got, I tend to view things in a historical context and interpret them accordingly. I was born in Bengal. The notion of food wastage was an anathema in my house simply because my own grandmother had lost several members of her family to the Bengal famine. We were taught to eat whatever was put on our plate without a fuss.
For MS, Mahatma Gandhi was the reason why he did what he did. He was training to be a doctor when the Bengal famine unleashed itself. And he felt that an agricultural country like India did not need one more doctor. What it needed was somebody to solve the food crisis. After two years of studying for a medical degree, he jumped into the agricultural sciences.
Like others of his generation, MS had unbridled admiration for Gandhi. But my own views are more real. My generation does not venerate Gandhi. What we know of today is because of the extensive research that has gone into uncovering his misogyny. I think that veneration of any individual from the past or the present is genuinely a bad idea.
Would you agree then that venerating MS Swaminathan is a bad idea too?
Yes, of course! Just to be clear, I am not venerating M.S. What I am trying to do is talk about the subject of food security in India through the political lens. Food is taken for granted now because there are lavish buffets after which food is thrown away. This cavalier attitude that we have today is because of the one man who gave India food security. If 1.5 billion Indians have food on their plate today, it is simply because MS refused to give up.
He told me that his greatest learning has come from his critics. He had a healthy regard for them. He was candid in saying that the Green Revolution was needed to taste success in a short span of time but it left India with consequences like over-salinization of the soil.
He was born in 1925, and your book was released to mark his centennial. What do you make of environmentalist Vandana Shiva’s criticism of his legacy?
Vandana Shiva makes a killing out of driving MS into the ground. She calls him the father of cancer in India. Well, she is entitled to her views as am I. The Green Revolution did bring carcinogenic elements into the ground because the fertilizers themselves were very carcinogenic. The hybrid wheat varieties needed large amounts of water and fertilizers so that the land could vomit out the volume of food that was needed for people. The cancer argument is actually true because of over-dependence on fertilizers. The criticism following the Green Revolution made MS introspect and begin his lifelong championing of the Evergreen Revolution, which prioritized agricultural productivity without ecological harm.
Your book claims that the liberation of Bangladesh would not have happened in 1971 if India was not self-sufficient in food production. How did you make that link?
The link is pretty much clear for anybody to see. If you can’t grow your own food, you cannot call your own shots. With Lyndon Johnson as their President, the United States used food aid to control foreign policy. In the mid-1960s, Indira Gandhi realised that the only way she could get the Americans off her back was to become self-sufficient in food production. Finally, in the 1970s, that happened due to the Green Revolution.
That said, the Green Revolution was a flawed experiment. It was critiqued by MS himself because he felt it was turning into a greed revolution. But without that revolution, Mrs Gandhi wouldn’t have been able to pull off the 1971 liberation of Bangladesh. If Indians were under American influence, she wouldn’t have been able to move one battalion of the army across the border to free the Bangladeshis or East Pakistanis as they were called at that point.
You also write about how the US wanted India to soften its criticism of the Vietnam War. How did Prime Minister Indira Gandhi respond to that expectation?
Mrs Gandhi had very strong opinions on geopolitics. By virtue of that, India did too. But she wasn’t able to deploy her voice very confidently or successfully because of the clout of American food aid over her head. When that changed, all hell broke loose. All the strings conditioning India to keep its stance more tailored to American policy snapped. That gave Mrs Gandhi the impetus to carry out the liberation of Bangladesh and also the nuclear test in Pokhran in 1974. “Smiling Buddha”, as the test was called, happened only because India had food security. Without that, Mrs. Gandhi would not have been able to call the shots.
You call Mrs. Gandhi one of MS Swaminathan’s greatest allies. What did he think of the Emergency?
His admiration for Mrs Gandhi was not absolute. He has gone on record to say that he did not support the Emergency. But he valued her support to scientists and farmers.
What was MS Swaminathan’s stance on the farmers’ protests in 2020-21?
He was in his late nineties. The only statement that he put out asserted that, at the end of the day, no farm law can afford to keep the farmer out of its purview. You have to base everything from the farmers’ perspective and not a corporate perspective, especially if your aim is to benefit the farmers. Excluding their voices is a grave disservice.
Chintan Girish Modi is a writer, journalist, educator, artist and literary critic. He has contributed to anthologies like 101 Indian Children’s Books We Love (2013), Borderlines: Volume 1 (2015), Clear Hold Build (2019), Fearless Love (2019), and Bent Book (2020).
One Subscription.
Get 360° coverage—from daily headlines
to 100 year archives.
Archives
HT App & Website