Dharmendra Pradhan should have resigned as Union education minister earlier. Perhaps — who knows? — he wanted to and was prepared to but was not allowed to. I regret the fact that he did not leave earlier, not just because that would have saved the country the enervations seen over the last three weeks but for another reason as well: Resignations, when they are real, are intensely personal decisions. They come from inner resolve. They are non-negotiable. Pradhan’s resignation, partly for the reason of its delayed arrival, but more for what could seem like a lack of a clear inner conviction, would stop short of being such a relinquishment.

When resignations are demanded by the public through protests, and are then offered, they become less of a self-denial and more of a punishment inflicted. I cannot get myself to admire demands for an individual’s resignation. Democratic demands for leaders of governments and of governments as a whole to resign, like Jayaprakash Narayan’s in 1974, are another matter. Expectations for resignations that follow due process and come after responsibility, direct or vicarious, if a public wrong is established are also another matter. Two Union finance ministers left Prime Minister (PM) Jawaharlal Nehru’s Cabinet in such circumstances — RK Shanmukham Chetty and TT Krishnamachari. When I refer to “real” resignations by individuals, I am referring to resignations which are true and inwardly driven, in response to something which will not let them continue in office — when continuing is to lose one’s self-respect.

The individual concerned in a democracy must see and feel public opinion, and when he does, that realisation contributes to his personal decision, Two impulses are at work then: one’s inner voice and the external voice, the voice of one’s conscience and the voice of the people. Both heeded, in good time, make for resignations of the kind PM Nehru’s Cabinet saw in the........

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