Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh’s intemperate remarks against Baba Ramdev and the incessant attempts to link the yoga guru to the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) should be seen as part of the grand old party’s strategy to keep itself in power in perpetuity. The idea is not only to malign Ramdev but also to present the Sangh Parivar as demonic and anything connected with it taboo. It is a strategy to keep the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) aloof from other parties.
The reasons are not difficult to find. The Manmohan Singh Government, remote-controlled by Congress president Sonia Gandhi, has comprehensively failed on all fronts: inflation is killing the aam aadmi for whom the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) so sanctimoniously professes to work; corruption is rampant; industry is exasperated with rent-seeking; the economy has started feeling the strains of the UPA regime’s mindless populism; national security is in a mess, thanks to the Congress’ desire to win brownie points among Muslim fundamentalists; and foreign policy is in a shambles, the recent blunder being indirect support to the tyrant Gaddafi by opposing Nato strikes in Libya. The only way the ruling coalition can sustain for a substantial period of time is by keeping the Opposition divided.
The BJP got 18.8 per cent vote in the 2009 general elections, down from 22.16 per cent vote in 2004; for the Congress, the corresponding figures were 28.55 per cent and 26.53 per cent. Any genuine non-Congress formation at the Centre is inconceivable without the BJP.
It is not for the first time that Digvijay Singh has chosen to castigate the Sangh Parivar. On December 19 last year, he said, as reported by PTI, “In the 1930s, Hitler’s Nazi party attacked the Jews... Similarly, the RSS ideology wants to capture power by targeting Muslims under the garb of furthering nationalism.” Further, he said, “Demolition of the Babri Masjid... is the darkest patch in the history of India. The roots of terrorism in India lie in BJP leader L.K. Advani’s rath yatra.”
He would like us believe that Lashkar-e-Taiyaba, ISI, etc., are not at the root of terror. However, his own party colleagues in the Government are unlikely to agree with him, but that is another story. What is germane to this article is the fact that Congress leaders like Digvijay Singh, and the intellectuals sympathetic to his party, have always tried to smear BJP (and earlier, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh) so that it could be left apart from the mainstream.
A fear psychosis is conjured up about ‘communalism’; and, concomitantly, ‘secularism’ is presented as the shield against all the evils that ‘communal forces’ could spawn. The propaganda is so vicious and misleading that the two words, ‘communal’ and ‘secular’ have been divested of their original meanings. A Briton or an American unfamiliar with the conditions in India may find the connotations of the two words bewildering. Congress leaders and their lackeys in the opinion-making apparatus have not only vitiated politics but also ravaged the English language. In their make-believe world, a big part of the Indian political system, the BJP, is dubbed as forbidden; any association with it is portrayed as vile.
More than the Congress leaders, it is the intellectuals who have played a key role in perpetuating the GOP’s misrule in the country. Careers have been made and fortunes built by lambasting the BJP.
Not that the project has succeeded completely. The first time that the Congress got an electoral setback was in 1967; the SVD governments were formed in states. Interestingly, it was the socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia who chalked out the strategy of anti-Congressism and joined hands with the BJS.
In 1977, another socialist leader, Jayaprakash Narayan, also decided to include the saffron forces into the grand alliance against Indira Gandhi’s Congress and the result was the first non-Congress regime in New Delhi after Independence. It was a diluted form of anti-Congressism in 1989, when the BJP and the Left supported the V.P. Singh government from outside, that Rajiv Gandhi was ousted from power, despite having secured a historic mandate five years earlier.
The Atal Bihari Vajpayee government (1998-2004) was also an exercise in anti-Congressism, the first time that a non-Congress government lasted full term. It included socialists like George Fernandes. Many of the constituents of the Vajpayee government are now part of the ruling United Progressive Alliance. In short, association with the saffron party did not cost them politically.
In this context, another point needs to be made. When we associate with somebody in politics or in life, we need not completely agree with them. If Anupam Kher supports Anna Hazare, it does not mean that the film actor will become a Gandhian like Hazare. In a liberal democracy, all of us are entitled to our viewpoints, so long as we don’t impose them on other by force. A natural corollary is that if we lampoon and criticize anybody just because they support the cause of our opponent, we only exhibit out intolerance. Our liberal commentators not only play into the hands of the Congress by joining the slam-BJP project but also show their own illiberal streak when they keep doing it blindly. Often, they end up becoming apologists for the monumentally corrupt and inept regimes like that of Manmohan Singh.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Cong, intellectuals try to fool people
A new doctrine has emerged since Anna Hazare sat on indefinite fast: the institutions of parliamentary democracy should be respected. There is nothing wrong with the assertion, but the doctrine is being abused to delegitimize a movement which so many people sympathize with.
It is true that many of the demands made by Hazare and then Baba Ramdev are impractical, that the tone and tenor of their discourse is excessively sentimental, that some statements made by their followers are outlandish, but this does not mean that the issue that the social activists are raising is inconsequential. It has been argued—quite convincingly, one may add—that there is no need for a Lokpal in the first place and that the corrupt can be thrown behind bars by properly utilizing the existing rules and apparatus. But the point is: who is interested in such action? The Congress-led regime in New Delhi is certainly not. This very fact makes the movement relevant and popular.
Fearful of the electoral consequences of the popular movement, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government and its spin doctors have tried to belittle its importance and impact. Earlier, we were told that only the urban, English-speaking, middle class people are supporting Hazare and going to Jantar Mantar (As if these people belong to another world and have nothing to do with the country they live in. This is one of those Leftist theories that pollute the climate of opinion). But when Ramdev began his fast at Ramlila Maidan in Delhi and his followers turned out to be mostly from villages and suburban areas, it became evident that all sections of people—urban as well as rural, educated as well as not-very-educated, middle class as well as the poor—were supporting the movement.
Efforts were made to malign the Bhushans, ad hominem charges were hurled at those opposing the government. Finally, Ramdev was accused of being the front of the Sangh Parivar. What our liberal commentators did not explain was why an RSS front should be banished. After all, there are a number of Left-leaning outfits—many of which are front organizations of communist parties—which espouse various causes. For this very association, these outfits are not denounced. So, why should Right-leaning bodies and individuals be castigated for their ideological proclivities?
Congress leaders, Central ministers, pro-Congress intellectuals, and many other commentators tenaciously assert that the institutions of parliamentary democracy should be respected. None of these worthies, however, have pondered over a simple question: do the politicians of the day, including those who cite this doctrine, really believe in it?
It is an open secret that politicians of all parties have undermined these institutions; and the Congress has done the most harm because it has ruled the country for the maximum period of time. At any rate, democracy and individual liberty cannot be left to politicians alone, even if they are democratically elected. It was, after all, a democratically elected government that imposed the infamous Emergency in 1975 and gave the country a taste of authoritarian rule. And it was the Attorney General of that government, Niren De, who said in December 1975 in the Additional District Magistrate of Jabalpur versus Shiv Kant Shukla case, popularly known as the habeas corpus case, who said, “Even if life was taken away illegally, courts are helpless.”
It was the darkest chapter of our Supreme Court’s history that its bench decided against habeas corpus in April 1976. The majority decision was: “In view of the Presidential Order [declaring emergency] no person has any locus to move any writ petition under Article 226 before a High Court for habeas corpus or any other writ or order or direction to challenge the legality of an order of detention.”
It is to the eternal credit of Justice H.R. Khanna that he wrote a note of dissent, saying, “The Constitution and the laws of India do not permit life and liberty to be at the mercy of the absolute power of the Executive… What is at stake is the rule of law. The question is whether the law speaking through the authority of the court shall be absolutely silenced and rendered mute… Detention without trial is an anathema to all those who love personal liberty.”
A democratically elected government, under Indira Gandhi, had made Parliament a rubber stamp, subdued the press, repressed civil disobedience, trampled on democratic rights, and managed to convince the highest court of the land that the life of a citizen could be snuffed out by the state without any legal recourse. And it was an unelected man, Justice Khanna, who kept the flag of individual freedom flying!
Before Khanna, there was Mahatma Gandhi. He was also unelected. Obviously, electability is not and cannot be the necessary condition for being the voice of the people.
Our elected representatives have imposed many draconian laws and oppressive rules on us. Quite apart from such sinister moves, they weaken democratic institutions on a routine basis. They stall Parliament. Could there be anything more dangerous for democracy? Members of all parties regularly shout and try to silence their opponents on the floor of the House. They exceed the time limit the presiding officer of the House imposes on them; they frequently disobey the chair; Parliament is often reduced to a circus with members indulging in theatrics.
Besides, there is the issue of representativeness. How representative of us are our elected representatives? It is a well-known fact that factors like caste, community, monetary might, muscle power, and slavishness to party bosses often help people win elections. One has to ludicrously credulous to believe that all members of Parliament and state Assemblies represent us and Hazare, Ramdev, and their comrades don’t.
A ruling party genuinely concerned with the rise of graft would have engaged the activists as well as the Opposition in a meaningful manner, thus evolving a national consensus. It is unadulterated hubris on the part of the Congress which nudges it to the view that just by maligning social activists it would be able to fool all the people for all of the time.
It is true that many of the demands made by Hazare and then Baba Ramdev are impractical, that the tone and tenor of their discourse is excessively sentimental, that some statements made by their followers are outlandish, but this does not mean that the issue that the social activists are raising is inconsequential. It has been argued—quite convincingly, one may add—that there is no need for a Lokpal in the first place and that the corrupt can be thrown behind bars by properly utilizing the existing rules and apparatus. But the point is: who is interested in such action? The Congress-led regime in New Delhi is certainly not. This very fact makes the movement relevant and popular.
Fearful of the electoral consequences of the popular movement, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government and its spin doctors have tried to belittle its importance and impact. Earlier, we were told that only the urban, English-speaking, middle class people are supporting Hazare and going to Jantar Mantar (As if these people belong to another world and have nothing to do with the country they live in. This is one of those Leftist theories that pollute the climate of opinion). But when Ramdev began his fast at Ramlila Maidan in Delhi and his followers turned out to be mostly from villages and suburban areas, it became evident that all sections of people—urban as well as rural, educated as well as not-very-educated, middle class as well as the poor—were supporting the movement.
Efforts were made to malign the Bhushans, ad hominem charges were hurled at those opposing the government. Finally, Ramdev was accused of being the front of the Sangh Parivar. What our liberal commentators did not explain was why an RSS front should be banished. After all, there are a number of Left-leaning outfits—many of which are front organizations of communist parties—which espouse various causes. For this very association, these outfits are not denounced. So, why should Right-leaning bodies and individuals be castigated for their ideological proclivities?
Congress leaders, Central ministers, pro-Congress intellectuals, and many other commentators tenaciously assert that the institutions of parliamentary democracy should be respected. None of these worthies, however, have pondered over a simple question: do the politicians of the day, including those who cite this doctrine, really believe in it?
It is an open secret that politicians of all parties have undermined these institutions; and the Congress has done the most harm because it has ruled the country for the maximum period of time. At any rate, democracy and individual liberty cannot be left to politicians alone, even if they are democratically elected. It was, after all, a democratically elected government that imposed the infamous Emergency in 1975 and gave the country a taste of authoritarian rule. And it was the Attorney General of that government, Niren De, who said in December 1975 in the Additional District Magistrate of Jabalpur versus Shiv Kant Shukla case, popularly known as the habeas corpus case, who said, “Even if life was taken away illegally, courts are helpless.”
It was the darkest chapter of our Supreme Court’s history that its bench decided against habeas corpus in April 1976. The majority decision was: “In view of the Presidential Order [declaring emergency] no person has any locus to move any writ petition under Article 226 before a High Court for habeas corpus or any other writ or order or direction to challenge the legality of an order of detention.”
It is to the eternal credit of Justice H.R. Khanna that he wrote a note of dissent, saying, “The Constitution and the laws of India do not permit life and liberty to be at the mercy of the absolute power of the Executive… What is at stake is the rule of law. The question is whether the law speaking through the authority of the court shall be absolutely silenced and rendered mute… Detention without trial is an anathema to all those who love personal liberty.”
A democratically elected government, under Indira Gandhi, had made Parliament a rubber stamp, subdued the press, repressed civil disobedience, trampled on democratic rights, and managed to convince the highest court of the land that the life of a citizen could be snuffed out by the state without any legal recourse. And it was an unelected man, Justice Khanna, who kept the flag of individual freedom flying!
Before Khanna, there was Mahatma Gandhi. He was also unelected. Obviously, electability is not and cannot be the necessary condition for being the voice of the people.
Our elected representatives have imposed many draconian laws and oppressive rules on us. Quite apart from such sinister moves, they weaken democratic institutions on a routine basis. They stall Parliament. Could there be anything more dangerous for democracy? Members of all parties regularly shout and try to silence their opponents on the floor of the House. They exceed the time limit the presiding officer of the House imposes on them; they frequently disobey the chair; Parliament is often reduced to a circus with members indulging in theatrics.
Besides, there is the issue of representativeness. How representative of us are our elected representatives? It is a well-known fact that factors like caste, community, monetary might, muscle power, and slavishness to party bosses often help people win elections. One has to ludicrously credulous to believe that all members of Parliament and state Assemblies represent us and Hazare, Ramdev, and their comrades don’t.
A ruling party genuinely concerned with the rise of graft would have engaged the activists as well as the Opposition in a meaningful manner, thus evolving a national consensus. It is unadulterated hubris on the part of the Congress which nudges it to the view that just by maligning social activists it would be able to fool all the people for all of the time.
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