Disquieting Developments

EDITORIAL

The two-day meeting of the BJP National Council in New Delhi had been called to endorse and ratify the appointment of Rajnath Singh as the party’s President. However, the meeting turned into something quite different: Gujarat CM Narendra Modi became the cynosure of all eyes with party leaders from President Rajnath Singh downwards singing paeans of praise for the organisation’s ‘Vikas Purush’ (Development Man) for having unveiled a development agenda in his State that was quite unique in the country. Of course, Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan sought to somewhat queer Modi’s pitch when he declared that in his State the rate of growth was 10.20 per cent and that in agriculture 18.91 per cent—something without parallel in the country.

Be that as it may, and the party’s ‘Lauha Purush’ (Iron Man) L.K. Advani sought to underplay the Modi-Chouhan rivalry by concentrating attention on the Congress’ mega-scams having scaled unprecedented heights in terms of the quantum of corruption in recent days, the fact is that the party used the meeting to convey one explicit message: Modi being Prime Ministerial material there was a distinct possibility that he could be projected in the 2014 elections as the BJP’s candidate for the top post in government in case the party and its allies come to power at the Centre.

This has sent shock-waves among secular democrats of all hues across the political spectrum and outside it, and they include those within the Opposition NDA as well. One prominent NDA leader, Bihar CM Nitish Kumar of the JD(U), has been consistently opposing for long any such move by the BJP leadership to zero-in on Modi as the candidate for the PM’s office. He was hardly amused by the party’s National Council members’ enthusiastic support for the Gujarat CM, almost approving Modi’s candidature for the post.

Nitish reflects the ground reality. The BJP might have led the NDA coalition to power at the Centre but India has not yet become a BJP-ruled state. Or else the party itself would have formed its Union Government in 1998-99 and then in 1999-2004. As Advani himself confessed after both the 2004 and 2009 elections, the Congress was able to outsmart the BJP by forming a viable coalition having the adequate numbers (he was arguing against the theory that the Congress had secured the people’s mandate to run the country on its own). The logic then is that the BJP too would have to get the numbers through a workable coalition. That unfortunately won’t be possible if Modi is at the helm. The horrendous anti-Muslim carnage in Gujarat eleven years ago has left permanent scars on the Indian psyche and those won’t be healed as long as Modi is in denial mode and refuses to tender even a simple apology taking moral responsibility for whatever had happened in 2002 as he was the head of government at that time. He remains in every sense a polarising factor and hence a liability for his party regardless of his “achievements†on the development front in his State.

So for Modi to claim that former PM Atal Behari Vajpayee was his “role model†, as he did at the New Delhi meet, is nothing short of demagogy. As Arati R. Jerath has aptly explained in The Times of India.

It was Advani who prepared the groundswell of popular support for the BJP with his rath yatra but he could not take the party beyond a certain point in terms of votes and Lok Sabha seats. When the time came to push for government formation, the BJP was forced to turn to Vajpayee who had what Advani lacked: support from the political class. The party has an Advani in Modi today. But to lead the next government, it may require a Vajpayee. In trying to do a two-in-one, Modi could end up as neither fowl nor fish.

Meanwhile several other events in the last few days have caused considerable anxiety among the public at large. The incidents of rape and molestation of woman continue unabated in different parts of our vast landmass evoking serious concern among all those who were highly disturbed by the gang-rape of ‘Nirbhaya’ in the Capital city last December. These incidents show how deep the rot has become. On the eve of the International Women’s Day these are indeed alarming and pose a grim challenge before our polity as a whole.

Side by side the merciless physical assault on a woman by the police in Punjab and the gruesome killing of a police officer—Kanda DSP Zia-ul-Haq—in UP provide fresh testimony of brutalisation of the police at one end and criminalisation of politics at the other. In the latter case the finger of blame has been turned to Raja Bhaiya, UP’s Prison Minister, who was compelled to resign from his post in the Akhilesh Yadav Ministry (though he has yet to be arrested despite a CBI investigation having been ordered into the case). Both these once more highlight the role politicians are playing in abusing power and in the process devaluing the politician in general.

At the same time the trial in the Capital of Irom Sharmila Chanu, that dauntless human rights crusader, for her ‘crime’ of attempting to commit suicide by going on a fast-unto-death at New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar in 2006 for the repeal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act in Manipur and the country at large is a reflection on the insensitivity of both the justice system and state. As analysts have cogently pointed out, clamping down on armed insurrections is one thing but peaceful protests on humanitarian issues have to be dealt with differently especially when the authorities no longer represent a colonial state. There is also the need to debate as to whether Section 309 of the IPC, criminalising suicide, should be struck down or not. And, as The Times of India has observed,

...in a larger context, it is also time to examine the strength of Irom Sharmila’s argument and consider repealing the AFSPA in the North-East in a phased manner. As the Jeevan Reddy committee, appointed by the Prime Minister in 2004, pointed out in its 2005 report while advocating lifting the AFSPA, “the Act... has become a symbol of oppression, an object of hate and an instrument of discrimination and high-handedness’’.

The situation in Sri Lanka and Maldives bring into focus the unmistakably anti-democratic trends manifest in the palpable genocide of Tamils (Sri Lanka) and attempt to throttle the democratic voice of former PM Mohamed Nasheed (Maldives) in arrogant disregard of Indian sensibilities. (In fact in an ardent appeal to New Delhi, Nasheed’s aide and erstwhile Foreign Minister Ahmed Naseem has said that “India must help us before Nasheed is murdered†.) This is where the Indian Government needs to firmly reiterate its unbending resolve to protect democratic values everywhere without in any way appearing to interfere in the internal affairs of any sovereign state. However, there is no gainsaying that New Delhi’s weak-kneed policy in foreign affairs, graphically illustrated every now and then, has complicated matters for the South Block which is itself to blame for such an eventuality.

All these disquieting developments at home and in our neighbourhood have added to the existing complexities that punctuate the national and regional scene today.

March 7 S.C.