Mainstream, Independence Day issue, 14 August 2004
The Civilised Family
Mukul Dube
In a recent lecture, the historian K.N. Panikkar said that what had kept the Hindu Right busy during the past five years was nothing less than an attack on Indian civilisation. If indeed Indian civilisation was so attacked, and I for one agree that it was, then the attack on it came from those who had arrogated to themselves the right to interpret it–which always involved a radical re-moulding to make it fit concocted untruths–to defend it, and to propagate the holy tripe which they called its values as a means of making themselves the leaders of the entire world, which presumably would be expressed through their continued sucking up to several wealthy nations and of course to the most powerful one. This mauling of a child by its guardian has to have been among the staggering ironies of our times.
I shall not attempt to discuss what is a civilisation, because I am not qualified to do that. I also dread a shrieking attack from those tens of thousands of semi-literate *lathi* wielders in khaki shorts and saffron head-bands who are convinced that they alone know all about this and all about every other subject under the sun–and that this blindly ingested “knowledge” gives them the right to vandalise libraries and threaten writers. I shall speak here only of how these fellows–and I use this word to include members of parliament and former ministers–are daily showing us what they mean by civilisation: specifically, that Indian civilisation is built on a foundation of personal rowdiness.
When, after the recent general election, the rout of the BJP and its allies rapidly became clear, the country went into a state of shocked euphoria. Many people told me that their reaction, like mine, was relief at being able to breathe again, relief at not feeling a constant hostile gaze upon the back, relief at not living in fear of yet another mindless attack on someone’s personal or intellectual freedom somewhere in the country. Too soon, though, the euphoria wore off and we began to see the harsh reality.
The thought that simultaneously struck nearly all of us was that the National Democratic Alliance–a singularly inapt name for an assortment of undemocratic, power-hungry people to whom the nation meant nothing–would no longer pervert democracy as it had done because it had lost the power to do that. But it would do something almost as bad–quite simply, it would keep Indian democracy from functioning. Evidence from the past pointed clearly to the future. During the Vajpayee years, non-issues had dominated parliament. Both the luminaries and the rough-necks of the NDA had behaved throughout like badly brought up, uncouth, rowdy adolescents who used only their voices and their muscles. Finger-pointing and name-calling became the order of the day. Possibly the most revolting feature of that long phase was the unspeakable pettiness which drove those whose numbers shored up the Vajpayee government and who were, nominally, representatives of the people and the makers of the nation’s laws.
Somnath Chatterjee, who through his efforts to be impartial had not only antagonised MPs of the party of which he had been a member for decades but had gone out of his way to make concessions to the Opposition, specially to its leader L.K. Advani, seems to have been reduced virtually to tears by the outrageous accusations that were made against him. He appealed, he explained, and quite unnecessarily he even defended himself. There was not a whisper of an apology for the wrong which had been done to him personally, to the institution of the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, and to the very dignity of that house.
But then it is foolish to expect those who incite their faithful goons to divinely ordained vandalism, rape and murder to understand what is meant by good manners, decency, principles and dignity. The only form of social organisation they understand is that which has at its head a divine or semi-divine king. The mythical Ayodhya and the tragically very real Nagpur are the chief examples of such kingdoms. The king must be blindly obeyed. The king may not be questioned. The king, or god-king, is absolute. We cannot expect people who have never been permitted to speak their minds–if those organs, rigidly conditioned not to think for themselves, can be called minds–to understand what is meant by democracy or to respect any institution that is based on that idea.
As we had anticipated, the non-issues have been coming thick and fast. The “tainted ministers” business has been much written about and I shall not repeat all that here. Nor will I re- tell the story of the change of governors. Let us look, instead, at certain later absurdities.
Arun Jaitley, who speaks with so many tongues that no one has yet been able to count them, said that the removal of the pictures of A.B. Vajpayee from the sky boards on the national highways that are being built made it clear that the government was on “a confrontationist path”. Those whose thinking is low take it for granted that the thinking of all others must also be as low. Jaitley, so fine a lawyer that he is miles above such mundane matters as evidence and reasoning, took it for granted that Vajpayee’s pictures were to be replaced by pictures of Manmohan Singh. He must have had in his mind the excellent example of Sushma Swaraj, who turned the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting inside out and upside down immediately on getting her hands on it. Her being seen so often with film stars probably indicated no more than a star-struck girl’s desire to be associated with fame and beauty: but in her zeal to leave her mark on history she even changed the names of AIR’s radio channels; and, of course, she declared advertisements for condoms *verboten*, presumably because none of the characters in the *Ramayana* was known to be afflicted with AIDS–although, like everything else in the modern world, AIDS too must have been a creation of the genius of Vedic India.
Poor Jaitley was made to fall silent when the Prime Minister’s Office rapidly and unambiguously made it known that Manmohan Singh had given strict instructions that no picture of his would be put up anywhere, not even in a government office. It becomes clear that Jaitley was incensed at the sheer waste which the decision would cause. The NDA government had spent an estimated Rs.48 crores on putting up the pictures of Vajpayee (*Hindu*, 27 July 2004). To remove so much beauty with a stroke of the pen, to throw into the gutter the priceless works of art which the NDA government had given to the nation at the expense of its own blood, sweat and tears, must have seemed obscene to him. How, he must have worried, would people survive the now colourless road journey from Dwarka to Faizabad?
In a classic instance of “should we laugh or should we cry”, parliament was the scene of pandemonium on account of something that had never existed and words that had never been uttered. Finance Minister P. Chidambaram spoke of brushing the dust off a 1991 scheme named after Rajiv Gandhi. The BJP, most ably led by L.K. Advani, promptly accused him of insulting their icon, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, by calling him dust. Chidambaram’s statement that he had not taken Upadhyaya’s name had no effect. Later, neither Advani nor the voluble V.K. Malhotra could identify any scheme which was named after Upadhyaya. But a terrific din had been made, a walk-out had been staged, the press had been rendered unable to figure out what on Earth had gone wrong–in short, the BJP had achieved its noble objectives. Chidambaram will have learnt that figures of speech are sometimes not so harmless as they might seem to be. Perhaps India will show the world what is meant by clear speech: there will be nothing more complicated than the “louse ate mouse” type of construction, in which the role of the BJP will be pre-eminent.
Central to the functioning of parliament are its several standing committees. For no rationally comprehensible reason, the BJP-led Opposition has chosen to boycott these committees–although the redoubtable Jaitley will conjure up a dozen reasons why this does not represent the adoption of a “confrontationist path” by his team, even when the whole of that team is figuratively off side. Efforts are now on to somehow coax the petulant and contrary child to eat its food so that the household can get on with its business. This is the new domestic reality of India’s politics. One component of today’s child is of course yesterday’s paterfamilias. Gone are the prawns, on is the bib streaked with saffron egg yolk–and barely has one tantrum ended before the nation is deafened by the next. Just after their electoral defeat, these people had promised to function as a vigilant but responsible opposition. What happened? First they fell from grace, then even the pretence of grace fell from them.
In parliament, the leaders of those who claim to represent Indian civilisation are L.K. Advani and A.B. Vajpayee. The Muslims of the country are said to have been “appeased” over the decades, but they have gained nothing from that–indeed, they have fallen lower in terms of nearly every socio-economic indicator. Advani, who in parliament has been favoured by the Speaker far more than he needed to be, has not only kicked his appeaser in the teeth but has kept on making more demands. And what of the poet-statesman Vajpayee? He just sits there, in the House of the People, benignly looking on as his followers–if indeed they are still his followers–show themselves to be hooligans of the purest pedigree. But is he silent everywhere or only in the Lok Sabha?
To return to the point with which I started. Indian civilisation as it was known for centuries has been badly battered. We now see, every day, in parliament and in the media, the deformed and malignant version sought to be imposed on us by the Hindu Right and its allies. It can be simply expressed thus: Indian Civilisation Equals Hooliganism. This is in a way fitting. When the world is dominated by a bully not inclined to listen to reason and unwilling to accept that other nations and other peoples too have rights, why should India not be overwhelmed by hooligans? After all, it is only political power that these hooligans have lost.
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