Politicians bowing to Ramdev's blackmail harks back to India's regressive past

Business Standard

Sunanda K Datta-Ray: Of men and 'godmen'

Politicians bowing to Ramdev's blackmail harks back to India's regressive past

Sunanda K Datta-Ray / New Delhi June 4, 2011, 0:24 IST

The government’s panic over the antics of a hirsute man in bright orange who makes a point of throwing up his arms during televised meetings to expose enormous underarm jungles recalls a conversation with Nirad C Chaudhuri half a century ago. From the balcony of his Old Delhi flat, Chaudhuri pointed to a piece of open land with some shacks and asked what it was. I thought it was a building site or the temporary encampment of construction workers. “Wrong” he declared triumphantly. “It’s not temporary, it’s permanent. That’s Hindu India coming into its own!”

I am not questioning the validity of some of Ramdev’s demands though his list has expanded to resemble a full-fledged opposition party agenda and includes some silly points as well. But his intervention and the official response are redefining the sources and exercise of power. It’s fashionable to bracket his and Bapat Baburao Hazare’s campaign and justify both in terms of civil society. But if civil society mattered, authority would long ago have responded to the sustained call by serious newspapers for many of the same reforms. The daily I worked for published hundreds of articles calling for an Ombudsman with teeth and realistic electoral rules. They had little effect.

Wearing trousers and arguing in English, we invoked western rationality instead of appealing to deeper atavistic instincts. We could not challenge the modernity of which we were an integral part. That’s what is happening now. The growing hold of astrology, “godmen” (a hideous oxymoron with which India pollutes the English language), vaastu, gender discrimination, bride-burning, caste persecution, sporadic sati and the khaps that dominate headlines are all part of the reversion to the pre-colonial past Chaudhuri darkly warned of.

Ramdev and Hazare have the same right as all citizens to demand change. Both are entitled to pressure their MLAs and MPs through normal channels and canvass for public support. Neither is entitled to indulge in blackmailing tactics. Yet they are courted and appeased precisely because by spurning the instruments of parliamentary democracy, they exert coercive pressure.

India may soar into space but Indian thinking is in some respects firmly imprisoned in the ancient fears of witch doctors and magic potions invoked by fashion accessories like long beards, beads and bright robes. Credulity doesn’t cripple only the poor and ignorant. Hamish McDonald’s racy account of the Ambani story describes members of the warring clan going off to temples and ashrams to muster the spiritual forces on their side for the epic showdown. Indira Gandhi’s socialism did not exclude a curious succession of supposedly holy men and women. Many ministers and CEOs won’t stir an inch without consulting the stars. Even West Bengal’s CPI(M) did not ignore the pujas that animate the masses.

Trying to counter this, the first Press Commission denounced as “undesirable” what it called “the spread of the habit of consultation of, and reliance upon, astrological predictions” that was “certain to produce an unsettling effect on the minds of readers”. The second Press Commission called on editors “who believe in promoting a scientific temper among their readers and in combating superstition and fatalism” to “discontinue the publication of astrological predictions”. No one took any notice.

Two supplementary factors deserve mention. First, whether or not our rulers also revere folk heroes, they fear the wrath of the followers of these heroes, especially with Uttar Pradesh elections round the corner. Second, there’s a paradoxical yearning to pass on responsibility to what used to be called extra-constitutional centres of power. Mahatma Gandhi, Jayaprakash Narayan and Sanjay Gandhi fell in that category. Ramdev is now demonstrating that though he shared Hazare’s platform, he must be placated as an independent force.

The least uncomfortable explanation for this drift is that all democratic parties must woo society’s lowest common denominator, which sets the tone. But democracy needs strong leaders to ensure that the multitude does not run amok. Otherwise, we are left with Chaudhuri’s grim analogy of a heavy piston that the British pulled out of its socket and kept in place with their muscular and mechanical power but which our weak arms cannot hang on to forever. One day our strength will fail and the piston will ram home, plunging India into the chaos where “Universal Darkness buries All”.

One suspects the government is now making a show of appeasing Ramdev to wriggle out of substantive reforms. Instead, it should ensure a clean administration, fair elections and just land acquisition but not at the behest of godmen who are pampered at India’s peril.