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The Tribune, Feb 6, 2017
The pot calls the kettle black
ApoorvanandWe
need to tell our leaders that they cannot sow bitterness and hatred in
their desperation to tempt people to their side. It is far too easy to
appeal to the base instincts of people. The task before political
leadership in a democracy is also to educate people and help them make a
rational choice.
POWER
POINT: Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Punjab Chief Minister Parkash
Singh Badal at the Vijay Sankalp Yatra rally for the Punjab Assembly
elections in Jalandhar. PTI
THE
supreme leader is pained. He is disappointed by the fall in the standard
of political discourse. Campaigning in Punjab, he told his audience
that in his long political career he had never come across the kind of
language he was forced to hear in Punjab. How can one say, he wonders,
that so and so would be jailed once they are unseated from power.
The supremo is shocked. Things are going beyond civility. And he is
right. It would also be right however for him to first confess, that it
was in fact he who started the lowering of the social and political
discourse to such a low level, that his opponents just didn't know how
to match him.
The man does not need go back far in time. It was only a few days ago
when he mocked and lampooned the leader of the Congress Party in a
congregation at the Banaras Hindu University (BHU), which was not
political at all. It was a gathering of academics and students in a
university campus, where he misused his position as a Prime Minister to
attack his opponent. That his audience laughed and cheered at this
abominable performance is a sad commentary on the state of our
institutions where civility should be taught.
That the Prime Minister should think it fit to campaign in state
elections is something people have noted, not very favourably. But when
he complains that Arvind Kejriwal sounds like a dictator, he
conveniently forgets his own diatribe against Kejriwal during the
election campaign in Delhi. In meeting after meeting, he told the
electorate of Delhi that they should elect a BJP government as it would
work because of his fear. It is quite different a matter that the people
of Delhi refused to be terrorised by him. But he did not take their
rejection of his warning very kindly. This is evident from the way he
unleashed the Lt Governor, the police and intelligence agencies on the
AAP government.
It was unprecedented that a Prime Minister should even entertain the
idea that fear would make state governments work. If there was anything
dictatorial it was this.The dictatorial and authoritarian inclination of
the leader has never been hidden. One should not forget that in his
election campaigns and elsewhere too he had always referred to Rahul
Gandhi as Shehzada. The connotation the adjective carries is outright
communal. It mocks him and connects him with a particular religious
community. Thus, this word arouses the base instincts of Hindus. Sonia
Gandhi was always called with her full name to emphasise her Italian
origins. Similarly, we have not forgotten that when the Election
Commission under JM Lyngdoh took some decisions which were not
favourable to him as the then Chief Minister of Gujarat, he made it a
point to claim that Lyngdoh was against him as he was a Christian.
Men can always change. But his record as Prime Minister demonstrates
that his veneer of sobriety falls off the moment he faces a serious
challenge. The people of Bihar witnessed it as the campaign progressed.
That they felt disgusted by his thinly veiled communal and authoritarian
language became clear from the verdict of the state elections. He made
the campaign casteist and anti-Muslim when he made repeated claims that
he comes from Dwaraka and is, therefore, specially beholden to the
Yaduvanshsis. It was a brazen attempt to woo the Yadav voters which
failed miserably. And then he went to his tested formula of scaring the
Hindus by attacking Nitish for being on the side of cow killers and beef
eaters.
It is definitely not right that Kejriwal promises that he would jail the
corrupt leaders of Punjab once he is given power. Because, he is not a
monarch. We know it too well that Prime Ministers and Chief Ministers
cannot jail people. They cannot even prosecute them. Worse is to ask the
people as Chief Minister whether criminals should be killed in
encounters or not and exhorting them to say “yes” to encounters. When he
attacks Kejriwal for trashing the process of law, it would be better to
recall his own instinct. It is as wrong to tell the people of Punjab
that being a border state they need to choose a party in whose hands
national borders would be safe. He is invoking the threat of Pakistan in
a state election.
We need to say that this is unacceptable because all political parties
are committed to protecting the territorial integrity of India.
Moreover, securing borders is not the job of a state government.
The man once fought a state election pasting the posters of Pervez
Musharraf all over and turning his entire campaign into an anti-Pakistan
tirade. A Prime Minister who does not shy from raising the scare of
Pakistan to frighten the electorate into submission is doing worse than
what Kejriwal is accused of.
Of course, we need to tell our leaders that they cannot sow bitterness
and hatred in their desperation to tempt people to their side. It is
far too easy to appeal to the base instincts of people. The task before
political leadership in a democracy is also to educate people and help
them make a rational choice.
It was reassuring to recently see Rahul Gandhi telling his party people
not to raise the slogans of murdabad against his opponents. It takes a
lot to remain sober in the face of uncouth and violent attacks. But that
is a challenge one must accept if democratic civility is to be
restored.
When the conscience of the man felt bruised by the undemocratic language
of Kejriwal, an admonition came from Sharad Pawar, directed not at
Kejriwal but the complainant himself. Pawar said that it was extremely
violent to give the slogan of a Congress-mukt Bharat.The language of
eradication of one's critics shows the criminally intolerant mind behind
it.
The writer is a Professor, Department of Hindi, Delhi University