Arjun Sampath in Tamil Nadu must be the happiest man now. He would never have imagined his name on the front page of the largest English newspaper in India. But he has made to its front page with his one-liner: “Those who eat beef should go to Pakistan.” Sampath heads a one-man outfit called Indu Makkal Katchi (Hindu people’s party)—a letterhead entity. Now, thanks to the leading English daily, he is one of the intolerant Hindu faces in India and outside. See how things have moved in the last few weeks to make non-entities the new and dark faces of India.
Dadri to Blackening
In a barbaric act, a Muslim in Dadri village in UP was lynched because he was believed to have slaughtered a cow. Look at the facts and how did the discourse go. UP is ruled by the ‘secular’ Samajwadi Party led by Mulayam Singh Yadav whose son Akhilesh Yadav is the Chief Minister. No one blames the UP government or questions Mulayam or Akhilesh. ‘India’s plurality in danger under the Modi’, charge the media, Opposition and scores of Sahitya Akademi award-winning writers, whose target is Modi. A month before, in Karnataka ruled by the ‘secular’ Congress, someone, who the media regards as rationalist, was killed. No one blamed Siddharamaiah or Sonia Gandhi. Hindu forces are responsible, said the very intellectuals, media and Opposition again, all pointing at Modi. Even earlier, a rationalist was killed in Maharashtra when the Congress was in power in the state and also at the Centre. No one questioned the Maharashtra Chief Minister or the Congress President. But, by pre-written script, Hindu forces were held responsible. A few days ago Sudheendra Kulkarni, a well-intentioned peace activist, who has found a new role as interlocutor between Pakistan and India, was blackened with ink by the Shiv Sena. The whole ‘secular’ brigade began shouting ‘intolerance’—read Modi— rules India. Couple of days ago, two persons from some unknown ‘Hindu Sena’ blackened the face of a Kashmir MLA who hosted a beef party. On the very day, the Shiv Sena stormed into the BCCI office to scuttle Indo-Pak cricket series talk. The media screamed “hate squad attack blackens the face of Indian democracy”.
Target Modi
Imagine instead of spilling ink on beef party leaders, the Hindu Sena idiots had held a pork party. There would have been riots and slaughter on streets. Beef party only spills ink. Pork would spill blood. But in secular India’s grammar spilling a bottle of ink is more violent now than spilling barrels of blood. Recall how, when Pakistani terrorists had spilled drums of Indian blood at railway stations, roads and hotels of Mumbai, the seculars, media, and intellectuals appealed for calm and held candle light processions to spread peace and harmony! And what do these worthies do now? Spreading peace? Harmony? Their aim is not harmony. Their target is Modi. For that, they look for the most intolerant faces—however miniature to lift them to the front pages. They yell ‘Modi must speak.’ ‘Why is he silent?’ they ask. Did they ask Sonia Gandhi or Manmohan Singh to speak on why the rationalists were killed in Karnataka and Maharashtra under the Congress? Did they question Mulayam or Akhilesh on Dadri? When did the Central government become responsible for individual incidents of law and order in states—a state subject?
Thanks to media’s propensities for sensation and the exciting subject of cricket mixed with nation’s traditional rival Pakistan, the Shiv Sena got the high visibility it lacked for years, over the BJP and Modi. Anyone aspiring to be in headlines today has to speak against beef or throw ink on beef eaters or on their supporters. If a novice like Sampath knows today how to make it to the front page in India, why will not a veteran Shiv Sena—seeking to regain relevance having lost the Hindu mindspace to Modi? Why will not some Hindu Sena—an outfit existing only on letterhead? Why not others who would not see their outfit’s name in print or on the idiot box otherwise? Are all of them Hindutva forces? While their potency is limited to spilling ink, they crave to hit headlines. The media, short of news, sees them as resources. Poor thing, how else to run 24x7 channels and fill news columns in-between ads in 60-page papers? The not-so-honest news is exported. On October 17, 2015, The New York Times carried a report titled ‘Indian Writers Return Awards to Protest Government Silence on Violence’. How else to undo the good work Modi has done to repair the image of India abroad?
Repeat of 1998-99?
Now it is time for some history. Cut back to 1998-99 when Vajpayee was the PM. ‘Christian nuns raped in MP and Orissa’. ‘Social worker Graham Staines burnt alive’. ‘Hindu pogram against Christians’. What was the truth? The Wadhwa Commission, which inquired into Staines murder, thrashed the secularists and the media for their lies. Arun Shourie has captured it brilliantly in his article on the Wadhwa report. Justice Wadhwa dealt with some of these incidents. The first was the alleged rape of Sister Jacqueline Mary on February 3, 1999. Wadhwa cited the media reports like ‘Orissa nun raped in moving car’ ‘by men in saris’ and pointed out that relying on the words of a pastor of the Church, the media highlighted it ‘as a planned attack on the Church’ and saw the ‘role of communal forces’. Wadhwa also noted the media quoting teachers of a Christian convent as saying, “Do not treat this as an isolated incident”, “a communal conspiracy is suspected to be behind the rape.” Shourie says it was indeed a communal conspiracy not to rape but to fabricate to fix Hindu outfits. What was the judicial finding? Justice Wadhwa concluded: ‘Investigations revealed that what Sister Mary said in the FIR was not true’; that it was a ‘made up story’; that there was ‘in fact no rape of Sister Mary’. Wadhwa noted that B B Panda, Odisha’s Director General of Police, stated on oath that the ‘rape of the nun’ case, projected and highlighted all over the world as an attack on Christians was not true—the case turned out to be false.’ Within four days of the fabricated rape news, on February 7, 1999, another media report appeared. Two children, aged 10 and 19, were found murdered, a third had sustained injuries. Newspapers came up with the headings, ‘Two Christians killed, one injured in Orissa,’ ‘Two tribal Christians done to death in Kandhamal’. “This incident again attracted a great deal of publicity in the media, including electronic media,” writes Justice Wadhwa. He found that ultimately “investigation revealed that the crime was committed by a relative of the victims who was also a Christian”. On Graham Staines murder Justice Wadhwa concluded that Stains was not just social worker, but, he was involved in illegal conversions of illiterate tribals which they resisted and if the Odisha anti-conversion law had been enforced Staines would never have indulged in conversions in tribal areas—which led to his killing by tribals. At about that time, news of rape of three Christian nuns in Jabhua in MP by Hindu outfits shook the nation and the entire world. The US ambassador even protested, breaking all norms. Finally it turned out that the 24 persons who were involved in the rape were drunken dacoits who had set out to rob; twelve of them were Christians and the rest Bhil tribals. Space constraint draws the curtains on further expedition into other similar cases.
Is what is happening now when Modi is the PM not an action replay of what happened when Vajpayee was in power? Are not the media, the seculars and Opposition doing today against Modi what they were doing to Vajpayee 15 years ago?
Pursue Modi
If the Indian judiciary, the highest to the lowest, pursued anyone relentlessly for a decade it was Narendra Modi. The Supreme Court instituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to investigate the riot cases, brought in the CBI to probe the Sohrabuddin and Ishrat Jahan cases choosing just the two out of hundreds of encounters throughout the country. While the SIT did an honest job, the CBI did a thoroughly dishonest probe under the very nose of the Supreme Court. In August 2011, The New Indian Express carried three explosive articles (‘Fixing Shah, by fabrication’, ‘CBI betrays court, bails out Congress’ and ‘Interrogating the media’), exposing how the CBI was dishonestly using the Supreme Court’s clout to fix Amit Shah and if possible Modi himself. The articles established how CBI was lying on affidavit and orally to the court contrary to the evidence it had procured. The final sentences of the concluding article of The New Indian Express were: “This is not the epilogue. Only an honest and independent judiciary can write an epilogue to this perfidy.” This short conclusion tells what volumes cannot. The media, intellectuals and the rest hounded Modi.
Now, cut back to 1984 when, after assassination of Indira Gandhi, over 2,000 Sikhs were slaughtered in Delhi over several days. The then Congress Prime Minister even rationalised the killings later, saying that when a big tree falls, the earth around it shakes. No ‘secular’ leader or party questioned him. No court did. No Sahitya Akademi awardee returned the award. No court set up any SIT and monitored the probe. Not a clear contrast?
Judiciary 1971 to 1977
Now perceiving the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) Act as an attempt by the Modi government to tread on judiciary’s toes, the Supreme Court has struck down the law totally. While doing so, the Court needlessly recalled the Emergency and indicated that except during the Emergency in 1975-77, the Supreme Court had been a bulwark of freedom and therefore its independence is sacred and inviolable. Did the judiciary fail only during the Emergency? Read on.
When in the Golaknath case (1967), the judiciary outlawed Parliament’s right to amend the fundamental rights and later (1970) struck down the nationalisation of banks and the abolition of privy purses, its conflicts with the government started. The Indira Gandhi government, after winning the 1971 elections, amended the Constitution and asserted Parliament’s right to alter the fundamental rights. In 1973, the Supreme Court (Keshavananda Bharati case) allowed the Parliament to amend but not hurt the basic structure of the constitution. Within hours of the judgment, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi superseded three judges who had decided against her government and made Justice AN Ray the chief justice—as a reward for his siding with the government’s view in bank nationalisation, privy purse and Keshavananda cases. Had only Ray refused the bait or resigned like his three seniors, the judiciary would have won and not become, as it had, psychologically subdued and weak. This setback did have an impact on the conduct of the judges during the Emergency and later. Ten High Courts had ruled that right to life could not be abrogated by Emergency. But, the Supreme Court, except Justice HR Khanna, happily held that the right to life stood suspended during Emergency. Forthwith HR Khanna was superseded and MH Beg made the chief justice. Had Justice Beg refused to supersede Khanna, judicial independence would have been asserted. That was judiciary’s second failure.
1977-80 vs 1980-89
Then came the Janata Party rule. The Supreme Court, which had denied citizens their right to life under Article 21 during the Emergency, went on to include their right to foreign travel in Article 21 and held the denial of passport to Maneka Gandhi by the Janata government as unconstitutional. This was in January 1978. Assuming that the political class had not worked and the masses had not voted and defeated Indira Gandhi in 1977 and that George Fernandez’s passport was at issue, would the court have read the right to passport in the right to life in Article 21 would be a moot point. With Indira Gandhi out of power, judicial independence was in full flow. Indira Gandhi returned to power on January 14, 1980. See what happened. On the very next day, Justice PN Bhagwati, in line to become chief justice, wrote to her: “You have become the symbol of the hopes and aspirations of the poor, hungry millions of India.” He praised her “iron will and firm determination”, “uncanny insight and dynamic vision”, “great administrative capacity and vast experience”, “overwhelming love and affection for the people” and “above all” her “heart which is identified with the misery of the poor”. He concluded: “Today the reddish glow of the rising sun is holding out the promise of a bright sunshine.” The rising ‘sun’ was indirect reference for the rising ‘son’ — Sanjay Gandhi. After the letter was published by the Indian Express, a shocked Justice Tulzapurkar said: “If judges start sending bouquets or congratulatory letters to a political leader on his political victory, eulogising him…in adulatory terms, the people’s confidence in the judiciary will be shaken.” The country was no more under Emergency then. And yet the senior-most judge in line to become the chief justice wrote such a shameful letter. Soon, in the first judges case, Justice Bhagwati handed the total power to appoint and transfer judges to the Indira Gandhi government precisely as it had demanded. And Indira Gandhi, who had superseded senior-most judges twice earlier, promptly elevated Justice Bhagwati as chief justice. Arun Shourie, writing in the Indian Express, quoted Justice Jackson who said, “judges are more often bribed by their ambition and loyalty than by money”. How apt! If Justice Bhagwati had dissented like Justice Khanna or decided the first judges case against government, would he not have met the fate of Justice Khanna?
1993 AND 2015
The surrender to the Indira Gandhi government in the first judges case was reversed by the second judges case in 1993, swinging the pendulum to the other extreme in the process. Had Indira Gandhi been the prime minister then, and not Narasimha Rao, whether this would have happened is difficult to say. Justice JS Verma’s judgement devised the collegium system for judicial appointments. The NDA government just got some clarification from the Supreme Court in 1999 as to how the collegium would work. With the collegium system, which worked in secrecy, failing miserably in judicial appointments and accountability, the Modi government brought the NJAC law as a joint project of the judiciary and executive, in line with Justice Verma’s later view, to make the appointment transparent and judiciary accountable. The law may have had its minuses, but it could have been “read down” by the court to conform to the safeguards needed for judicial independence. But the court struck down the law in entirety and claimed that the judiciary is a reliable safeguard against Emergency, when in 1976, the Supreme court had actually institutionalised Emergency. Who then packed off the Emergency and those who imposed it and brought democracy back, for the courts to become independent again?
Exceptions
There were four exceptions to the national surrender to the Emergency dictatorship. First, the heroic fight of Ramnath Goenka and Indian Express, and also The Statesman—the only two papers to stand up to the lawless regime, with the rest crawling. Second, strangely the very politicians whom the media and the court deride today resisted the Emergency, languished in jail for 18 months, sank all their differences and formed the Janata Party, overthrew the Emergency and buried it by amending the Constitution so that it could never be imposed again. In contrast, the judges would not even refuse the out-of-turn positions offered to them. Third, ironically it is the RSS, which the ‘seculars’ see as the villain today, which strategically fought the Emergency—like Ramnath Goenka did—misleading Indira Gandhi with peace moves on the one hand and on the other hand dynamiting her dictatorship by huge underground movement. Jayaprakash Narayan even said that if the RSS was fascist, he too was one. Fourth, the less literate people of particularly northern India binned the Emergency regime in the 1977 elections — with the more literate South India endorsing it. Yet, today, those who fought the Emergency are described as fascists and those who imposed it, justified it or ducked fighting it, are celebrated as the fighters for democracy! Can the discourse be more laughable?
Post Script: Most of the ‘secular’ leaders, media and intellectuals were supporting the Emergency. Some 34 intellectuals had accepted the honour of Sahitya Akademi awards during the Emergency. Two of them—Sarvepalli Gopal and Bisham Sahni—were even ‘secular’ icons. Ghulam Nabi Khayal, who got it then, has now returned the award against emergence of fascism!
The President’s statement that there is squeeze on dissent space is headlined by the media. But for the media, headlining the likes of Arjun Sampath, Shiv Sena and Hindu Sena, even the President’s statement itself, will not be on the front page.
S Gurumurthy is a well-known commentator on political and economic issues. Email: comment@gurumurthy.net