Salman Khurshid is a senior advocate in the Supreme Court, eminent author and a law teacher. He replies to a range of questions beginning with opposition INDIA alliance seat-sharing talks to India’s foreign policy and the recent laws passed by Parliament. Excerpts:
Shahid Faridi: General elections are round the corner. The Prime Minister is hoping to score a hat-trick. The opposition INDIA bloc is engaged in seat-sharing talks. Whether the opposition will be able to mount a challenge depends on a successful seat-sharing pact among the opposition parties. You are part of the Congress committee for alliances. How are the talks going?
I have some views about what we are trying to deal with. As far as we are concerned, we have a very specific, confined mandate. It’s only about ensuring that seat-sharing is done quickly and in a manner that leaves us with a greater sense of friendship than what we began with.
We’ve taken feedback from some of our state-level leaders. In one or two states, things are a bit complicated. As discussions proceed in days to come, we’ll have an idea of the extent of agreement, and the sticking points. We’ll then go back to the party leadership on how we should proceed further.
We are all in a learning process. I hope our alliance partners too are doing the same. Some of them have more experience in forming alliances than we have. We have to be careful that we don’t appear novices, but at the same time, we don’t appear to be too rigid. We are flexible, and yet, we are not pushovers.
In four-five days, we will know, I guess, how tough this task is, how, viable it is.
Santwana Bhattacharya: When it comes to alliance making, it’s not just about seats that you have to adjust with your alliance partners. It’s also about how you manage the egos and the concerns of your state leadership. We are on a cusp of something more significant than an election: this is the first time a non-Congress PM is seeking a third tenure. If he wins, it will bring him in the Nehru legacy. Then there is a temple which is getting built in your own state with resonance across the country. Your thoughts…
About the state leadership, it is not ego, it is an ideological position they take. Despite that, they have been extremely cooperative, and helpful. We do have leaders in every state who have strong opinions.
Preetha Nair: The Congress leadership has been invited to the Ayodhya consecration ceremony. Being a senior party leader, do you think your colleagues and other party members should attend it?
As far as attending is concerned, if people have astha (faith), it will tell them what to do and when to do.
Even Shiv Sena said no...
Whoever says no, it’s their astha. Ram temple will not cease to be Ram temple the day after PM Modi returns. It will still be the Ram temple. Somebody who has astha goes, what’s wrong? Let people go. But don’t dictate to them. And don’t write a script that you must come between 10 and 11 on January 22. I mean nobody ever tells you when to go to a temple.
I’ve not been invited for the event. But I’ve been there before… long before Mr Modi. I was there when there was nothing but a tent.
Preetha Nair: Is there an ideological ambiguity in the party? We saw it during Madhya Pradesh elections?
Congress workers’ ideology may vary from time to time because of their own personal experiences. But wherever we get a chance to share what our ideology is, what we broadly describe as Nehruvian ideology, we do that. But people want to write their own screenplay. So between ideology and pragmatism, there can be confusion sometimes.
Shahid Faridi: You have been a law minister. The government has passed lots of laws, very important legislation in the absence of the Opposition. How do you view it?
If you want to introduce tough laws, specifically in hit-and-run cases, for instance, if you are at the receiving end of it, you feel so hopeless. If it’s a huge bus accident, the public threatens to lynch the driver. He doesn’t have a chance to prove his innocence. There is a problem, which is why people run away. Now, when laws are made, you do research, you bring in data, then you analyze it, and then you discuss it politically and then you make a law.
Jitendra Choubey: The UPA had started muzzling the voice of civil society. And this government is taking forward. Now there is a kind of a silence from the civil society that they are not able to question the government…
I’m not going to vouch for whatever we did as being 100% correct. If somebody has issues about what we did, they should discuss it with us and say, we’ll tell you where you’ve gone wrong and why you’ve gone wrong. Every law can be misused. Now, simply because a law is going to be misused, you stop making beneficial laws doesn’t make sense in a democracy. Now, the issue of what we did and the purpose for what we did, it was because democracy has an extra element of civil society, which is not directly linked with any political party.
Yeshi Seli: India has been globally visible because of G-20 and other events. What are your views?
I admire my successor many times. He’s a bright person. I admire what he has been able to do. I don’t know whether I could have done the same — to have grown up within a system and within a thought process and then so fluently able to defy it in subsequent years. If he had never been made ambassador to the top countries, if he had never been celebrated and he felt that he was a victim of the Nehruvian system, then I would have understood. But I don’t think you can find anybody in foreign service who would say that, of all the people, Dr. S Jaishankar.
About his latest book (Why Bharat Matters) I couldn’t understand because he said, “We matter for this or that reason.” And then he ends by saying we matter because we are Bharat. So we didn’t matter all these years because we were not Bharat all these years. We were India, we were Nehru, we were Hindustan. Now for me, frankly, India is India, it is Hindustan.
India existed when we had nothing. We were heading the NAM (Non-Aligned Movement), the Afro-Asian gathering. We were sought after everywhere. And a lot of that came from the fact that we are a nuclear power. Why? Because the Nehru-Indira connectivity provided the base for being a nuclear power. Narasimha Rao reached the doorstep of being a nuclear power. But yes, it came during the BJP government, but he (Jaishankar) doesn’t even give credit to the BJP government for having turned us nuclear. And then he doesn’t give us credit for the remarkable negotiations he did in the US to bring the 123 Agreements (establishing a legally binding framework for peaceful nuclear cooperation). We are not being told in any of these books as to how much land China has come and grabbed now, though.
Suchitra Mohanty: Are you happy with the present system of court judgments that have been pronounced and the post-retirement posting of judges?
My instincts tell me, and these are not my instincts alone. These are instincts of Supreme Court judges who have never accepted any assignment after retirement from the top court. My instinct tells me that the Supreme Court judgeship is such a high pinnacle that after that nothing comes anywhere near it. Let us learn to use the wisdom of retired Supreme Court judges who can think about greater things. I think we should use them as a very important asset of society, but I don’t think that we should give them assignments. I am very clear on that. But there may be many other implications that have to be considered. Should the judges retire at 65? I have a view that they shouldn’t.
Suchitra Mohanty: Judges appointing judges has been criticized. Do you think that the collegium system should be there or it should be replaced?
Politicians will appoint politicians. This is a big Indian problem. This is not a problem of judges. Journalists appoint journalists. But you are considered the best. You are considered the best because you know what journalism requires.
Ketan Tanna: What’s your take on West Asia?
See, India is not reaching out. When India reaches out to one as against the other, you’ve already lost your ability to intervene. Look at what the UN secretary general says. He is no friends of Hamas, right? But what he says is a point of view that is available to India. PM Modi has developed relationships which he’s entitled to. But then you don’t have the high moral ground from which you can preach. We couldn’t do it for various reasons in Ukraine. We haven’t done it for various reasons with Palestine. And therefore, we opted ourselves out of that. And it may not be 100% Indian fault. But frankly, we forgot Gaza for 20 years. Now they put Gaza right on the map.
Yeshi Seli: What are your views about India ignoring Western sanctions to buy Russian oil?
See, the cheap oil that we bought from Russia had a context that the Europeans were imposing sanctions, but not where it affected them. Now, if we accepted the sanctions, buying oil does affect us. That was one thing. Secondly, we have a historical relationship with Russia. I think we don’t have such a strong relationship with Ukraine. Russia has drifted a bit from time to time. It drifts to Pakistan. It’s drifted again towards Pakistan. But I think if we are trying to repair our relationship with Russia, then it was inevitable that we had to continue buying stuff from them because they needed money.
Santwana Bhattacharya: Is INDIA bloc trying to get Mayawati into its fold?
I have myself spoken to her. She is non-committal at the moment. However, we are hopeful to get her on our side closer to the elections. Our doors are open.
Prabhu Chawla: The BJP has got nara (slogan) as well as neta (leader) — PM Modi is the leader and ‘Modi Ki Guarantee’ is the slogan. What do you have?
Mere paas maa hai… (laughs)