As if the BJP/RSS ordained definition of nationalism was not enough, the people are now getting to know a new construct of the law of the land. Firstly, the Lok Sabha witnessed an unusual situation where the ruling party members moving a calling attention notice spoke to their heart’s satisfaction, instead of seeking clarifications from the minister on the basis of his written statement. When the opposition pointed out that the ‘debate’ was one-sided and they should be also allowed to speak as their leaders had been named, the speaker countered that their names were not listed on the notice, and in so far as the leaders’ names were concerned she has ruled that these be deleted from the record. Never mind that the proceedings are telecast live and, and there is no way to delete that from the record.
But this is a minor procedural matter compared to the larger political agenda. Just look at what these BJP members — Nishikant Dubey, Anurag Thakur, Kirit Somaiya and Satyapal Singh — want to tell us. Dubey, the mover of the motion, lays down the law of the land justifying Ishrat’s killing even if it is a fake encounter. “If terrorists come to kill us, we will kill them,” he says.
In this context it is pertinent to note that all three inquiries into the case have concluded that the encounter was fake — the Additional Judicial Magistrate of Ahmedabad, the SIT or Special Investigation Team and the CBI. The matter is now sub judice and is to be decided by the courts.
However, those bothered about the niceties of the law of the land are political ignoramuses. The Ishrat case is hardly about the law of the land. It is about the politics of power, and in this game the law of the land, which makes it the duty of the courts to give the verdict of punishment and wherein the police cannot have the power of judge, jury and executioner, is irrelevant. The law of the land is now laid down by the BJP MPs.
Now witness their mindset. Anurag Thakur, the shining star of the BJP’s youth politics, has this insight: “By 2009 the Congress had realised that they would not be able to win the 2014 Lok Sabha elections on their own and so they went to strike an alliance with the Pakistani terrorists. It seems they (Congress) tried to do what Ishrat Jahan failed to achieve.”
With the BJP in power and the two NSAs exchanging intelligence with each other, it should not be long before Thakur enlightens us on the details of the Congress-Pakistani terrorist alliance. Or maybe we shall be enlightened by the testimony of David Coleman Headley on this count as well?
This “Congress conspiracy” in the Ishrat case also has the endorsement of the Modi sarkar with union home minister Rajnath Singh claiming that ‘‘there was a deep conspiracy to defame the then Gujarat government and frame the then chief minister.’’
The beauty of this approach to now defame the Congress is that an already demoralized opposition neither has the caliber nor the strategy to fight this assault. The BJP just has a walk-over in the Lok Sabha, and it can shape the discourse in whatever direction it chooses.
It was not that there was no resistance. It did come from BJD member Kalikesh Narayan Singhdeo who wanted to focus on the issue of whether the Ishrat encounter was fake or genuine. As logically pointed out by him, whether she was a terrorist or not is not the issue, at all?
But unless Kanhaiya Kumar is anti-national the nationalism discourse does not move in the BJP’s direction and similarly unless Ishrat is labeled as a terrorist there is no political juice in the fake or genuine encounter debate.
Yet all these clever exertions do not seem to be taking the BJP any farther when it comes to achieving the “Congress-Mukt Bharat” goal. The latest evidence came from none other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi who had to use the morbid death metaphor to describe the Congress. He observed in the Rajya Sabha: “Death has a blessing. It never gets blamed for anything. If somebody dies, the blame goes to reasons like cancer, age… death itself is never blamed or defamed – Sometimes I feel that Congress has this blessing. If we criticise the Congress, the media terms it as ‘attack on Opposition’ but not an attack on the Congress. However, if we attack (JD-U leader) Sharadji (Yadav) or Mayawatiji, then it says it is an attack on JD-U or BSP. The Congress never gets the blame… It needs to be pondered upon as this in itself is a big science.”
Now Modi has spent almost a life time as a RSS man and the Congress has been the bête noire of the Sangh parivar. His learned observations about the Congress being like death cannot be taken lightly. Besides, death is a subject that has been commented upon by so many wise men in the past, and has been compared to taxes (that are also certain to come like death, but unlike death keep rising every year), and other things but never to a political party. Scholars in the Hindu mythology have their own tales about the death of god Yama, and the prevalent myths that there are record keepers (his accountants) who keep a tab on each and every act of ours before deciding our place in hell or heaven in after life.
Be that as it may, the death metaphor for the Congress from Modi is a compliment as well as an acceptance of defeat. It is indeed a confessional. Congress cannot be harmed beyond a point. Modi has in the past claimed that he knows the art of politics. His strategies have served him so well that he has achieved something that has eluded the BJP in the past. He should very well be able to decipher the mystery that surrounds the Congress survival despite odds.
