Is there going to be no limit to the unending degeneration of public discourse in this country, which may be a young nation-state, but is an ancient civilisation? One had thought that the nadir had been reached during the recent election campaign, unquestionably the nastiest we have ever had. But a C-grade actor from Tollywood, that is to Kolkata what Bollywood is to Mumbai on a grander scale, Tapas Pal, who is also a Trinamool Congress member of the Lok Sabha, has demonstrated that there is still more than ample scope for a spurt in filth and vulgarity in Indian polity. Nor is it impossible that some others might yet outdo him.
Just to point to the admirably high standards from which we have fallen to the present disgusting state, let me cite only two of countless instances. The first was a titanic clash, soon after the first general election, between Jawaharlal Nehru and Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, the founder of the Jan Sangh, which later morphed into the Bharatiya Janata Party. Arguably, he also was the greatest parliamentarian this country has seen so far. Relations between the Congress and the JS were very strained because in the midst of fiercely fought municipal elections in Delhi, the two parties had also got involved in a riot over an inter-communal marriage. Speaking in the Lok Sabha, Mookerjee accused the Congress of using wine and money to win the local poll. Perhaps, assuming that the Jan Sangh leader had employed the usual phrase “wine and women”, Nehru sprang to his feet and protested vehemently. Mookerjee coolly advised him to check with the official note-takers what exactly he had said. Realising his mistake, Nehru ‘apologised’ to his opponent graciously.
The second event, in 1954, was no less significant. Purushottam Das Tandon, a respected, but highly conservative member of the Congress Party, had launched a blistering attack on Maulana Azad, the second most important minister after Nehru, holding charge of Education, alleging that the Maulana was deliberately neglecting Hindi. Other Hindi zealots joined him. The Maulana listened to them patiently, and then hit back, speaking, as always, in elegant Urdu. At one stage he argued that through Tandonji’s oratory there lay a “purfraib takh-khyul.” Since the word fraib means deception, the Hindi phalanx screamed that the Maulana must apologize for his “insult” to Tandon or they won’t allow him to proceed. Order was restored only after several impartial and Urdu-knowing members convinced the protesters that the Maulana’s beautiful expression only meant “meretricious thought.”
Those halcyon days are now history and will not return. But can this country afford to let things be as they are except at its peril? Sadly, it seems that the Indian political class has neither the will nor the skill to take the necessary remedial action. What better proof in support of this pessimism can there be than the manner in which the Trinamool Congress’s supreme leader and West Bengal chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, has dealt with this despicable affair? At first, she maintained her customary silence. But eventually, in response to the fast-mounting public outrage, she made a critical statement that was a signal to the culprit to tender an “unconditional apology.” Thereafter, she let him off with a mild slap on the wrist, angrily asking the media she hates: “Should I kill him?”
In accordance with her unchanging style and temper, Banerjee overdoes whatever she has to do. But her resolute defence of her loyal followers, no matter how abominable the loyalists’ behaviour, is exactly the policy of the ‘supremo’ of every other political party, as was established during the election campaign. For example, a senior minister in Uttar Pradesh’s Samajwadi Party Government, Azam Khan, made a most vicious statement, not about any political rival, but about the army, which could have ‘communalised’ India’s most integrated and secular armed force. For, he thundered that “no Hindu, but only those shouting Allah-ho-Akbar had won back the hills of Kargil from Pakistan.”
General (retired) V P Malik and other military leaders appealed to the SP supreme leader and former defence minister, Mulayam Singh Yadav to discipline Khan and ask him to withdraw his absurd remarks. Not only didn’t Yadav do this, but also made his ‘boys–will-be-boys’ speech, virtually in defence of rape – a cult that has since spread.
Then there is the infamous prescription of BJP’s Giriraj Singh that whoever voted against Narendra Modi “had no place in India and must go to Pakistan.” Like Banerjee now, the BJP president Rajnath Singh then “entirely disassociated” his party from Mr Singh’s statement and that was the end of the matter. For its part, the Congress Party also had merely “disapproved” of the threat by one of its candidates in UP to “cut to pieces” Modi, while Rahul Gandhi went on canvassing for him. Bihar’s Singh had a Muslim opposite number in Maharashtra, who cried himself hoarse that any Muslim who did not vote for the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance was “not a real Muslim” and had to be subjected to a “DNA test.” Such egregious examples can be multiplied ad nauseam but need not be.
Ironically, TV talk shows, instead of shaming the errant political parties, end up encouraging them, by enabling their spokespersons to defend the indefensible with such fury that all arguments are lost in the resultant hysteria.
The key question is whether we should throw up our hands in despair or do something about the relentless erosion of democracy and its decencies at the hands of democratically-elected politicians themselves? Immediate action at two levels is imperative. As some have already demanded, Parliament should expel any of its members who acts as Pal did. (This might explain why he has got himself admitted into a hospital.) Secondly, activists must use the next five years to educate the masses to vote out the wrongdoers, whose number is large and performance egregious.
Inder Malhotra
