Halo Wanted. Apply Within.
Here's a good analysis of "Atalji", aka Uncle Vajpayee, the "true leader of India", the one Indian politician with "character", yadda yadda yadda.
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Halo Wanted. Apply Within.
"What wrong did this man do?" asked the full page ads
that appeared in newspapers soon after April 17. You
remember, that was the day India's current government
lost its legitimacy in Parliament. Now I know it's been
over a month since then, but I have an excuse for not
writing this earlier. I spent much of the month
marvelling at the gall of a party that would put out ads
like this. There is not a single political party in this
land that is free from the stink of sleaze and crime.
But there is one, nevertheless, that longs for a halo
around its head.
That's the party of the man in the full page ads. Mr
Atal Bihari Vajpayee and his Bharatiya Janata Party.
The ads have him looking out benignly at you. What wrong
did he do, and you can hardly help thinking: could
someone who looks quite so avuncular ever have done
anything wrong? At all? Perish the thought! -- which is
exactly what uncle's party wants you to do. And then
your eye travels down the page, to a rogues' gallery of
five photographs. Sonia, Mayawati, Laloo, Subramanian
Swamy, Jayalalitha. "Ask Them", the ad advises you. Ask
Them what wrong the dear avuncular uncle did, that is.
And just to nudge you along the path all right-thinking
people must take on seeing this ad, the captions below
the rogues' gallery contain such eye-catching words,
judiciously applied, as: "Chanakya." "Chandragupta."
"Kalyug."
You are not meant to miss the contrast between such
words and the one that is used for everybody's favourite
uncle: "Atalji.." Always "Atalji." And for good measure,
"the true leader of India."
With the rogues' gallery, of course, comes a catalogue
of the nasty tricks the rogues got up to in booting
Atalji's Government from power that April 17.
Jayalalitha "asked for votes in Atalji's name and then
used the very same MPs for betraying him." Mayawati
"lied to the people and the country." And so on. You can
guess the rest.
Oh yes indeed, what wrong did this man do? In a word:
enough. I went over some of it in a column some weeks
ago, so please forgive the repetition. It does bear
repetition. It does bear recall.
Let's see, where shall we start? Mayawati? OK, Mayawati.
In my memory, and I believe it stretches back to before
Mayawati hit the big screen of Indian politics, there is
not one thing this winsome lass has done that would make
her worthy of trust. Believable. Credible. She has run
election campaigns in tandem with one party, announcing
even while she does so that she intends to dump that
party after the election. Time and again, she has abused
the BJP, not kept her promises to them. What's more, she
revels in this very untrustworthiness, believing it to
be a badge of honour. She is that curious beast in our
politics: a weasel who is proud of being one. And I am
conscious, as I say this, of the slur I'm attaching to
the fair name of the weasel family.
If Mayawati "lied to the people and the country", that's
just about what any ordinary Indian expects from her.
The wrong is entirely Atalji's, for believing this woman
in the first place. That is, if he did believe her in
the first place. There is the little matter, that I
quoted once before, of what a BJP MP from Karnataka has
been telling rallies in that state, as reported in The
Times of India on April 22: Mayawati "got money from us
and them but ditched us."
Wrong, we were looking for? It stares us in the face.
Next, Jayalalitha? OK, the Big Lady from TN. Much the
same reasoning, if that's the word, applies as with
Mayawati. This lady has also proved that she has no use
for promises and words such as "trust." Besides, she is
neck deep in a series of scams involving amounts
carrying so many zeros you think you are seeing double.
You would think a man who so badly wants a halo would
have said something like: "I will not have anything to
do with a woman on trial for corruption, even if that
prevents me from forming a government." Instead, the
"true leader of India" very consciously and cynically
joined hands with the lady before our last Lok Sabha
election. Then he spent much of his year in power
helping her in her efforts to wriggle weightily off the
hook of the cases against her. He even put his Attorney
General, Soli Sorabjee, to the task of undermining the
special courts the Tamil Nadu government set up to try
those cases: Mr Sorabjee has spent months arguing in the
Supreme Court that they were unlawfully constituted.
Naturally, now that uncle's new alliance in TN is with
the party in power there, such efforts are a thing of
the past. Suddenly Jayalalitha must indeed be tried by
those special courts.
And for that little extra dab of opportunism, try this:
uncle and fans ridicule Sonia for joining hands with
Jayalalitha in a joint search for power. Spot on, uncle.
We agree with you. That's what they did and power is
what motivated them. But you did exactly the same thing
just over a year ago, also in search of power! I ask
you, what is it that makes one grab for power stink, but
the other smell of roses? (And while we're about it, may
we please see an end to the frantic finger-pointing
about people harbouring a lust for power? Power is what
politicians want. Lusting for it is what they do. It is
what we must want them to do. And the ones who pretend
to be uninterested in it are lying).
Wrong, someone said? It's here, in full-figured life.
But there's more too. Atalji the genial uncle was quite
happy to watch as my state, Maharashtra, was given as CM
a man accused of murder in a case that is still on
appeal. He looked on benignly as our largest state, UP,
turned a gaggle of thugs and goons into the biggest
cabinet of ministers Lucknow has ever known. He was
quite content to make a hero of a man, Sukh Ram, who has
thereby escaped any punishment for the corruption he had
become synonymous with only two years ago. (Millions
rolled into bedsheets, no less). Atalji was similarly
benevolent towards two other stalwarts of the North: Om
Prakash Chautala who disgusted us a decade ago with his
crimes in Meham; and Bansi Lal who disgusted us two
decades ago with his crimes during the Emergency -- the
very same Emergency that jailed Atalji and company, the
same one they fought so valiantly.
Why stop there? Atalji's year in office saw a leap in
attacks on Christians by people tiring of attacks on
Muslims. His own Home Ministry's Annual Report for
1998-99 tells us that such attacks went from 30 in 1997
to 84 in 1998. The Home Ministry also informs us that in
some of those 84 cases, it was a "coincidence" that the
victims were Christians. I don't know what this means,
but perhaps the good uncle does. His most famous
reaction to such attacks? That we should debate
conversions by missionaries. In other words: blame the
victims. Just by coincidence, I'm sure.
The "true leader of India" did show us what justice
meant to him in his 1996 stint as Prime Minister. In
those 13 days, he asked the Maharashtra government to
reinstate the Srikrishna Commission that was conducting
an inquiry into the Bombay riots of 1992-93. He deserved
all the applause he got for that decision. Yet what
happened when he came back as prime minister in 1998?
The Justice submitted his report a month before Atalji
took office; his own alliance government in Maharashtra
wriggled for six months before tabling it in the
Assembly; when that happened, that government's then
chief minister and his puppet-master launched a vicious
attack against report and author, calling both biased
against Hindus. Like every other report about every
other inquiry, this one too has been shelved and
forgotten, with no action taken against those who
murdered a thousand Indians six years ago.
Through all of this, Atalji maintained a studied
silence. He wanted the inquiry resumed in 1996, but
watched as its report was torn to shreds in 1998. Not
one word has he uttered about it.
What wrong did he do? Plenty, and plenty more.
Through the year, we were treated to a steady stream of
issues that all turned magically into patriotism tests.
Nuclear bombs, first. (The ones that were supposed to
enhance our security but have not prevented us from
approaching the brink of war in Kashmir yet again). You
didn't like the bomb, you were "anti-national."
Songs, next. (This is true). The argument over the
Srikrishna report in the Maharashtra Assembly somehow
became an argument over singing "Vande Mataram", and of
course only those who sang it were patriots. Then there
was "Saraswati Vandana", and now singing that one made
you a patriot.
As those dulcet strains faded away, it was the need to
debate religious conversions. And that mutated into the
pronouncement from various people, one Ashok Singhal
among them, that Christians and Muslims have
"extra-territorial loyalties." With one master-stroke,
some 140 million Indians were defined as anti-national!
Not even their possible liking for the bomb, or their
willingness to sing songs, could save them! What genius!
Most recently, it's foreign birth. Now all you have to
do to be certified a patriot, in case you somehow missed
all the other opportunities, is to pronounce that India
cannot have a person born abroad as PM. That's all. You
don't have to sing it, either.
I have no idea what's next in the patriotism stakes.
Whatever it is, I know Atalji's party, his government
Whatever it is, I know Atalji's party, his government
and his followers will be jumping up and down screaming
it. Governance by puerile patriotism test, that's what
we've had from "the true leader of India."
And we're asked: "What wrong did this man do?"
I'm pessimistic about every possible government that we
might have on our heads come September. But when one as
venal as this yearns nevertheless for a halo, there's
just one thing to say. Good riddance.
Dilip D'Souza |
