POLITICAL DIARY

New Delhi, 29 September 2007

Swearing By Or At Gandhi?

ENOUGH OF RHETORIC & GIMMICKRY

By Poonam I Kaushish

The drumbeaters were out. Hooting for Rahul Gandhi. “He is the country’s future,” gushed Congressmen. “Is the movie ‘Gandhi my Father,’ connected with him?” queried a schoolgirl. “No, it’s about the other Gandhi, the one we read about in history and get a chutti for,” answered her friend. “You mean the Mahatma in the super hit Lage Raho Munnabhai. Who popularized Gandhigiri -- truth, morality and values. The one our netagan talk about ad nauseum to acquire a halo around their own heads,” replied the schoolgirl. 

She was damn right. Look how our netagan, who till yesterday remembered Gandhi only ritually, are today falling over each other to be first past the post in everything Gandhian. The Congress has claimed proprietial rights on the Father of the Nation. Amidst celebrations to commemorate 100 years of Satyagraha, it has not only got the United Nations to declare Gandhiji’s Birthday 2 October as “Non-Violence Day” but Party President Sonia Gandhi is also addressing the UN at a special function today. Remember, the Party held a two-day jamboree in January on Gandhian philosophy in the 21st Century. Leaders from all over the world then pontificated on peace, non-violence and empowerment. 

Do they honestly believe in Gandhiji? Adhere to his values? Forget it. All are busy riding the crest of popularity of Gandhigiri to reap a political harvest. Today, at the crack of dawn a smattering of leaders led us to Rajghat, the samadhi of freedom. With beatific smiles even as they inwardly cursed the time wasted. Ritually offered flower petals. Observed two minutes’ silence. Gave sound bites to the TV cameras. Duty performed, they rushed back to their heavily securitized cars. Heading to their next destination. To go through the ritual again.

Ignoring the genuine Gandhians, some of them in their eighties, who have formed a Gandhian Satyagraha Brigade, based in New Delhi’s Lajpat Bhawan, and have been conducting “a new Satyagraha” for the past two months against the failure of successive Governments of India in combatting mounting corruption and criminality in public life. And the aam aadmi who patiently awaits his turn to pay his sincere homage. Opportunity comes only when the VVIPs and VIPs have departed and the security barricades are removed.

Look at the irony. Gandhiji wanted to wind up the Congress party and have a Lok Seva Sangh (servants of the people society) to take its place. This was primarily because of the rot that was setting into the Party. He had received information that some Congress legislators were taking money from business houses to get them licences, that they were indulging in blackmarketing and subverting the judiciary and intimidating officials to secure transfers and promotions for their protégées in the administration. He wanted somehow to stop the Congress and Congressmen from capitalizing on the freedom struggle in which the nation as a whole had participated.

Going a step further, Gandhiji wanted to sternly screen candidates for Parliament and provincial legislatures and put up only those with integrity and a selfless spirit of service to the community. This, he urged, would guide the voters in their choice of suitable persons to speak on their behalf in the nation’s highest forum. The members of these organizations, which were to be engaged in constructive social work among the masses, were to keep out of politics themselves.

But Gandhi’s proposals did not appeal to his lieutenants, who were more interested in using the Congress ladder to power. The Mahatma thereupon felt even more isolated than ever from the very men who claimed to follow him and practice his precepts. He felt like one exploited by his close comrades for their own political ends. Tragically, he was killed by an assassin’s bullets, before he could purge Indian politics of its fast corrupting influences.

Today, Gandhiji’s fears have come a full circle. Just look around and sees how far removed we are from Bapu’s vision of India post-Independence, his ideas of simple living and high thinking, his sense of right and wrong and his value system. If ahimsa, or call it soul force, cast a Mahatma’s halo around him universally, himsa has become the universal truth for our society.

Wherein Gandhi’s teachings have been reduced to mere pious platitudes and inane speeches on his birth anniversary and martyrdom day or during elections, courtesy our parochial leaders. The fire and zeal across the nation to come out in response to Gandhi’s “do-or-die” slogan died an early death. Replaced by a rent-a-crowed brought by chartered buses to election rallies. Might is right, after all.

Bringing things to such a ludicrous pass that today Gandhi seems an alien from a different planet. Said he: “The ministers are the people’s servants. They will not stay in office a day longer than the people’s wish. These offices have to be held lightly, not tightly. They are or should be crowns of thorns, not renown.” Sadly, the Mahatma did not visualize portly ministers fitting tightly into their polyester khadi kurtas! And khaas kursis. Or, how these heavy weights would not take anything and everything lightly! Certainly, not their offices.

Wherein corrupt and convicted leaders shamelessly strut around as proud peacocks. He could never have imagined a day when tainted ministers would adorn the Treasury Benches and the Prime Minister would justify their inclusion as the “compulsions of coalition politics!” Or, that a Cabinet Minister would be jailed for murder and another would go “underground” to evade arrest. Could one imagine the Father of the Nation manipulating the system to achieve this? Never.

Bapu had said, “Ministers should not live as ‘sahib log’ or use private work facilities provided by the Government for official duties.” Nothing could be farther from the truth today. Yesterday’s princes have been replaced by Ministers, and MPs, who see themselves as winners. Not one Minister is willing to give up his colonial bungalow and be anything less than the Burra Sahib! Lutyen’s Delhi is being absurdly treated as a holy cow. There are no rules of the game any more. You make your own rules. The business of democracy is all about rule by law not rule of law. The doctors of all trades. Experts in doctoring facts and in fixing deals.

At various election rallies, our polity emphasises a return to Gandhian values. “Our life styles must change. Vulgar, conspicuous consumption must go. Simplicity, efficiency and commitment to national goals hold the key to self reliance!” Brave words indeed, words which taunt the five star culture reality of today.

How many have read the Arjun Sengupta report on unorganized labour which talks of 70 per cent of India’s teaming billion living in abject poverty, earning less than Rs 20 a day. Are they aware that there are over 12 lakh manual scavengers who load human excreta with their bare hands? Yet they continue to woo illiterate masses with money and pipe dreams of roti, kapra and makan.

Depressingly, nowhere does ideology, principles, party interests or policies even rhetorically figure in our leaders vocabulary. In the past, the leaders at least used to camouflage their intentions in ideological garbage. Today, even that fig leaf or verbosity has been discarded. “The truth I proclaim is as old as the hills,” said he. Alas, he did not visualize that the hills could be decimated and truth erased and replaced with only one lakshya these days: “gaddi rakho, paisa pakro”. Power and money at any cost. The country and its democracy can go to hell.

The Mahatma’s view as stated in his biography, “Experiments with Truth”: “I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be shuttered. I want the cultures of all lands to be blown about freely. I refuse to be blown off my feet by any. Mine is not a religion of the prison house. It has room for the least of God’s creations. But it is proof against insolent pride of race, religion or colour.”

Most sadly, India’s secular credentials today have been dissected, butchered and roasted to suit political convenience and tactics. Unfortunately, the secularism advocated by the Mahatma and our founding fathers has got greatly diluted to brazen minority appeasement. Carrying it to such absurd limits that our polity takes offence to the rendering of Vande Matram but willy nilly talks of giving reservation for minorities. Equality for them connotates giving first preference to the Muslims.

Less said about the raging controversy over the Ram Setu the better. Clearly, a day is not far when Mahatma Gandhi’s call for Ram Rajya will be dissected and debunked as the outpourings of a rabid Hindu fundamentalist. This is the secular reality of what a wit described as India’s “420 secularism”.

In the final analysis, what should one say of a polity that swears by the Mahatma but doesn’t heed him. “Today I am your leader but tomorrow you may have to put me behind the bars, because I will criticize you, if you do not bring about Ram Rajya,” he said. We did not put him behind bars. Instead, we murdered him --- and continue to do so daily. Our experiments with untruth! ---- INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)