REWIND
New Delhi, 5 January 2023
Personal Poll Attacks
LOATHSOME BUT UNAVOIDABLE
By Inder Jit
(Released on 5 October 1999)
Unlike top leaders of the BJP, the
Congress and other parties, I am not upset by the marked tendency among those
involved in the recent poll battle to indulge in “dirty and loathsome” personal
attacks. On the other hand, I welcome what has come to pass and consider all
the brouhaha whipped up over certain remarks against some leaders largely
uncalled for. In fact, I even believe that Mahatma Gandhi, whose jayanti we
celebrated last Saturday, would be on my side and may well puckishly repeat
from the high heavens above a line made famous by Sachin Tendulkar: “Dilmaange
more.”
Shocked? Perhaps yes. But you really
don’t need to feel outraged. The Mahatma would not only have found the
development desirable but hoped that it would help revive an important debate
he was having with Jawaharlal Nehru before the assassin cut short his life.
Gandhi wanted Nehru to judge people not only by their public actions but
equally by their private conduct. Nehru, influenced by the western ethos,
insisted that he was concerned only with a person’s public doings and not with
his private life. The Mahatma, however, maintained: “A man’s public life cannot
be clean, if his private life is not clean. You cannot separate the two!”
Almost all the leaders and many
others are today loudly lamenting what they call a decline in the standard of
poll campaigning and aver that the battle should be fought only on issues and
not on personalities. This is an absurd proposition which must be summarily
rejected. May I ask: Should we as voters not take a good close look at the
candidates who seek our support andare eager to be elected to the Lok Sabha?
The character, commitment and credibility of persons making poll promises are
of crucial importance. In fact, we need to recall what Baba Sahib Ambedkar
emphasised about the importance of the individual during the concluding session
of the Constituent Assembly on 25thNovember 1949.
Ambedkar said the Assembly had
laboured hard to give India a good Constitution. But much in regard toits merit
would depend upon the people who worked the Constitution, adding: “However good
a Constitution may be, it is sure to turn out bad because those who are called
to work it happen to be a bad lot. However bad a Constitution may be, it may
turn out to be good if those who are called to work it happen to be a good lot.”
In short, the man operating the system was no less important than the system
itself.
Every party today offers us the moon
in the course of glossy manifestos. But who will give us what our people have
been demanding for the past five decades: a good, clean Government. Clearly, we
need leaders who can truly be trusted to put the country before all else --- self,
family, caste, community and party -- and implement their solemn promises. This
may have happened had Nehru and those who followed him shunned sycophancy and
enforced selfless Gandhian standards. Sadly however, Nehru, though Bapu’s
political heir, had his own ideas -- and agenda.
Corruption and political harlotry
may not have flourished as brazenly as they do in India today if only we had
focussed as much on the character of our rulers as on the issues. Especially
when issues have largely become irrelevant with politics increasingly becoming
an exercise in unabashed hypocrisy, double talk and deception. We have adopted
the Westminster form of democracy, but not applied its standards of probity.
Churchill’s War Minister quit during World War II for having accepted no more
than three bottles of liquor. Profumo had to go not because he slept with
Christine Keeler but because he told a lie in the high temple of democracy --
the House of Commons.
We have allowed politicians and many
others to get away not only with lies and damn lies but even with murder at
high noon. We have spoken loudly but done little to punish the crooks and the
corrupt among our rulers as also those who have made a mockery of the
Constitution. We often lambasted those who have shown the courage to expose
unprincipled doings instead of praising them. Pramod Mahajan has, for instance,
been condemned for comparing Sharad Pawar to Elizabeth Taylor and saying: “He
marries, divorces, remarries and again divorces!” Instead, he deserved to be
complimented for his delightful quip.
Even Sonia Gandhi loyalists
privately concede that the issue of her foreign origin is of crucial importance
to India’s national security, integrity and self-respect. At the time of the
Chinese aggression, Nehru warned: “Freedom is in peril. Defend it with all your
might.” This warning is as relevant today as in 1962, now that the Congress has
no qualms of conscience in projecting a person of foreign origin for the office
of the country’s Prime Minister. Remember, Nehru barred officers of India’s
Foreign Service from marrying foreigners on considerations of national
security. This ban, I gather, also virtually applies even today to the officers
of India’s Armed Forces. Remember also, that the United States, by the same
token, has amended its Constitution to bar persons of foreign origin from
becoming the Country’s President!
Many more pointed questions need to
be asked from various leaders. Our people have a right to seek some basic
information from Sonia Gandhi: Her family background, education, political
philosophy and links, if any, with Italy. Why did she not take up Indian
citizenship on her marriage to Rajiv Gandhi, since she now claims to love
India? Why did she wait for 16 years before doing so? For Sonia to dismiss the
query as “technical” is as ridiculous as Indira Gandhi’s absurd assertion in
1975 that Justice Sinha’s decision to unseat her from the Lok Sabha and disqualify
her for six years was based on “technical” grounds. This historic judgment
eventually led to the diabolic Emergency.
Likewise, our people have every
right to get adequate answers to the questions raised about Prime Minister
Vajpayee by Congressmen Ghulam Nabi Azad and Rajesh Khanna, both of whom have
been unfairly slandered by angry BJP leaders. Ghulam Nabi asked: “How does the
PM have a son-in-law without being married? Whose son-in-law? Who is married to
whom?” Rajesh Khanna queried more pithily: “Auladnahin, dammadhai.” Vajpayee,
as we have all known for years, has an honourable answer. His life is an open
book, leaving no scope for any canard, including one regarding his role in the
1942 freedom movement.
I am one with the others in opposing
personal vilification. At the same time, let us not shut out the cut and thrust
of a political debate, which once made Mohammed Ali Jinnah, prior to
independence, mischievously describe half the members of the Central Assembly
as consisting of fools and knaves. When some members protested and the Speaker
asked for amends, Jinnah cleverly corrected himself and stated amidst smiles
and thumping of desks: “Sir, half the members are not fools and knaves!” In
fact, DMK’s Chief Minister, M. Karunanidhi, deserves a hand for the ingenuity
with which he has been hitting out at his bete noir, Jayalalitha. When the
AIADMK Supremo coupled her campaign speeches with a song which said:“Oh
Vajpayee you have cheated me”, Karunanidhi commented: “I don't think it is ingood
taste... If a woman says she has been cheated, we can only draw awkward
conclusions!”
In the final analysis, India faces
many crises today because our voters have tragically failed to demand the
highest probity, integrity and commitment from our publicmen. We have
recklessly compromised with minimum standards wherever our friends, relations,
partymen and benefactors were involved, greatly encouraging all-round decline
in standards and institutions and even criminalisation of politics. Our people,
therefore, need to take a good close look at every candidate and apply the
Gandhian yardstick sternly. Crooks, criminals and the corrupt among our leaders
and aspirants for Parliament must be exposed ruthlessly together with their
carefully hidden personal frailties. No quarter must ever be given to them
under the misplaced plea of good taste and decency. – INFA
(Copyright, India News & Feature
Alliance)
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