Blunder to blunder

As Pramod Mahajan has demonstrated with such felicity, this is the season for turning events into occasions and personalities into icons....

As Pramod Mahajan has demonstrated with such felicity, this is the season for turning events into occasions and personalities into icons. It was perhaps appropriate that the completion of one year in office by the BJP coalition was celebrated by staging a cricket match of no consequence for the fact is that what has marked the preceding year has been, as Shakespeare might have said, mere sound and fury, signifying very little.

The adage about speaking softly but carrying a big stick has been reversed by the Vajpayee administration. The regime8217;s ineffectuality in practice has been offset by the volume of its proclamations. Who does not remember the loudness of the blast of proclamations that followed the explosions at Pokhran? But then who has forgotten the diplomatic ineptitude which accompanied that burst of self-congraulation? George Fernandes pointed to China as the principal cause for testing atomic bombs. The Prime Minister himself put this down in writing in a letter to the US President. Both spoke inhaste, only to eat their words at leisure. The home minister threatened Pakistan with the bomb days before the Pakistanis carried out their own tit for tat explosions. And, there was Mahajan in his then incarnation as the Prime Minister8217;s major domo, making the eloquent but not quite apt remark: ulta chor kotwal ko daante the thief scolds the guard, a wisecrack that cost him a few months out of the ministry. The net result of the machismo of the government is that India8217;s external affairs ministry is now filling ink in pens to sign the CTBT when it had earlier proclaimed that it would not accede to that treaty, quot;Not now, not ever!quot;.

The saying about the bark being worse than the bite was demonstrated even in the field of economic affairs. The finance minister has been characterised by his penchant for constantly doing the one step forward, two steps back jig, so much so that he is well and truly known as the one who has perfected the steps of the roll back dance.

Indeed those in charge ofeconomic policy have shown amazing agility in footwork as they have skipped over inconveniences in getting their way. Thus, the industry minister ignored the recommendations of the Law Commission while getting the Patents Act passed. The telecommunications minister went one ahead: he overturned the decision of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. For that supposedly autonomous body, it became a case of TRAI, TRAI again!

The government has had many other causes to celebrate: the by-passing of the Rajya Sabha in subverting the autonomy of Prasar Bharati; the tampering with the federal structure by periodically dispatching home ministry officials to investigate the situation in different states; the home minister 8212; Sardar Patel Mark II 8212; abjectly pleading at the court of the Shiv Sena supremo in person; the Prime Minister calling for a national debate on conversions when attacks were mounting on Christians and his Number Two expeditiously giving a clean chit to the Bajrang Dal on the ghastly murder ofa missionary and his two children while taking his time in providing the minimum facilities to the Justice Wadhwa commission of inquiry appointed to investigate that shameful event.

More dramatically, the Centre acted with precipitate haste in dismissing Rabri Devi when the Samata Party exclaimed, quot;Off with her headquot; just as it had shown speed in pleasing Jayalalitha on innumerable other occasions. The eagerness to get rid of Admiral Bhagwat and then invoke quot;national securityquot; to cover up the reasons for his forced exit are also achievements. All this encouraged the government to launch extravagant celebrations. After all, sheerly surviving for one year is no mean accomplishment and it calls for grander celebration than the wet spectacle of a dripping horde of ministers on Rajpath, huddling under umbrellas, as a pop crooner belted out a version of Vajpayee8217;s verse to observe the 50th anniversary of India8217;s Independence.

It is important to recall all this because the celebration of any anniversary is, inany event, marked by reification and the replacement of substance by symbolism. This makes life extremely difficult for the historian. The methodology of history is complex enough; it becomes terribly complicated when metaphors of contemporary politics are loaded on to memories of history, when, in the organisation of celebrations, commerce and cupidity are added to scholarship and sentiment.

Story continues below this ad

In the process, events are transformed by depiction, memories altered through clever invocation of metaphors and the very meaning of words is changed by subtle manipulation. And, new quot;purr wordsquot; and quot;snarl wordsquot; emerge in the public discourse. Take quot;swadeshiquot;, once a purr word of the self-proclaimed nationalists in the Sangh Parivar; today a snarl word to be hurled at the likes of Mohan Guruswamy when they expose the small wheels and big deals in the government. In the topsy-turvy wonderland which is entered through the looking glass of hype, it is significant how business uses the metaphors of politics and also howinconsistent it is in its use. Those who have thrived for years on the quot;licence-quota-permit rajquot; suddenly start proclaiming loudly that quot;there is no such thing as a free lunchquot;. When a soft drinks magnate was fighting to keep a multinational competitor out of the market, the major virtue was in quot;nationalismquot;; when he sold out to another multinational, it was quot;to bring competitiveness and quality.quot; When a few years ago a Non-Resident Indian carried out predatory raids on Indian engineering firms, it was quot;buccaneeringquot;; when the foreign principals of a tobacco company try to influence financial institutions to increase their stake, it is quot;synergyquot;. It is thus that the government turns the meaning of word and occasions and celebrates when it has cause for sober introspection.

Unlike partisan celebrants, real historians do not enjoy the intellectual immunity provided by unthinking pragmatism which enables businessmen and bigots, politicians and publicists, unintellectual existentialists and philistinerelativists to invent the convenient truth of the moment.

quot;Facts are sacred; opinion is freequot;, a great liberal journalist proclaimed, when, in fact, in the best conceptualisation of liberalism, only opinions are sacred and facts can be quite free. The manner in which the performance of the constantly tottering government has been assessed by Sangh-friendly journalists and analysts gives a new context to the term quot;stumbling from correctness to correctnessquot;. And that is something the leaders of the Sangh Parivar can well celebrate.