What will be their Nandigram?

A few Left intellectuals did question CPM in the land acquisition debate. But on the 8216;BJP8217; CD, not a boo from intellectuals on the Right

Much column space has been consumed commenting on the contents of the BJP8217;s CD in Uttar Pradesh 8212; which the party has disowned. And yet, only when one reads the transcript, does one get the feeling that the adjectives used to describe its contents such as, 8216;devious8217;, 8216;mischievous8217;, 8216;communal8217;, 8216;offensive8217;, etc do not actually name the crime. They fall far short of the work that an adjective, in such a case, is supposed to do. Perhaps because the CD was produced by a major political party of India, that runs governments in several states, and that has sworn allegiance to the 8216;basic structure8217; of the Constitution, that one subconsciously feels that extreme adjectives such as 8216;perverted8217;, 8216;depraved8217;, 8216;wicked8217;, etc., should not be used. The assumption here is that political parties do not act immorally as some individuals are prone to do. They act responsibly. They have built-in checks. Since they rule over a plural people, such parties tend towards moderation.

The fact that the BJP is a major party of a major democracy produces a filter which makes us see the episode as a lapse, as an error of judgment, and not as the evil that it actually is. But this is a wrong reading. Quite honestly, when I read the transcript, I was overcome with the same sense of stomach churning disgust I experienced when I read the news item on the Nithari killings. I asked myself what sort of a mind could think up such a strategy of political mobilisation? What group of national leaders consider this as fair competition? What kind of organisation allows such a CD to pass its internal 8216;checks8217;? Reading the transcript I knew that what I was confronting was a social pathology. I was reminded of the work of the neo-Freudian Erich Fromm who, analysing another social pathology that had traumatised Europe in the decades of the thirties and forties, warned us of the processes that led to the destruction of 8216;the sane society8217;.

At the very minimum, the CD raises three basic issues that any democracy must confront. The first concerns the attributes of the mind that thinks it proper, a stroke of campaign genius, to produce a CD which has the following five episodes. I shall briefly describe them without comment. The first is the voice, supposedly of Mother India, screaming about being torn apart by terrorists with the accompanying image of a Muslim man, planting a bomb under a white Ambassador car. The second is of two Muslim youth duping a Hindu farmer to sell his cow. The accompanying image here is a 8220;50 second long footage of a buffalo being slaughtered, including scenes of the blood pouring out of its throat8221;. The third is a conversation between Muslim women where one says that their leaders have issued an order to produce more than 10 children to turn the country into a Muslim state. The fourth is that once such a Muslim state comes about then people will have to wear beards and burqas. And the fifth is about Muslim boys abducting Hindu girls to marry and ill treat them. Reading the transcript makes one8217;s stomach churn. The thought that there are thousands of such CDs being seen across UP is a chilling thought. Are we here witnessing decent folk being turned into pathological beings in Erich Fromm8217;s sense? Imagine the anger, hatred, and demonisation of the other that the CD will produce. What sort of perverted minds would find this acceptable?

Take the second issue. While there has been an outcry from the other parties, and from some public intellectuals, there has been no note of dissent forget disgust from intellectuals close to the BJP. Where are they, those who write in the papers about public morality, constitutional values, decency in the making of a future India? No senior lawyers close to the BJP, or senior editors or ex-editors who have imposed long articles on us about good governance, or writers, or educationists, or retired army generals for that matter, have protested. On Nandigram some Left intellectuals protested even though they were close to the CPM. But on this CD, not a boo from intellectuals on the Right. Are these all party intellectuals, their master8217;s voice? Whatever happened to that foundational value of Indian civilisation, Satyamave Jayate? And where is that poet-statesman of the party? Poets are supposed to have the finest sensibilities of a society. Not even a gesture of mild disapproval from him! Instead all we get is legal defence. The CD has been withdrawn. But was it not produced in the first place? Is production not a crime? What legal chicanery do we have to listen to when we hear arguments such as 8216;the CD was released before the Model Code of Conduct came into effect8217; and hence it is outside the jurisdiction of the EC. So what?

The third issue is the Election Commission8217;s moment of truth. This must be seen in terms of the fact that the EC enjoys the highest trust among all political institutions in India, a trust that has not come overnight but because of its consistent attempt to do what is right and not what is pragmatic alone. If you look at the evolution of the institution historically, from the early days when Sukumar Sen stood up to Nehru to the later years when it took the Union government to the Supreme Court in several cases and won check the cases on the ECI website, the EC has taken its mandate under Article 324 very seriously and sought to regularly organise free and fair elections. In this moment of truth it may be useful to remind the EC of the Allahabad High Court judgment against the incumbent PM of the day, the powerful Mrs Gandhi, where she was found guilty of using government machinery to aid her in her election campaign. It was a difficult decision for the judge to make. But in hindsight it was a correct one. The nation had to endure the Emergency as a result. But it has emerged stronger. Its institutions are today more independent of executive diktat. Independent institutions have to make such lonely decisions. But because they do we will never have such an emergency again.

The writer is senior fellow at CSDS, Delhi