Words turn into bullets

Rarely, in fact, has a parliamentary intervention elicited such widespread condemnation, right across the social spectrum. The reason for this is not far to seek. In his desperation to defend the BJP government and its protege in Gujarat, Fernandes rendered acts of extreme barbarism as unexceptional, almost ordinary, everyday events. In his attempt to make the Congress squirm over the 1984 riots, as well as its record in Gujarat, he ended up glossing over events that required urgent redressal. This was not a school debating exercise, where scoring points over one8217;s opponent is the only objective, this was the nation talking to itself on a crisis of gargantuan proportions. Fernandes, more than most others in the NDA government, had even less reason to whitewash the terror, having visited the state when bestiality was unbound during the very early stages of the pogrom. He had faced violent mobs and seen for himself the desperation of people being systematically hunted down, tortured and butchered. So when he does not have a word of condemnation for a dispensation that presided over this catastrophe, when he goes out of his way to render the crimes perpetrated in this interregnum as almost palatable, it indicates either extreme physical blindness or, more plausibly, a very high degree of cynicism created by vaulting political ambition 8216;which o8217;erleaps itself8217;.

Little wonder then that George Fernandes8217; old friends, people who participated in and furthered his political career, now wish to pronounce the 8216;8216;old George8217;8217; as dead. Therefore, when the 8216;8216;new George8217;8217;, the 100-per cent shock-proof George, now claims that 8216;8216;nowhere in my speech was there even the remotest attempt to disrespect women of our country for whose dignity and welfare I have fought all my life8217;8217;, it carries little conviction. The defence minister has no defence.