This is the year of the birth centenary of Faiz Ahmed Faiz,one of the worlds greatest poets in the 20thcentury. He was an Indian when he was born and became a Pakistani when his side of India became Pakistan in a blood-soaked partition. He remained a friend of India till his last breath. Men like him are the messengers of peace,goodwill and good-neighbourliness between India and Pakistan. But they are also messengers of an honourable quality called COURAGE,which all human beings should have.
Faiz was unafraid of standing by his convictions. And governments that are afraid of fearless men and women who uphold truth and justice have always sought to silence such persons in various cowardly ways. Pakistan,a country never known for a high degree of respect for democracy and the rule of law,imprisoned Faiz during one of its many stints under military dictatorship. He wrote this poem from inside his prison cell: If they snatch my ink and pen/ I should not complain/ For I have dipped my fingers In the blood of my heart/ I should not complain. Even if they seal my tongue/ For every ring of my chain. Is a tongue ready to speak.
Why am I remembering Faiz in this column? Why this week? Because I believe that our paying tribute to great men and women on commemorative occasions should not be ritualistic,devoid of courage and readiness to follow their good steps. I am writing these lines on a day that marks the third anniversary of 22/7. Remember that day in 2008? Remember those shocking visuals on your TV screens when,hours before the UPA government won a fraudulent vote of confidence by encouraging the most shameful scandal of horse-trading in the history of Indian Parliament,three BJP MPs displayed wads of currency notes worth one crore rupees in the well of the Lok Sabha?
The three MPs claimeda claim later substantiated by abundant evidencethat the money was paid to them by a senior leader of a party that had suddenly,and quite mysteriously,become an ally of the UPA-1 government,which was sure to be defeated after losing its majority in the Lower House. I,then an activist of BJP,played an important role in planning and facilitating the three MPs whistle-blowing operation that exposed what has now come to be known as the Cash-for-Votes scandal. Although I am not with BJP anymore,I have stood and continue to standby everything that I did,said and wrote then and subsequently,all of which are in the public domain. I had written five columns in a row on this subject in this very paper,both before and after 22/7.
The probe into that scandal,which was in danger of being given a quiet burial,first came alive after a highly incriminating disclosure by WikiLeaks in the Cash-for-Votes scandal in March this year which essentially corroborated what our whistle-blowing operation,conducted in collaboration with a news channel,had revealed three years ago. (I want to emphasise here that this operation was not conducted by a few freelance individuals with their own private agenda. Its aim was to expose government-sponsored horse-trading. It was carried out with the knowledge of BJPs top leadership,without whose consent three of its sitting MPs could not have participated in it.) When the probe continued in a shoddy and tardy manner,some public-spirited and non-political citizens approached the Supreme Court,thanks to whose welcome pressure the investigation has now reached a crucial stage. Nevertheless,as I write these lines,I am filled with dark apprehension that the government,in order to protect its own skin,is misusing the investigative agency to turn truth into untruth and justice into its parody.
As far as I am concerned,I am prepared to face the consequences of my action. Free men should speak up,and speak the truth,if they want to be known as freedom-loving men. Especially since India has not yet descended into chaos like Pakistan,where the price of speaking the truth,as journalist Saleem Shahzad recently found out,can mean paying with your life. However,if the institutions of democracy and governance in India continue to get corrupted and corroded in the way that the Cash-for-Votes scandal,the bigger scandal of its official cover-up,and several other scandals in recent years have shown,the day is not far off when Indias unscrupulous rulers will have raised the price for blowing the whistle. Lovers of freedom and justice,and lovers of Faizs poetry,should be ready to pay even that high a price.
sudheenkulkarni@gmail.com
