Are these rumbles of discontent coming together?

Jawed Naqvi in The Dawn

A PEOPLE’S movement is underway in Israel against its ultra right-wing government. Prime Minister Netanyahu is trying to subvert the judiciary’s neutrality, with a selfish aim to kill the criminal cases hanging over his head and that of his colleagues. In quite a few democracies, the judiciary is or has been under assault from the right wing for similar reasons. India is witnessing it in unsubtle ways. Pakistan too has seen political interference with the judiciary at least since the hanging of Bhutto. Then Nawaz Sharif and Gen Musharraf, vicious to each other, took turns to undermine the courts. Pakistan, however, has seen mass movements too that have thrown out military dictators and restored democracy even if intermittently. Where’s that old fire in the belly for India?

Describing the unprecedented attack on India’s democracy starkly at a Cambridge University talk is one thing. Few Indian politicians are capable of speaking with conviction without a teleprompter as Rahul Gandhi recently did before an enlightened audience, while also making plenty of sense. But just as he was holding forth — at a talk called ‘Learning to listen in the 21st century’ — two unrelated landmark events were unfolding in Turkiye and Israel. Was he listening to them too?

The events might send any struggling democratic opposition to the drawing board. In Turkiye, a last-minute collapse of the alliance of six disparate parties, preparing to challenge President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s re-election in May, holds a lesson for any less-than-solid political alliance about possible ambush on the eve of an assured victory. Equally instructive was the opposition’s ability to bury its differences promptly, something that eludes India. The Turkish groups have made compromises with each other so that their common goal to defeat Erdogan remains paramount. There are good chances they would succeed, but even if they don’t, it won’t be for want of giving their best to restore Turkiye’s secular democracy.

However, it was the coming out of Israel’s air force pilots to join the swarming protests against the Netanyahu government that is truly remarkable, and unprecedented. These pilots are usually adept at bombing vulnerable neighbourhoods, including Palestinian quarters. But their taking a stand in defence of democracy offers a lesson to every country with a strong military. There were rumblings in India once. Jaya Prak­ash Narayan, the mass leader opposed Indira Gandhi’s authoritarian patch and called for the army and the police to disobey her, an unusual quest but an utterly democratic call when democracy itself is being murdered. The RSS had supported the JP movement. The boot today is on the other foot. Does the Indian opposition have the conviction to follow in JP’s footsteps to take on Prime Minister Narendra Modi? Does it at all feel the dire need to make sacrifices and compromises to rescue and heal the wounded nation?

The Israeli government may or may not succeed in neutralising the supreme court, which it has set out to do. But the masses are out on the streets to act when their nation is in peril. And India cannot exist as a nation without democracy. Secular democracy enshrined in its constitution binds it into a whole.

Rahul Gandhi has evolved as a contender for any challenging job that could help save the Indian republic from its approaching destruction. But he should also have a chat with Prof Amartya Sen perhaps who was quoted recently as saying that Mamata Bannerjee would make a good prime minister. Others have their hats in the ring. Gandhi’s talk in the hallowed portals of Cambridge bonded nicely with his 4,000-kilometre walk recently, from the southern tip of India to what is effectively the garrison area of Jammu and Kashmir. No harm if the walk served as a learning curve for the Gandhi scion, but even better if it were a precursor for a mass upsurge as is happening elsewhere, and which has seen successful outcomes in many Latin American and African states.

Rahul Gandhi spoke about the surveillance, which opposition politicians and journalists among others have been illegally put under. His points about deep-seated corruption, that shows up graphically as crony capitalism, are all well taken. Few can match the feat of mass contact across the country that he displayed recently and his declamation at the world’s premier university. The point is that Cambridge University cannot change the oppressive government in India. Only the Indian opposition can. Rahul Gandhi has the credentials to weld mutually suspicious opposition parties into a force to usher in the needed change.

There’s no dearth of issues to unite the people and the parties. To cite one, call out the BJP-backed ruling alliances in north-eastern states where its supporters assert their right to eat beef. And place it along the two Muslim boys incinerated in a jeep near Delhi by alleged cow vigilantes. The criminality and the hypocrisy of it.

The fascist assault on India’s judiciary is an issue waiting to be taken up for nationwide mobilisation. The assault comes at a time when the new chief justice is one with a mind of his own. Judges have stopped accepting official briefs in sealed envelopes as had become the practice, dodging public scrutiny, say, in the controversial warplanes deal with France. The court has set up a probe into the Adani affair, something unthinkable until recently.

The timing of the vicious criticism of the judiciary is noteworthy. The law minister described the judges as unelected individuals, perhaps implying they were answerable to the elected parliament like any other bureaucrat. This is mischievous. The supreme court set new transparent principles in the appointment of election commissioners. It’s a rap on the knuckles of an unholy system. Could anyone call it a fair election in a secular democracy when people are nefariously polarised and the election commission looks the other way? The questions are best answered by opposition parties, preferably in unison.

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Does the BJP have an obsession with the freedom movement?

Vir Sanghvi in The Print

Should Rahul Gandhi have been critical of the way things are in today’s India when he spoke in the UK? Does this amount to asking white people to colonise India as some BJP supporters have suggested? Or is he merely following in the footsteps of Narendra Modi who has also not always been complimentary on foreign soil about the situation in India, especially in the years after he first became Prime Minister? Is the BJP making the mistake of believing that attacking Narendra Modi’s governance is the same as attacking India, as Congress supporters claim?

There are no ‘yes’ and ‘no’ answers to these questions as we have seen over the last few days as the controversy has raged. My guess is that people who support the government will criticise Rahul while Congress supporters will argue that if he is asked questions about how things are in India, then he should tell the truth and not lie to make Modi look good.

Either way, how you approach this debate is largely determined by what you already believe.

So I am not going to waste your time by recalling the arguments of the last few days all over again. Instead, I am going to ask a different question: is the BJP doing Rahul a favour by making him the centre of a new controversy every week?

Consider the reality of the situation. Ever since he became the Congress’s chief campaigner, Rahul has faced setback after setback. He lost the 2014 election to the BJP and to Modi’s charisma. He tried again in 2019 but was defeated again even in his own constituency of Amethi. During his period as the Congress’s most visible leader, the party has lost state after state. Its top leaders, many of whom were Rahul’s friends, have either left the party or, at the very least, tried to leave. The consensus is that Rahul will not be able to beat Modi at the next election either.

Given this background, does he deserve so much attention? As the BJP itself has told us, he is not fit to be a leader; in fact, it has said much worse things about him, not all of which can be repeated here. So, if he is such a useless person, then why is the BJP so obsessed with him? Why does it use up so much energy in attacking him?

 
BJP, a party of obsessions

You could argue that despite the Congress’s dismal electoral performance over the years, one reason why Rahul has such a high profile and still acts as though he is the pre-eminent opposition leader is that the BJP takes him so seriously. No other opposition leader is subject to the kind of scrutiny the BJP subjects Rahul to.

In the early days of the BJP’s Rahul obsession, I used to think that the single-minded focus on the Congress leader was strategic. Perhaps, the BJP wanted to shine a spotlight on him to show Narendra Modi in a better light. But that time has long passed. Nobody regards Rahul as the man who will topple Modi in the next election. So why does anything he says rattle the BJP so much?

My conclusion is that the BJP, despite its shrewd grasp of strategy, is becoming more and more a party of obsessions. Take the BJP’s obsession with Nehru. Once upon a time it may have made sense to rubbish Nehru to discredit his descendants. But that ploy has run its course. Even those who support Rahul today do not do so because his great grandfather, who died nearly 60 years ago, was a great guy.

The BJP’s obsession with Nehru now extends to criticising the freedom struggle. It is entirely valid to say that we have made too much of Nehru and ignored other freedom fighters. But is it necessary to insult MK Gandhi and to praise his murderer Nathuram Godse as Sangh Parivar members have done?

Certainly, it does not help the BJP electorally. The attacks are launched not for sound strategic reasons but because a section of the Parivar has its own bizarre obsessions.

Beyond a point, it only makes sense to go on about the freedom struggle if the BJP believes that the Congress massively benefits from its history as the party of Nehru and Gandhi. But does it really? Does anybody believe that this version of the Congress is the party that Gandhi once mentored? I doubt if the Congress gets any votes on that basis.

There is a logic to going on about the freedom struggle if the BJP believes that its leaders have been insufficiently recognised for their role in fighting the British. But this is not the case. The BJP was only founded in 1980. The Jana Sangh, its predecessor, was only established in 1951. Nobody can reasonably expect either party to have been part of the freedom movement because neither existed before India became independent.

This should be fine. Most parties in today’s India were not around before India became independent. They don’t try and rewrite the history of a struggle they were not around for or abuse those who were. Why then does the BJP care so much?

Why BJP does what it does

Yet such is the BJP’s obsession with creating alternative icons that it strains credulity by hijacking historical figures. Yes, Vallabhbhai Patel and Jawaharlal Nehru had differences. But then so did Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani. That does not mean that Advani did not subscribe to the BJP’s ideology. So it is with Patel who even banned the RSS. And so it is with Bhagat Singh who was a left-leaning (communist even) atheist who had nothing in common with the ideology the BJP now espouses. And yes, Subhas Chandra Bose did fall out with Nehru and Gandhi but he was hardly a Hindutva supporter. He named a brigade in the Indian National Army (INA) after Nehru and after the war it was Nehru who defended INA veterans from persecution by the British.

Even the case of VD Savarkar is complicated. Yes, he was a patriot and freedom fighter who suffered for his views. But to hold up Savarkar as your own icon against Gandhi, you have to explain away too many things: his apologies to the British, his differences with the RSS, his support of beef-eating, etc.

So here’s my point: why does the BJP even bother? People who vote for the BJP support it because they admire Narendra Modi, respect his achievements and perhaps because they believe in a vision of a Hindu India. Nobody votes for the BJP because of anything that occurred in the freedom struggle. Or because the party now glorifies Bose or Bhagat Singh.

The only explanation possible is that on some issues – Jawaharlal Nehru and his descendants, the freedom struggle and Gandhi in particular – the BJP goes beyond strategy and gives in to an obsession. It is an uncharacteristic lapse for a party that is otherwise so pragmatic and worldly-wise.

But it works, I suspect, to Rahul Gandhi’s benefit because it keeps him forever in the news and at the centre of the public debate.

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