The Indian State Under Siege

 

The Indian State Under Siege

This month, on August 15, India celebrates its 79^th Independence Day. The freedom struggle was inspired by high ideals and ethical and moral values. And when India secured independence from the British colonial rule, the stalwarts of the freedom movement had a vision of independent India.  This vision is eloquently captured by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in his stirring speech Tryst with Destiny delivered in the Constituent Assembly on the mid-night of 14-15 August 1947. The excerpts:  

 

“Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. At the dawn of history India started on her unending quest. Through good and ill fortune alike she has never lost sight of that quest or forgotten the ideals which gave her strength. We end today a period of ill fortune and India discovers herself again. That future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we may fulfil the pledges we have so often taken and the one we shall take today. The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity. The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but as long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over. Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and so also is disaster in this one world that can no longer be split into isolated fragments.”

 

And the founding fathers of the Indian Republic drafted a constitution that established a secular liberal democracy, conforming to the broader vision. The Preamble to the constitution, derived from the Objectives Resolution presented by Pandit Nehru in the Constituent Assembly on December 13, 1946, assures to secure to all the citizens:

 

JUSTICE, social, economic and political;

LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;

EQUALITY of status and of opportunity; and to promote among them all

FRATERNITY, assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the nation.

 

The excerpts from the ‘Tryst with Destiny’ and the text of the Preamble are reproduced to remind ourselves how today’s India has deviated from these ideals and values of the founding fathers of our Republic, while we celebrate 78^th anniversary of Independence.

 

The Indian State is under siege. The constitutional democracy is at stake. Parliamentary democracy essentially means discussion, debate and dissent, and recognition that the opposition has a legitimate role to play. It is not just the rule by majority. When Atal Bihari Vajpayee died in 2018, I was asked to write an obituary. I wrote a piece Bhisma Pita Maha of Indian politics for The Free Press Journal, paying tribute to him. Though Vajpayee had a foundation in the RSS ideology, he had a liberal bent of mind. As the Prime Minister, he provided continuity to the governance.  He led successfully the first non-congress coalition government, completing a full five-year term. And when Pandit Nehru died on May 27,1964, he paid a very memorable homage to him in the Rajya Sabha on May 29, in these moving words:

 

“A dream has been shattered, a song silenced, a flame has vanished in the infinite. It was the dream of a world without fear and without hunger, it was the song of an epic that had the echo of the Gita and the fragrance of the rose. It was the flame of a lamp that burnt all night, fought with every darkness, showed us the way. We were robbed of a priceless gift of life. Bharat Mata is stricken with grief today — she has lost her favourite prince. Humanity is sad today — it has lost its devotee. Peace is restless today — its protector is no more. The down-trodden have lost their refuge. The common man has lost the light in his eyes.

 

In the Ramayana, Maharshi Valmiki has said of Lord Rama that he brought the impossible together. In Panditji’s life, we see a glimpse of what the great poet said. He was a devotee of peace and yet the harbinger of revolution, he was a devotee of non-violence but advocated every weapon to defend freedom and honour. He was an advocate of individual freedom and yet was committed to bringing about economic equality. He was never afraid of a compromise with anybody, but he never compromised with anyone out of fear. His policy towards Pakistan and China was a symbol of this unique blend. It had generosity as well as firmness.

 

The freedom of which he was the general and protector is today in danger. We have to protect it with all our might. The national unity and integrity of which he was the apostle is also in danger today. We have to preserve it at any cost. The Indian democracy he established, and of which he made a success is also faced with a doubtful future.

 

The sun has set, now we have to find our way by the light of the stars. This is a highly testing time. If we all could dedicate ourselves to the great ideal of a mighty and prosperous India that could make an honourable contribution to world peace for ever, it would indeed be a true tribute to him.

 

The loss to Parliament is irreparable. Such a resident may never grace Teen Murti again. That vibrant personality, that attitude of taking even the opposition along, that refined gentlemanliness, that greatness we may not again see in the near future. In spite of a difference of opinion we have nothing but respect for his great ideals, his integrity, his love for the country and his indomitable courage.”

 

In contrast, Narendra Modi is not a statesman. He has developed an intense hostility and hatred towards Pandit Nehru – the architect of modern India. He carried the animosity to such a level as to rename the Nehru Memorial Museum at Teen Murti Bhawan as Prime Ministers’ Museum, constructing Museums for other Prime Ministers in the Teen Murti Bhavan complex, despite several eminent people, including former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, appealing to him to leave the Teen Murti Bhawan untouched.

 

To Modi, Nehru and the Gandhi family have become a ‘life jacket’ for his political career, built on hatred and innuendos.  He accuses them of perpetuating a dynasty and of power hungry.  The Nehru-Gandhi family is known for ‘3Ss’ -struggle, sacrifice and service – for the cause of the nation right from Motilal Nehru to Rahul Gandhi.

 

Motilal Nehru, the richest lawyer of his time, led a regal life, sacrificed everything, gave up the legal practice to join the freedom struggle, went to jail and died. The Nehru’s entire family, including Pandit Nehru’s aging mother, were lathi charged and sent to jail. Pandit Nehru spent three decades of his prime life from 1916 to 1947 in the freedom struggle, was tried nine times, spent 10 years in the British Indian jails. Indira Gandhi donated her jewelry to the nation during the Chinese war. She donated the Nehru’s ancestral property in Allahabad, Swaraj and Anand Bhawans, estimated worth around Rs.180 crore those days (now more than Rs..2000 crore) to the nation. Pandit Nehru didn’t build any house. Nor Indira and Rajiv Gandhi constructed any house. Rahul Gandhi does not have any house of his own either. Indira and Rajiv were martyred for the country’s unity and integrity. Indira Gandhi had dismantled Pakistan and created Bangladesh, a rare story of indomitable courage, unmatched in history. 

 

Sonia Gandhi renounced the office of the Prime Minser, offered on a flatter in 2004. If he wanted, Rahul Gandhi could have become the Prime Minister in 2009 when Manmohan Singh was willing to step down due to ill-health. Another historical anecdote from the freedom movement shows how Pandit Nehru was renouncing power. In November 1937, when completed two successive terms as the President of the Indian National Congress, he wrote an essay The Rashtrapati, taking a pseudonym Chanakya, in The Modern Review, Kolkata, warning against his continuation as the President for a third term. Nobody knew who Chanakya was; it was revealed later that Chanakya was none other than Pandit Nehru himself.

 

A blunt self-critic- a humorous piece and a biting satire: “Jawaharlal has all the makings of a dictator in him – vast popularity, a strong will, well-defined purpose, energy, pride, organizational capacity, ability, hardness, and, with all his love of the crowd, an intolerance of others and a certain contempt for the weak and the inefficient.  By electing him a third time, we shall exalt one man at the cost of the Congress and make the people think in terms of Caesarism. We want no Ceasars.”

 

The purpose of this account of the Nehru-Gandhi family is to place historical facts on record so as to burst the campaign of calumny against the family once and for all. The family never chased power; power chased them.  We will not find any such patriotic illustrious family in the annals of world history. And yet, that Modi makes it a point to discredit the family day in day out, and build his political fortune on that, is utterly disgraceful, bringing disrepute and lowering the office of the Prime Minister. It is an attempt to cover up his own ancestors' collaboration with the British during the freedom movement. 

 

Modi is running a deep state. It is majoritarianism. India, under him, has virtually become a de facto Hindu Rashtra where the minorities and the marginalised will live at the mercy of the majority community. He has done an irreparable damage to the nation. The opposition is treated as enemy, and not a political rival.  The Parliament is made dysfunctional. The treasury benches do not allow the opposition to raise issues of national important on the floor of the houses, leading to logjam and deadlock time and again. The approach is ‘my way or high war’. There is no middle path. Modi doesn’t respect parliamentary democracy and parliamentary conventions. The presiding officers act very partisan, toe the line of the ruling party, to avoid inviting the fate of Jagdeep Dhankhar. The manner in which the Vice President of India was forced to quit reminds us that India, under Modi, is more like the totalitarian-autocratic states like China, North Korea and Russia, where no dissent is tolerated.

 

The state institutions are reduced to play a subservient role to the establishment. The media is captured, so that it becomes a mouthpiece of the government. And even the Judiciary is reluctant to deliver judgments critical of the government, however unpalatable and illegal the government's actions are. In the cases relating to demonetization, the nation-wide lockdown, the abrogation of the Article 370 and downgrading Jammu & Kahmir into a union territory, using armed forces for electoral gains, and various scandals relating to the Rafale deal, the electoral bonds etc. the Judiciary is found wanting, undermining the people’s faith in the justice system.  

 

The success of democracy depends on free and fair elections. However, the role of the Election Commission of India has come under severe scrutiny. The Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi said the Election commission, as a neutral umpire, is dead, as multiple complaints of electoral malpractices remain unaddressed; and it has failed to ensure the integrity of the electoral rolls.