NEW DELHI — Governments seem to prefer the death of thousand cuts. Perhaps this is because, being small, the cuts have the illusory feel of a minor problem. But the profusion can add up to a paralyzing weakness, inflicting its daily quota of damage and disfiguration.
Most of these cuts are self-inflicted. So many occur because the surgeon sent to heal holds his scalpel with a wavering hand. There is further illusion when these nicks do not make the front page. V.K. Malhotra would probably be less injurious to the health of the BJP if he were given a promotion, to the job he really wants, that of a Cabinet minister.
Instead as spokesman he often parlays a logic that could be dismissed as ludicrous were if not offensive. The other day he offered the thesis that anyone who questioned Narendra Modi’s partisan thirst was talking the language of the Muslim League. Chandrababu Naidu and Jayalalitha will be surprised to learn that they have become honorary members of the Muslim League.
On another recent inside page the far more careful home minister, L.K. Advani noted that law and order had returned to Gujarat. He must have been briefed by a very special intelligence agency. The same day’s front pages of all newspapers carried stories of four more killed, and heaven knows how many more injured. It does not matter to which community the dead belonged; four more Indians had joined a terrible death list.
What bleeds each time from these nicks is credibility. Credibility is finite resource.
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee believes that he has been ill-used by the media, and that criticism of his speech in Goa is “baseless and misinformed”. Since that speech has been so controversial it is only fair to allow the prime minister his response, in detail. He insists that “my remarks, taken in their totality, contain nothing that is either against Islam or against Muslims”.
He explains: “I had drawn attention to two contradictory streams in Islam. I had said, ‘Islam has two forms. One is that which tolerates others, which teaches its adherents to follow the path of Truth, which preaches compassion and sensitivity. But these days, militancy in the name of Islam leaves no room for tolerance. It has raised the slogan of jihad. It is dreaming of recasting the entire world in its mold’. In pointing to these divergent facets of Islam, I have not said anything new or different from what numerous perceptive observers, including many devout and concerned Muslims around the world, have already said.”
No one would deny that there are Muslim fundamentalists who have misinterpreted Islam, and even misused it to spread their havoc; this column has repeatedly attacked elements who preach divisive hatred particularly in our country. But it is the totality of the speech that raises questions. Prime minister, does the carnage let loose after the shameful incidents of Godhra deserve just one throwaway sentence in your long discourse? Just one line, and this is it: “Baad ki ghatnaein nindaniya theen, lekin aag lagai kisne? Aag phaili kaise?” To translate: “The incidents (after Godhra) deserve condemnation, but who lit the fire? How did the fire spread?”
Even your one-line reference was not without a qualification. You condemned and rightly so all those who lit the fire, extending your condemnation across the borders. But you forgot to answer your own second question: How did the fire spread?
You should have answered that question. Those who were burned and raped and killed by this fire — did they not deserve a prime minister’s sympathy, a word from his heart? Those who have gone to investigate what happened have broken down publicly at press conferences, unable to stop their tears at such inhumanity. Could the prime minister not find a single word from his rich reserves of vocabulary and rhetoric for the child who died in flames?
Vajpayee must appreciate one thing: If Indians are critical of his speech it is only because they expect more from him. Any other BJP leader could have said what he said and there would not be a murmur in response. But we may be missing the real point in this debate. Any leader of a political party has the right to say whatever speech his ideology persuades him to articulate. One does not have to agree with what he says. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee is a Communist. It is not necessary to agree or disagree with what he says on economics at his party plenum.
But when Bhattacharjee enters Writers Building in Calcutta and becomes chief minister of the state, then every action and view of his is accountable. He is duty-bound to ensure peace in Bengal, to treat every citizen as an equal, whether Communist or not, Hindu or Muslim, Bengali or non-Bengali.
The same rule of accountability applies to the chief minister of Gujarat. And to the prime minister of India. Vajpayee is not the prime minister of the BJP, he is the prime minister of India.
The prime minister, his party the BJP and his coalition the NDA, must ask themselves just one question: Can Narendra Modi govern Gujarat any longer?
Modi may be capable now of winning the next election (a capability that might however wither with time). But is he capable of ensuring the first fundamental right of every citizen: peace? Can there be normalcy in Gujarat as long as he is there? Can the vigilantes he let loose ever be brought under control by his administration? Does he even want to? Or will we continue to be haunted by stories such as that of the lawyer Veersinh Rathod, who saved 25 Muslim families in Naroda on Feb. 28 and is now fearful of his own?
Rathod is the Indian that the prime minister applauded in his speech in Goa, who represents the values that are synonymous with our country. But today Rathod is a frightened man in a state ruled by the BJP and Modi. He has no faith in the police’s ability to protect him, because he saw what the police did and knows what they can do again. Those vigilantes still have Modi’s protection. And under that protection they have launched a phase of apartheid in Gujarat, a combination of economic war and social hatred against Muslims. This is less dramatic than rape and massacre, but it is more insidious.
Is this the governance that the prime minister or the NDA want in Gujarat or any part of India?
The real coalition government of India is not a coalition of political parties but a coalition of communities and social sections, so that every community and broad caste group from India’s demographic mix feels confident that it has a voice in authority. This is the democratic spread and spirit that must infuse every government, whether of the Union, or the state, or indeed of the panchayat and the municipality. When this principle is abandoned, good governance is destroyed.
A George Fernandes cannot restore the confidence of the brutalized; he is at best a four-day visitor. For these four days Modi will sit back, confident that he will still be around when Fernandes has returned in his plane to Delhi. The police and administration will still be there to listen to him, and if they do not they will be punished just as those IAS officers were punished who did their duty and prevented violence.
Modi cannot govern Gujarat even if he wins the election. That may be a paradox, but it is also a fact.
Many politicians, across all political parties, enjoy treading on blood, however slippery that journey may be. Atalji, you have seen them all in your long career. I have only one point to make to you. Poets, I am told, have a conscience.
