NEW DELHI, 4 May — You can take some people out of boarding school, but you can’t take the boarding school out of some people. Kamal Nath’s little sideshow during the debate on Gujarat in the Lok Sabha, when he passed on gum or a clove or Heaven knows what to his leader Sonia Gandhi, had all the sophistication of a private giggle during chapel.
However, mastication is not a crime. What was irritating about the incident is that it distracted attention from a singular fact of that long night in Parliament. Television and newspapers should have associated George Fernandes with just one thing during this debate, and that was not chewing gum.
It was a sentence that must stand out as the most revealing photograph of the mind of a man who has turned into a poseur, a fighter who has become a dwarf, and an idealist who has become a fraud. That sentence is stark. It is brutal. And it is confirmation of a deep political and intellectual corruption that has taken over what once used to be a heart.
The five words that George Fernandes uttered will haunt his conscience, if he has one left: What is new about rape?
Every womb is new about rape, George Fernandes.
Every woman is new about rape, George Fernandes.
Every scream is new about rape, George Fernandes.
Every death is new about rape, George Fernandes.
Every child who smelt burned flesh is new about rape, George Fernandes.
George Fernandes began his career training to become a priest. He left the frock but for long years in politics he retained that commitment to morality that must have taken him toward the church to begin with.
The explanations — and they only came days later, couched in cliché — do not wash. There is no explanation for the vulgarity and insensitivity of such a statement, precedence being the least of them. To his credit L.K. Advani understood this instantly, and sought to distance himself and presumably his government from the hectoring, senseless statement made by Fernandes through an intervention after the infamous speech.
But this is not the kind of sentence that can be forgotten after a minor rap on the knuckles. It echoes. For it accurately reflects the attitude of authority to the colossal tragedies that have occurred in Gujarat. That sentence is a justification for administrative indifference and bifocal morality. It also proves the old adage that when you start to defend a lie, you end up — inadvertently — telling the truth.
Good criminal lawyers know this all too well. That sentence is a blinding flash of light that has exposed much more than the decay of Fernandes. Gujarat has already given us a new name for Narendra Modi: Narendra "Milosevic" Modi. George Fernandes will henceforth be known as George "Rape" Fernandes.
There is nothing new about governments telling lies to cover up rape; nothing new anywhere in the world. I am engrossed at the moment in a superb book written by an old friend Phillip Knightley, The First Casualty: The war correspondent as hero and myth-maker from the Crimea to Kosovo. The title originates in a comment made by an American senator, Hiram Johnson, in 1917, that the first casualty, when war comes, is the truth. It details how precisely government after government, across the world, used every mechanism of power (and whipped-up sentiment can be as much a weapon of power as any other) to suppress facts, from the Crimean war to the Americans in Vietnam and Iraq, taking in world wars, China, Russia, Korea and Algeria along the way.
The book is the story of journalists being forced by circumstances, or sometimes ideology, to participate in this cover-up; but it is also the story of an Edgar Snow who both reported and understood the consequences of the Japanese rape of Nanking, "When 300,000 Chinese civilians were murdered by Japanese soldiers in an orgy of rape and plunder". History has never seen such rape and plunder as it witnessed across Asia, Europe and Africa in the first 50 years of the last century.
Even the Mongols of Chengiz Khan and Hulegu might have shuddered at what happened between Germany and the Soviet Union and Japan and China. We Indians were fortunate in that the Second World War stopped at the Burmese door in the east and never reached Iran and Afghanistan to our west. But we made our evil contribution to this history of horror with our savage conflicts during the partition of India.
The justification for Fernandes’ indifference can go as far back as recorded time and as near as the Congress hypocrisy that inflamed him more than Modi’s proven culpability. Maybe there were generals and colonels on those Second World War battlefields of central Europe who did shrug, what is new about rape? Was Fernandes displaying the mentality of a serving general on the battlefields of the communal conflicts of India, in which case his place by the side of Narendra "Milosevic" Modi is secure.
But these generals will not have one comfort, that of censorship. The censorship policy of any army was well summed by an American censor who said that he would rather not tell the people anything until the war was over and then tell them who had won. India’s media, fortunately, is not going to be cooperative. The horrors that interfere with our sanity will be reported, as will be the state of Fernandes’ mind.
Perhaps, and I cannot use a word with more certainty, that Fernandes statement on rape upset the applecart of moderation that the BJP has been selling in the last few days. The early callousness, best exemplified by Modi himself, has given way to a let’s-heal-together rhetoric and peace marches where the one man who looks completely out of sorts is Modi himself.
The relentless pursuit of the story by the media, the direct sallies of Sonia Gandhi, and the unwillingness of the world to ignore such blatant inhumanity has had its cumulative effect. The contortion became official when the Gujarat debate shifted to the Rajya Sabha. The BJP declared itself its own opposition, joined the demand to exercise Article 355 in Gujarat and — incidentally or coincidentally? — sent K.P.S. Gill to start the long effort toward the restoration of law and perhaps also some order. It was an appointment two months too late, but better late than never.
Can the BJP think tank discover any rationale for the party’s existence other than the demonization of Indian Muslims? That is the crux of its dilemma, and the challenge before it as well. Much as they might want to believe it, the Modis did not bring the BJP to power; and they will not be able to retain the power that others have handed to them.
Hatred is combustible, but it also burns itself out very quickly, particularly if it is not refueled constantly. It also leaves regret where it once resided, except in those committed to hatred as a philosophy or a belief. The dribble has started on the Modi boom; and if the Gujarat elections are held early next year, as seems probable, the BJP might discover that Modi’s blood bank of votes is bankrupt.
How long will the BJP keep asking Indian Muslims to prove that they are Indians as well as Muslims? Obviously the hangover of partition will continue to be a dull pain; and there will be some Muslim "leaders" who are hysterical, and others who indulge in the rhetoric of hatred.
But the broad mass of Indian Muslims has never been lured by the politics of extremism. Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda organization had recruits from all over the world, including Bangladesh, Southeast Asia and America! But there were no Indian Muslims in the organization. We have faced our battles in Kashmir, and armed recruits to the cause of Kashmiri separation have come from Pakistan, Afghanistan and even occasionally the Arab world.
But non-Kashmiri Indian Muslims never joined that cause. They do not want India to suffer another wrench, for this is their country as much as anyone else’s. They are indignant when confronted with allegations from the past. They are irritated when asked to produce certificates of loyalty. And they are devastated when a Gujarat occurs.
This has become a story without an end. For years — since that harsh winter of 1992 and 1993 — this monster slept, so that we became complacent. After a decade it woke up and another generation of children saw life tortured to death before their eyes. That is what is new about rape, George Fernandes.
