Confronting our organised hypocrisies….

Harish Khare

Two young Indians — one male, 24 years old, the other a female, 31 years old; one comes from the rustic world of the Patidars of Gujarat, the other belongs to the glamorous ecosystem called the Bollywood — both of them have made us confront our organised hypocrisies and bogus pieties. 

First, Hardik Patel. This young man has dared the establishment in Gujarat and has refused to be intimidated. He found himself subjected to a vilification campaign, including a so-called sex CD. The national news channels gleefully jumped into the swamp of dirty tricks, implying some vague moral lapse on the part of the dissident Patidar leader.

Rather than allowing the hypocrisy-mongers to set the tone, Hardik Patel talked back: “I am a young man, I am not impotent.” Such a bold assertion could come only from someone who is not tamed by mainstream politics and its false pretences. After all, pre-marital sex is not a crime in India. 

The sex CD and its implied character flaw would not wash. For all its religiosity and religious animosities, Gujarat is wonderfully relaxed in such matters. This is a land that not long ago had flirted with the idea of maitreyi karar (friendship pact), a quasi-legal arrangement that would have allowed a man to have an authorised relationship with a woman, outside wedlock. 

Then, we have Ms Deepika Padukone who finds herself embroiled in a controversy surrounding her film Padmavati. A tiny section of the Rajputs in Rajasthan has waded in with objections, threats and violence against a so-called insult to women. Rather than allowing herself to be cowed, she talked back. She said what every modern Indian thinks but is somehow not able to assert: as a nation, we are regressing. 

“It is appalling; it is absolutely appalling what we have gotten ourselves into? And where have we reached as a nation? We have regressed,” she has asserted unintimidatedly. 

This is our Salman Rushdie-II moment. Because there is an election next year in Rajasthan, vote bank politics demands that the ‘Rajput feelings’ be appeased. A significant community — and, vote bank — should not be allowed to feel offended. On the one hand, we are at our hypocritical best, arguing vehemently that there is a new India in which “vikas” has cured us all of our caste identities and consciousness; on the other hand, our electoral mobilisation remains blatantly predicated on caste calculations.

The Hardik CD is a case of smallness that comes naturally to small minds. The Padmavati row is an organised hypocrisy. All these experiments in pettiness are being organised from a particular corner, with a defined mindset which thinks that power must be captured at all costs because we are on the verge of a great national renaissance. Why give in to the liberal squeamishness? Far too long, India has been kept away from its national greatness.

These are natural excesses of the new India. 

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The Hardik Patel-Deepika Padukone travails may be the excesses of the New India, but the Old India was no prettier. We were quietly reminded of that unappetitising reality a few days ago: Ms Indrani Mukerjea has suggested that her estranged husband Peter Mukerjea could have conspired to have killed her daughter, Sheena Bora (murdered in April, 2012). 

The Mukerjeas once made a glamorous couple; they were wined and dined by the bent and the beautiful sets in Mumbai and Delhi. Glossy magazines serenaded them.

For years, Peter Mukerjea was an authoritative arbiter of cultural taste and aesthetics. As the CEO of various television entertainment organisations, he was a veritable godfather, extending patronage and protection to journalists, anchors, actors and actresses and others from the creative community. Only very few are allowed to straddle the worlds of art, media and entertainment, and the Mukerjeas did that with much aplomb and class.

All that glitters is not gold. The twosome were soon found out to have flirted with offshore accounts, experienced the joys of money-laundering and to have had quite a gift for taking promoters for a ride. And, now both are in custody in connection with the murder of Sheena Bora. 

Perhaps, all societies have to suffer the collective indignity of discovering the grave moral and ethical lapses in the leadership rank. The Mukerjeas came very close to being our cultural czars and now we find to our dismay that they were just ordinary minds. 

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Gulab Kothari is an unlikely dissident. As editor-in-chief of the Rajasthan Patrika, the principal newspaper of Rajasthan, Gulab jee has shaken all media operatives out of our complacent consensus: do not talk back to the authority, do not take panga with the saffron crowd, do not insist on asserting your right to question and criticise a government. Gulab jee has boldly taken on the Vasundhara Raje government on its attempts to hoodwink the public by enacting a “black law” which makes it almost impossible for any newspaper to expose corruption among the bureaucrats and other public servants. 

The Raje government had most inexplicably got an ordinance promulgated to protect corrupt officials. When a nationwide hue and cry ensued, it was announced that the proposed law was being put on the backburner. It seems that when the attention got shifted to other preoccupations, the Raje regime quietly resurrected the draconian law; it has been referred to a Select Committee, in a great hurry and in violation of all legislative procedures. 

In a front-page editorial in the Rajasthan Patrika, Gulab Kothari has not minced his words. The Raje government enjoys a total majority in the Assembly and the enactment of the draconian law is not far away. The proposed law, Gulab jee argues, “will throttle free speech and expression”. 

In the face of a brute legislative majority and a determinedly insensitive government, a newspaper finds itself confronted with an existential dilemma. Gulab jee asks: “Should we allow the Hitler regime to prevail over democracy?” 

The answer can be: a resounding no. The only thing a newspaper can do is to boycott an offending regime. Hence the decision “till the Chief Minister, Mrs Vasundhara Raje does not take back this black law, Rajasthan Patrika will not publish any news of hers or those related to her. This is a matter of democracy, of free expression and of the pride of people’s mandate”. 

Brave words. A glorious reaffirmation of a newspaper’s duties and obligations to resist intimidation and suppression. All powers to Gulab Kothari. 

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It made all sense for Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh to allow himself to declare that he was not all that averse to contesting an election again. Captain Saheb is only 75 and in the context of Punjab and India, he is still relatively young. Whatever health issues he has can easily be taken care of — with some discipline and medical attention. 

We can never be sure whether it was part of a clever election-time ploy for the good Captain to declare that the 2017 Assembly campaign was the last electoral battle he would fight. Probably, it yielded some emotional dividend. Then, his party wins a comfortable majority and he becomes the Chief Minister and a curious cloud begins gathering over the new government. 

Politics is a game of power, ordinarily fought according to civilised rules of engagement. Therefore, a politician who declares that he would not be around to lead the troops in the next battle chooses to put himself, his leadership and his entire government to some kind of a disadvantage. Such a declaration also invites perceptions of an absentee or part-time chief minister. Anyway, politics is a demanding, exhausting occupation; it can be enormously tiring to stay in the arena, unless one is driven by extreme ideology. The good captain has not yet been accused of ideological fastidiousness. 

As it is, the life of a Congress chief minister is never without its challenges. Then, there are younger party colleagues who aspire, legitimately, to take his place. Do the younger colleagues render him less than full cooperation and become anxious for the Chief Minister to vacate the chair? The cabinet dynamics become somewhat less settled. 

So, the Captain has done himself and everybody else a favour by retracting a bit. 

And, that should call for coffee. Join me.

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