Power trip gone too far

Sudheendra Kulkarni

Former close aide to ex-PM Vajpayee and Founder, Forum for a New South Asia

INDIAN voters often tolerate corruption by a political leader, but they never tolerate arrogance of power.’ I often heard LK Advani, BJP’s ‘Bhishma Pitamah’, saying this during my long association with him. ‘A majority of the people who come to vote in elections are poor and not highly educated in the formal sense. But they have high democratic consciousness. They can teach a lesson or two to even the tallest of leaders when he or she behaves arrogantly, abuses power, and creates an atmosphere of fear to browbeat people.’ In his exhortation to colleagues in his own party to be humble, he would often give the example of how the voters had handed a humiliating defeat to Indira Gandhi in the 1977 parliamentary elections after she was forced to end the draconian Emergency rule.

Advani believes that people ‘can teach a lesson to even the tallest of leaders when he or she behaves arrogantly, abuses power, and creates an atmosphere of fear.’

Himself a hero of the anti-Emergency struggle, Advani spent 19 months in jail, along with thousands of other leaders and workers of non-Congress parties — he would often recount an anecdote to drive home his point. Significantly, the anecdote is from UP, and hence topical and instructive for those who are now ruling in New Delhi and Lucknow. The Emergency was lifted on January 18, 1977, Opposition leaders were released from prison and the Lok Sabha elections in March were announced. Under the guidance of Loknayak Jayaprakash Narayan, a new political entity named the Janata Party was formed on January 23, with the merger of the Congress (O) led by Morarji Desai, Bharatiya Jana Sangh led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Bharatiya Kranti Dal led by Charan Singh and Socialist Party led by George Fernandes. Congress rebels like Chandra Shekhar also joined the new party, which began campaigning for the elections. Like now, the Janata Party’s main focus was on UP, which then had 85 seats

in the Lok Sabha.

About the anecdote, it is best to hear in Advani’s own words. ‘Even though the Emergency was lifted and press censorship was over, the atmosphere was still filled with fear. Common people were not talking to us freely, as I found out when I travelled across UP to campaign for the Janata Party candidates. I was disheartened to see Congress flags atop houses and shops everywhere. I said to myself, “Indira ji looks set to sweep the polls again.” At a roadside chai ki dukaan, I asked the owner about the election scene in the state. After much prodding, he said in a low voice, “Ma aur beta donon haarenge.” (Indira Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi). In disbelief, I responded: “How can you say so when your own shop has hoisted a Congress flag?” His reply was a big lesson in political education. “Aapko sirf jhanda dikh raha hai. Jhande ke neeche danda bhi hai. Us dande ki dar se humne jhanda lagaya hai. Lekin hamara vote toh is baar Congress ke khilaaf hi hoga.” His prediction came true. Both Indira and Sanjay lost, and the Congress couldn’t win a single seat in UP.’ The Janata Party won a landslide victory.

I have recalled this anecdote because what we now see in UP is a brazen display of misuse of power by the BJP government. The killing of eight persons at Lakhimpur Kheri on October 3, in the course of a farmers’ agitation, has shocked and outraged the nation. Five of the victims were mowed down by a speeding car driven allegedly by the son of a Union Minister of State for Home Affairs. So far neither PM Narendra Modi nor UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has condemned the massacre. The son was arrested only after a valiant protest by Priyanka Gandhi and other Opposition leaders. The Prime Minister has refused to ask the accused’s father to step down, even though there is considerable evidence that the latter not only contributed to the creation of an atmosphere of violence in his constituency but also tried to shield his son from arrest.

Just a week earlier, Modi in his address to the UN General Assembly had announced to the world: ‘India is the Mother of Democracy.’ In any democracy worth its name, the Prime Minister would have asked the minister to step down, and the CM of the state would have urged the PM to take appropriate action. The refusal of Modi and Yogi to do so can be attributed to only one reason: their arrogance and political expediency. With the Assembly elections in UP only a few months away, neither the PM nor the CM wants to antagonise the caste (Brahmin) to which the minister belongs. They also seem to think that the Opposition’s demand for the minister’s dismissal can be stonewalled by remaining ‘firm’. Actually, the kind of firmness the nation expects from its leaders is to remain faithful to constitutional morality. Without an ethical core, democracy becomes a hollow shell.

True, there are major differences between the Emergency and the Modi era. Yet, there are some eerie similarities, too. Arrogance of power, contempt for the Opposition, disdain for the rule of law, misuse of the police and other institutions of governance, enslavement of the media (at least a large section of it), spread of fear in society, personality cult built around the top leader and sycophancy in the ruling party. Whether, and to what extent, the BJP will pay the price for all this in the UP elections is unclear. Ominously, the negative fallout of the crime at Lakhimpur Kheri may be offset to a considerable extent by the saffron party’s conscious policy of communal polarisation of society and vigilante action by criminal gangs — something which Indira Gandhi did not attempt during the Emergency. Indeed, dark days are ahead for our democracy.

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