Treat dissent as the essence of democracy
Ex-Special Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat
SOMETIME in the second half of 1976, I was asked by RN Kao, then chief of our foreign intelligence, to convey a personal message to Ambassador Apa Saheb Pant who was living in Pune after retiring in 1975 as our envoy to Italy. Apa Saheb, who was close to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, then told me a story describing her dilemma. Indira Gandhi was deeply upset at the unexpected turn the Emergency had taken and had met philosopher J. Krishnamurti for advice. She told him that she was riding a tiger which would devour her if she dismounted. Krishnamurti, according to Apa Saheb, advised her to dismount and allow the natural process to happen if she believed in democracy. Sure enough, the 1977 elections shattered her, albeit temporarily.
In 2019, the Modi government had no reasons to ride a tiger as it was elected with a record mandate. Still, it chose to lead us through a destructive path, selected by their ideological mentors, which would have suited the early part of the 20th century Europe. Otherwise, the country would not have been torn apart through the Kashmir lockdown, protests over the Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens, besides police excesses in the BJP-ruled states. They also appear to have followed an extreme version of the American journalist Walter Lippmann’s theory on the ‘Manufacture of consent’ (Public Opinion, 1922), thus lowering their domestic and international credibility.
On March 17 this year, a national daily gave a sample of this pernicious influence. It published their senior ideologue’s speech on ‘Kashmir — Way ahead’ to a select gathering in Mumbai that Pakistan would be a ‘part of Hindustan after 2025’ and they could live there to do business. He also added that ‘Delhi had ensured that Bangladesh had a government favourable to it’. To others, it appeared that the August 5 crackdown in Kashmir had followed this script.
Efforts to sugarcoat the hard blows, that it was to protect the state from Pakistan and for its economic development through outside investment, did not mislead anybody. More serious security situations from the 1980s were handled there without such heavy deployment of force, a blanket ban on communications or by arresting thousands of locals, including senior politicians, who were a part of our government. I had assessed at that time that the government would get bogged down there in the Operation Parakram quagmire during 2001-02.
On December 19, the Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) estimated the economic losses suffered by the local people as $2.4 billion due to disruption of communications, heavy presence of troops, panic, loss of confidence, loss of tourism and hotel business. Deutsche Welle, the German broadcaster, said the KCCI was planning to sue the Central government for the destruction of Kashmir’s economy.
The second avowed objective was replacing the ‘dynastic rule’ which was hindering development. This also proved to be wrong on December 23 when middle-level leaders of the National Conference (NC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) reposed confidence in their ‘dynastic’ leadership during their first political meeting since August 5. The attempts of the Modi government to ‘manufacture consent’ by encouraging a new
local leadership, seen during the
farcical visit of 27 unknown Members of European Parliament (MEP) in October, also did not work.
Continued detention of pro-India leaders contradicts the claim on December 24 that 72 paramilitary companies might be withdrawn from the Valley as the situation has improved. Or are these security teams being sent to the rest of India as agitations are engulfing the whole country against the hastily passed Citizenship (Amendment) Act, National Population Register and the National Register of Citizens with Prime Minister Narendra Modi contradicting at Ramlila Maidan on December 22 our President’s speech over the NRC to the joint sitting of Parliament on June 20 this year.
This country-wide agitation is coming at a time when international opinion, especially in the US Congress and US media, has hardened against India. On December 24, US Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, the first
Indian-American woman in the House of Representatives, wrote an op-ed in Washington Post, “India’s foreign minister refused to meet me. I won’t stop speaking out on human rights.”
She was referring to the recent incident when our External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar had reportedly informed the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee that he would not attend a meeting on Capitol Hill if Jayapal was present. The apparent reason was that she had co-sponsored a bipartisan resolution in the Congress, asking India to uphold human rights in Kashmir. Jayapal added that the Chairman refused our External Affairs Minister’s request as it was ‘wholly inappropriate for any foreign government to try to dictate which members of the Congress participate in meetings on Capitol Hill’.
In the past, Israel and Russia had prevented some US Congressional members from visiting their countries by denying a visa. But to my mind, this is the first time that a foreign dignitary had demanded from a US
Congressional Committee Chairman to exclude an elected Congressional member when he was meeting them. Congresswoman Jayapal also complained that our ambassador in the US had cancelled two of her appointments with him.
All these betray ignorance about how the US governmental system works with parallel importance to their legislative branch, unlike ours where the executive branch is supreme. It is as unseemly as a foreign dignitary asking our Speaker or Rajya Sabha Chairman to exclude a member of our Parliament when he visits them for discussions.
Or were we trying to emulate Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu who had prevented two US Muslim Congresswomen, one a member of the House Foreign Relations Committee, from entering Israel in August? If so, we forget that Netanyahu had done it under pressure from President Donald Trump. This had resulted in bipartisan condemnation. Jaishankar’s action has been described in the Congressional circles as ‘weakness’ to face up to dissent the same way as US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had described the Israeli action on Muslim Congresswomen as a ‘sign of weakness’ of their democracy. We would not have been in this predicament had our government been more tolerant and followed Vice-President M. Venkaiah Naidu’s description of ‘dissent as the essence of democracy’ on December 23.
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