Bastion of Free Speech

I was at a roadside dhaba near Sawai Madhopur in Rajasthan when the news about the attack on Parliament came. After the initial shock was absorbed, the customers, mostly local villagers, began to express their views. There was generous praise for the security personnel who beat back the attack and special praise for those who laid down their lives while defending Parliament. There was one widely applauded regret too, expressed in jest of- course, lest POTO be attracted, that the terrorists did not get any of our leaders as well. That politicians have become such objects of revulsion and derision is sad. Now increasingly no distinction is being made between good and bad people in politics. The conventional wisdom is that they are all rogues and that the people have no real choices. The fall of the BJP from the pedestal of some modest grace it held prior to its second coming is now total.

The BJP came to lead this ragtag coalition government by selling itself as being able to make government less corrupt and the nation more secure - coined as Su-raj and Suraksha by its chief sloganeer, LK Advani. Scandal following in the wake of every previous scandal - Enron, Suzuki, Hinduja, Tehelka, UTI, Cyberspace, Stock Market, Bangalore's Ashok Hotel and even coffins for soldiers - have laid low any residual pretension of honesty and integrity. That he is not involved in any of them is now just a technicality. LK Advani may have got away scot-free on the Hawala charge, even if it be on a mere technicality, but the long list of serial scandals swirling all around him does not grant him immunity any more. Even Somnath Chatterjee who was once generous enough to grant him a certificate of good character will now be hard pressed to do so. His silence is now proof of his complicity.

Such shameless silence in the face of repeated outrages is enough to establish culpability. If an ordinary citizen fails to respond when a crime is being committed or when a person is in distress, it makes that person liable under the provisions of Section 39 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973. And when the person in question is the Home Minister of India, a self-styled latter day Sardar Patel at that, it should be applied even more vigorously. Merely showing himself off as the better man when compared to at-least one of his senior colleagues is not enough. It is not enough not to be a drunkard or a womanizer or whatever else. To be counted among those with integrity one must stand up and be heard, particularly in the face of the blatant and regular episodes of corruption and venality that are so amply evident these days. Advani can now at best be described as the consigliore to a mafia family, who while not given to pulling the trigger or robbing the bank, devotes himself the protecting the crime family from the law. Being a Tom Hagen to a Vito or Michael Corleone is very different from being a Ram Jethmalani defending a Haji Mastan. The difference is that Jethmalani may be defending a criminal because that is inherent to his chosen profession but a Tom Hagen is a participant in criminality. A consigliore's crimes are no less than that of the Godfather's!

Just as the results of the 1998 Lok Sabha elections were trickling in and when it became apparent that IK Gujral was not going to be importing Australian wheat at exorbitant prices again or Mulayam Singh Yadav not being able to add an Amar Singh to the take-off weight of a Sukhoi-30 fighter or a Deve Gowda no longer misusing high office for indulging in his usual district level capers, LK Advani was advised by several persons, me included, to become the Finance Minister. Advani was honest enough to admit that he did not know any economics. It was argued that neither did Jaswant Singh. And for that matter neither did Yashwant Sinha. Advani had one advantage, that he was perceived and known to be honest. We told him that a good team of Secretaries and his moral rectitude and abundant commonsense would be more than enough to ensure that he did a good job as Finance Minister. A Manmohan Singh was a once in a political lifetime event and the BJP's only pretenders to that mantle were Jay Dubashi and horror of horrors, Jagdish Shettigar. Obviously an Advani was better than any Singh or Sinha.

And besides when did knowledge become a pre-requisite to high office? What would Atal Behari Vajpayee be knowledgeable about? This is not restricted to politics alone. Few business leaders are expert in any aspects of their businesses. IAS officers have no expertise whatsoever. There is this editor who was made the editor of a Tamil newspaper, a language he is still not even remotely familiar with. It is said that when the journalists complained to the proprietor that this unfamiliarity with the language was outrageous, the owner laconically replied: "Well, he already edits an English newspaper!" So there you are. Ignorance is never any hindrance to a good man or woman on the make or on the take.

One suspects that his fear of being unable to say no to his pal, S.Gurumurthy's, intellectual sleight of hand, as well as a weakness for spit and polish made Advani curiously enamored of the Home Ministry. I distinctly recall telling him that since the advent of Ms. Indira Gandhi the job of Home Minister was gradually whittled down to a mere pulpit for sermons that nobody hears and with only the power to shuffle para-military forces around, that too when requested by the state governments. The CBI is under the Department of Personnel. Do you know who that minister is now? Well never mind. The Intelligence Bureau reported to the Prime Minister. Does he remember who the DIB is? Well never mind. All this made the job eminently suitable for a Buta Singh or a Mufti Mohammed and not for Sardar Patel II. But Advani wanted the Home Ministry, probably thinking that fighting Pakistan inspired terrorism was merely the daily sundown theatrical ritual between the BSF and Pakistan Rangers, and that all it took to whip the recaltricant and obstructive bureaucracy into purposeful shape was to have read or seen "Yes Minister".

Now lets go to the recent attack on Parliament. Even Atal Behari Vajpayee knew it was coming and used the momentous occasion of Sharad Pawar's sixty-first annual anniversary of coming to earth to tell the nation that a terrorist attack on Parliament was imminent. Advani told us to expect it. Murli Manohar Joshi's UGC approved astrologers would have no doubt told him too about it. Even the Intelligence Bureau seemed to know that it was going to happen. Only the fellows responsible for securing Parliament against unauthorized entry seemed blissfully unaware of it. Would the Home Minister of India care to tell us as to why, despite so much fore-knowledge, was the foremost symbol of the peoples will allowed to be assaulted so openly and so violently? Who is responsible for this lapse and who must pick up the buck for it? LK Advani? Kamal Pande? Vijai Kapoor? Ajai Raj Sharma? I am sure these gentlemen will find some Mathew (Tehelka's only civilian casualty) or some Keystone cop's neck to hang the placard proclaiming guilt around and keep their services available to the nation.

This attack is not without its mystery. First we do not know for sure if there were six terrorists or merely five. Priyaranjan Dasmunshi, who presumably can count as well as any other of our leaders can, counted six of them. Did the sixth one disappear into the thin air, like the woman in the red sari who figures in the royal murders in Kathmandu? Or was there a sixth terrorist? All newspapers save one have reported that the Ambassador (the ISI is not without some humor) carried 34 kilos of RDX when in reality there was only an explosive mix of locally available chemicals. Actually 30 kilos of Ammonium Chlorate, 4 kilos of aluminum powder and some gasoline to ignite the mixture placed in a canister. How did this happen? Was it merely the professionalism epitomized by our earlier referred to editor percolating down to the real professionals who report news? Or was it an uncoordinated plant? Keystone cops again?

The simple fact of the matter is that under the BJP led coalition the nations security has been jeopardized as never before. Pakistani troops occupied the Kargil Heights and our government did not know about it till the snows melted, far less anticipate it. This is despite having been informed that the Pakistan Army had engaged several hundred porters to lug equipment and supplies, and that it had purchased large quantities of Alpine gear. We are being told to believe that just because one battalion was not identified by name we must blame it on failure of intelligence. It was failure of intelligence all right, but not of the kind provided by the people who read other people's mail, here and abroad. They can never get all the information. They provide scraps of information that have to be stuck together to get as much of the big picture as possible. History is replete with instances of leaders who could not stick such information together. Richard Sorge, Russia's legendary second world war spy based in Japan, gave his masters in Moscow enough information ferreted out of the Japanese War Department to be able to conclude that Nazi Germany's attack was imminent. Yet Stalin was taken by surprise. Whose intelligence failed? In the recent instance our leaders knew from so many sources of the imminence of such an attack. Yet Parliament was assaulted. What happened? Failure of intelligence? And whose intelligence?

The situation in Kashmir has worsened since the BJP came to power. Before he became Sardar Advani, Lal Krishna Advani used to say "bring us to power and we will sort it out in just a short while." "We will abolish Article 370." "We will embark on hot pursuit." "We will put J&K under military rule." These were a few of his favorite prescriptions. Now he is learning the hard way life is not as simple as pulling down that "ocular distortion", the Babri Masjid. His friend by contrast said little, says little and does even more little besides gorging himself. At least he entertains. What is LK Advani good for? When Oliver Cromwell stormed the English Parliament on April 20, 1653 he told them: "I command you therefore upon the peril of your lives, depart immediately from this place, go, get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves begone… In the name of God, go!" In a way that precisely was the message the five (or was it six?) terrorists were carrying for Sardar Advani. He of course doesn't get it.

Copyright(c) Mohan Guruswamy, 2001. All rights reserved.