By M D Nalapat
It looks like it would be more of the same brew served during 2004-2014.
Among the
problems concerning UPA I and II was that Sonia Gandhi regarded the
people of India as moving to a different beat than those in her native
Italy. During 2004-2014, with the exception of the Right to Information
Act, there was no effort by the government to replicate the freedoms
present in Italy to its citizens. The people of India continued to be
constrained by colonial-era shackles that were only added on to by such
votaries of “strong” governance as Palaniappan Chidambaram and Kapil
Sibal, both of whose associates claim that each is the personal choice
of Sonia Gandhi and her successor Rahul Gandhi for the Prime
Ministership, Lok Sabha numbers in 2019 permitting. Judging by the
deference with which these two authors of law upon law of regressive
measures are treated within 10 Janpath, it is a certainty that both will
have important roles in any coalition in which Congress plays a role,
as will other favourites such as Sushil Kumar Shinde (whose intimates
too talk of him as the favoured choice of “Madam” for the Prime
Ministership) and A.K. Antony, the lifelong pacifist who in a spirit of
historical irony became among the longest-serving Defence Ministers of
India. Placing him in that particular “hot seat” is analogous to
Bertrand Russell becoming Minister of Defence of the UK during 1939-45,
and it is scant wonder that the combined exertions of Chidambaram,
Sibal, Shinde and Antony motivated the Indian voter to bring the
Congress tally to 44 in the 2014 polls. Although Rahul Gandhi was in a
unique position to influence policy (during the UPA decade), he gave no
outward sign of opposing restrictive and socially regressive laws, such
as those that the Supreme Court has tossed out as being contrary to the
rights of a citizen in a democracy. Given the UPA-era governance links
of the core team of the Congress Party in what it heralds as a new era,
will a Rahul Gandhi in power retain the liberal instincts of his present
stint on the opposition benches, or in power again entrust the
processes of governance to those committed to a colonial view of India?
Which is that the people of India do not merit the freedoms enjoyed by
citizens in countries such as Italy, the UK or the US, but must remain
shackled to the administrative and legal constructs left behind by the
British together with the luxurious structures of the Lutyens Zone.
On the anniversary of the birth of
Mahatma Gandhi, the Congress Party in the person of its leading
office-holders went all the way to Wardha to emote about a “climate of
fear” across the nation. Their solution? To replace Narendra Modi as
Prime Minister with almost anyone else barring Amit Shah. Party chief
Rahul Gandhi should know that the roots of the fear that he talks about
are related not to Modi, but to the colonial system of governance left
behind by the British. The lowliest officials in India and the
politicians and moneybags who control them have awesome power over the
lives of citizens, such that an individual would face ruin were he or
she to run afoul of the bureaucracy. As for freedom of speech, a defence
analyst, Abhijeet Iyer-Mitra, is facing jail time for having posted on
the internet remarks about the ancient land of Kalinga that are both
tactless as well as tasteless. While such expressions of opinion are not
in good taste, they would not in more than a few other democracies
result in the denial of liberty that prison entails. Iyer-Mitra has
already been made to suffer the ignominy of having his powers of
reasoning questioned by the many who went through the offending posts,
which is surely punishment enough in a context where peer recognition
and respect is vital to future success. Instead, he will most probably
go to jail, where he will join hundreds of thousands of others who have
committed “crimes” that are defined as such only by a penal code that
was made almost two centuries ago after the 1857 revolt against foreign
rule. A Supreme Court bench once opined that a life sentence is
precisely that, a sentence which may conclude only with the death of the
individual incarcerated. Such a feature is among the more unattractive
parts of US jurisprudence, together with the death penalty, and
hopefully both will go the way of the laws against same-sex
relationships or relationships outside wedlock that were tossed into the
wastebasket of history by the Supreme Court recently. To consign an
individual to prison sans hope of release would be to extinguish any
thought or hope of redemptive behaviour. Prisons should not be such as
would degrade professional skills and personal relationships, and in
such a context, except for those prisoners with a propensity for
violence, “open jails” need to be the norm rather than the exception. It
is a tragic reality that the families of prisoners (as indeed those who
suffer from insanity or dementia) often join in paying a steep price,
through social exclusion and the blocking of career or promotion
opportunities. Rahul Gandhi recently claimed in the UK that he shed
tears when he saw photographs of the dead Velupillai Prabhakaran (the
LTTE chief). There are millions in India whose fates are far more
deserving, not simply of the tears of Rahul Gandhi, but concrete actions
to make this country more just.
Prime Minister Modi promised of
transformational change when he campaigned for the job in 2014. Once in
office, he chose UPA-era favourites to key official posts, and stocked
his ministry with those prominent in the A.B. Vajpayee regime. However,
that such was his intention became known only after Modi formed his
official and ministerial family. By retaining those active during UPA I
and UPA II overwhelmingly in his core team much before the 2019 polls,
Rahul Gandhi is giving rise to a perception that a government either led
by the Congress or with it as the major partner would be a UPA III. It
would be more of the same brew that was served to the Indian people
during 2004-2014. It is not the continuance of Modi as Prime Minister,
but the persistence of colonial-era powers and arbitrariness in
decision-making that causes fear of those governing amongst those
governed. Unless Rahul Gandhi—unlike his mother—shows that he regards
the people of India as deserving of the same basket of rights and
freedoms as Italians or Brits enjoy, and works towards that objective,
his promise of change will disappear into the ether, once in power.
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