By S Mulgoakar
Nobody is happy to take on the role of Cassandra. It was her fate to warm of disaster ahead and was condemned by Apollo because disaster is what befell the kingdom of Troy.
Many of us can throw our minds back to 1966. It was a difficult year for India, a year of natural calamities, of gross mismanagement of our resources and of a worrying increase in unredeemed political corruption. But not many of us took a very dim view of the country’s future. At any rate, I did not.
Yet in early 1967, in his address ‘on the eve of Republic Day, Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan was already warning us from his sickbed in these grim, prophetic words:.
“As dishonesty creeps into every side of public life, weshould beware and bring about suitable alterations… Our way of doing things has set a bad example cynical and contemptuous of values. Internal differences are crippling democracy… we make the prospect of revolution inescapable by acquiescing in such conduct.
What would Dr Radhakrish nan have said of where we are now if he was still with us? I am often accused of using strong, in temper ate Language. Dr Radhakrishnan ‘was a friend I often visited and as think of him now I see myself as a craven, hobbled, gelded creature.
First lie T see no point in repeating what has already been fully reported about the disreputable way Mr Rajiv Gandhi’s Government has behaved in the entire Bofors affair. Though Gen Sundari says the Bofors howitzer was the best choice, and I have no doubt he believes he was giving his honest opinion to the Government, there were elements about the very hurried modalities in the negotiation of the deal by Mr Gandhi who at that time held the Defense portfolio also and the great personal interest he took in the entire matter which itself is a dubious. Story on which not much light has been yet shed.
All that that we know is that Mr. Gandhi was then caught in his first lie when he let it be under stood that he had come to an understanding with the Prime Minister of Sweden that there would be no middle men in the contract to purchase the Bofors howitzer. The Swedish Prime Minister denied this. Mr Gandhi corrected himself. He had meant to refer to the late Prime Minister of Sweden, Mr Olaf Palme. Why Mr Palme should have intervened to give an assurance on behalf of Bofors in a commercial deal has always puzzled me. But we let it pass at the time as possibly a con versation in which Mr Gandhi had read more than he should have. A small enough thing to raise Cain about.
But from that point on has followed a succession of lies of a character so tortuous as to make ‘one wonder how far the process of criminalization of our politics has gone. for Mr Gandhi is, let us remember, the president of the Congress and his writ runs over the entire party and its affiliated organizations. Though many in that party must question his honesty, if only secretly, nobody questions his authority, Are we then already arrived at a situation where we have handed the country over to a mafia run by a kleptocracy of Katres?.
It is a story that must shame us all for our inertia, not so much in. the face of the loot of our national wealth, but in the face of the ongoing invalidation of the institutions which sustain democracy.
We have borne silent witness at every stage of the strangulation of the inquiry into the Bofors affair. ‘There was the unconcealed refusal to cooperate with the inquiry that the Swedish Prosecutor, Mr Lars Ringberg, had set in motion. There was the bogus delegation of offi sials specially charged with securing the cooperation of the Swiss Government when the Swiss had already told us that all we had to was to make a formal request of assistance in the investigation of a criminal offence.
Mr Pant, who now holds charge of the Defense portfolio, goes on repeating that the Government is leaving no stone untamed to get at the truth and has threatened to send another delegation of officials to acquire a copy of the new Swiss law on the conditions in which banking secrecy will not apply. He also invites Mr N. Ram, on the authenticity of whose documents reproduced in the Hindu he had always thrown doubt, for cooperation with the Government’s stone turning exercise. This is much too transparent a move to seal Mr Ram’s mouth and does little credit to Mr Pant’s capacity for ingenuity.
Not the only instance
We have concentrated on Bofors as though this is the only instance of governmental duplicity. We are forgetting the message from our Ambassador in Bonn about the 7 per cent kickback on the HDW submarines. Mr V. P. Singh, who had accepted at the time with great alacrity his transfer from Finance to Defence Ministry in the belief that he was being asked to save a nation in great peril, took the message to his Prime Minister in the hope that he had alighted on information that the Prime Minister would urgently want to look into. Mr Singh did the least that his duty demanded. He put down the Hinduja name on the file as one which attracted suspicion. That was the end of the HDW submarine chapter and the end of Mr Singh as a member of Mr Gandhi’s Cabinet.
There is also the mystery of the Westland helicopter, a British product that the R.AF. Itself had rejected. Mr Gandhi was on record as declaring in Parliament that he would not look at the Westland if it was offered gratis. He soon for got those words and bought the helicopter that no one had wanted. True, there was a British subsidy on offer, but by the time India had bought spares and accessories the bill exceeded the subsidy by a tidy sum.
What Radhakrishnan would have done
Soon we could take a guess to explain a possible reason for Mr Gandhi’s volte face. Ann American Italian combine showed an interest in taking over the Westland Company. The deterrence was the huge liabilities the company had run up. After india had helped to reduce the Liabilities, the takeover swiftly went through.
What Dr Radhakrishnan would have done in a situation of this kind is not a matter allowing for dispute. Indeed, he would not have let the matter slide to where it has progressed by stages.
Twenty two years have gone by since, 22 years which have seen great changes. The threshold of the demands which we have got used to making on our political system. has greatly receded. But we can still remind ourselves of the Constitution we gave unto us I take it that it is still valid.
Under its provisions the President is under oath “to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution and the law” and in the dis charge of that oath he is entitled, nay required, to ask the Prime Minster “‘to furnish such information relating to the administration of the Union” as he deems fit. It is not permissible under the Constitution that the exchanges between the President and the Prime Minister be made public. But it is permissible to wonder whether the President is satisfied that he is fulfilling the duties he is charged with under the Constitution. To won der, but not ask. For it is entirely a matter between the President and his conscience.
Article extracted from this publication >> November 3, 1989
