How does one square what’s happening now with confidence in our democracy being alive and well, as L wrote recently? The ink on the Lok Sabha motion of confidence in Mr Chandra Shekhar is hardly dry when large scale arrests in Punjab belie Sikh hopes that the new Prime Minister will extend his professed sympathy for them to his new job. Then comes President’s rule in Assam, with the center state declared “disturbed” and the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN) declared unlawful under the wide powers given to the army under the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act. Tamil Nadu and possibly Andhra Pradesh may be next on the list, according to that redoubtable defender of democracy, Janata Dal (S) general secretary, Mr Om Prakash Chautala.
He is not alone. A senior Central official took the same line in a brief informal conversation. The government must be seen to govern, he declared, Otherwise, Punjab’s would ‘occur all over the country, Mr Chautala made the same point, except for warning that the Three, he said, the Prime Minister according top priority to the issue, and considering ways to find a speedy solution was sufficient.
He did not go into the political reasons for doing exactly what the Congress (1) puppeteer pulling the Janata Dal (S) strings wants done without taking direct responsibility. That is to delay elections, anywhere, at any cost; teach the Asom Gana Parishad government Vene wherever an Assam type law and order situation prevails. But he did not think that the situation developing in Uttar Pradesh, where the second phase of kar seva to establish a Rama temple in Ayodhya has been announced, merited Central intervention a lesson for supporting V.P Singh, and ensuring that moderate Akalis (Indira Gandhi’s pet peeve) never get together.
‘What does all this mean? The same kind’ of statements were made to justify imposition of the emergency 15 years ago. It seems nothing has been learnt from that experience, nor from what has happened since in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
According to the official, Indira Gandhi had realized that enough was enough in Punjab in 1984. That was why she authorized Operation Blue star. Mr V. P. Singh could not act in Assam because the Asom Gana Parishad there was part of the National Front, and even Home Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed had been obliged to pocket the insults he received there. But the new government had realized it was time to put a stop to such subversive activity.
He did not have time to explain why he thought that Punjab was a good example of the correct use of force, Or why he thought the benefits accruing from the military operation against the Golden Temple in June, 1984, had strengthened the nation, or was worth alienating the Sikhs and thus imperiling national security in a border state as well as starting an unending spiral of violent deaths. The reason why law and order had not been restored so far, presumably, was that the right amount of force had not been used to uphold the sacredness of authority.
Administrative firmness is, of course, standard Home Ministry advice. A government representing one tenth of the Lok Sabha membership is in no position to resist when it also concurs with deep rooted Congress (I) attitudes. Senior bureaucrats have never taken kindly to popular rule: they still retain the Raj contempt for native politicians, But even the British did not bring out the army to impose order on civilians as extensively, and frequently, as we do now.
Despite repeated official assurances, Kashmir is scarcely better off under army rule, That was Punjab’s experience too when Operation Wood rose followed Operation Bluestar. Designed to flush out militants from the border districts, it succeeded in sending hundreds of young boys running to seek shelter in Pakistan. The same process seems to be on in the valley of Kashmir. The then government claimed to have crushed subversion in the northeast with army help in the fifties and sixties, But the poor Nagas never receive enough succor and arms from China to resist, in spite of documented atrocities. Only Jayaprakash Narayan, by whom Mr Chandra Shekhar still swears, was sympathetic enough to lead a peace mission there, Who has the stature and foresight to do that now?
‘So, what about the vitality of Indian democracy? No democracy can stop a ruler, concerned only with perpetuating himself (or his family) in office, stop misuse of official power. It can only ensure, if given a chance, that dictarship, in the guise of emergency, does not survive as Indian voters did in 1977, and will undoubtedly do again, if the next dictator does not learn from Mrs Gandhi’s experience and allows a general election on the assumption that he or she is popular because that is the only information let through by the closed circle of interested sycophants.
Mr Chandra Shekhar, it is true, was a victim of Indira Gandhi’s emergency and should know better. But the puppeteer behind the scenes, Mr Rajiv Gandhi, has never decried the emergency. In fact, he has justified it. And Mr Chandra Shekhar shot into national prominence only because Jayaprakash Narayan never a good judge of character because he was too innocent to question motives was impressed by his bearded seriousness, then undyed. In more than a decade as president of the Janata Party, he failed to build a party worth the name. Nor was his intellectual prowess particularly impressive. What did impress some people were his links with the Dhanbad coal mafia headed by his friend and patron, Mr Surajdev Singh.
Even so, when he became Prime Minister, I hoped that having waited so long, and with the cause of his prolonged frustration removed, he would strike out on his own towards some of his long professed objectives, thus making it hard for Mr Rajiv Gandhi to sabotage him in the style set by Indira Gandhi with Mr Charan Singh. But already, judging from the latest interview to Mr Dev Dutt published in the Times of India, as well as earlier remarks, he seems to find some common ground with a Congress, still bearing the initial (I), the nation is in peril again. Therefore, the government has to take many harsh decisions in different situations. In a some areas, the situation may hurt.”
Or further, “I was surprised that Rajiv Gandhi, whom I did not know much, appreciated the reality of the situation, So the thinking was that we should work together to tide over the present crisis. It does not mean that there is any suggestion to suspend for all time the system of parliamentary democracy. In a war situation, don’t we temporarily suspend all our differences? Today the war is not there, but the situation is quite difficult.” This was in response to a question as to whether he was not acting as if functioning in a presidential form of government. A poster currently splattered all over the capital projects Mr Chandra Shekhar with his deputy, Mr Devi Lal. In between is a drawing of Jayaprakash Narayan. The artist must have presumably unconscious sense of humor. There is no mistaking the quizzical expression on JP’s face.
‘When contemplating the harsh measures that he feels may be necessary, as already evidenced by Punjab and Assam, Mr Chandra Shekhar may care to reflect on what JP wrote after long experience of politics and politicians, in India and abroad.
Freedom, with the passing of the years, transcended the mere freedom of my country and embraced freedom of man everywhere . .it meant freedom of the human personality, freedom of the mind, freedom of the spirit. This freedom has become a passion of life, and I shall not see it compromised for bread, for power, for security, for prosperity, for the glory of the state or for anything else.”
Article extracted from this publication >> December 21, 1990
