Ms Shabana Azmi deserves high praise for her spirited protest on January 10, at the inauguration of the 12th International Film Festival of India in New Delhi, at the brutal murder of Safdar Hashmi, the Delhi theatre activist, on New Year’s Day. Mincing no words, she declared that he was murdered in broad daylight by the followers of a Congress (1) supported candidate. Mr. H.K.L. Bhagat’s angry reply, “It is wrong, totally wrong to politicize the murder” and totally wrong to politicize film festival ‘was worse than disingenuous. Insensitive as ever, it did not occur to our Minister for Information and Broadcasting that his very presence at the function politicized it and lent the fullest justification to Ms Shabana Azmi using the forum to voice a representative protest on behalf of “film makers and film lovers” in the presence of a representative of the Congress (I) government.
Shabana Azmil’s protest Come to think of it, fundamentally what business had the Minister to be there in the first place? One is not oblivious at all of the settled practice, for whatever reason of ministerial presence at such functions, and very many like them, for longer than anyone cares to recall. But if cultural and intellectual activities are brought under the sway of the State, its minions cannot object if the functions which they “‘grace” by their presence are regarded as state functions at which protest against any grave dereliction by the State in that particular field of activity is regarded as proper and justified. One wish there was more such protests.
Unfortunately, in India debate on the role of the State has been confined for the most part to its intervention in the economic sphere. We have given little thought to the danger which state intervention in education, culture arts and a vast array of intellectual activities poses not only to their growth and development but to democracy itself.
When one of Mr. Bhagat’s many predecessors, Mr. V.N, Gadgil, remarked that autonomy for Doordarshan and Akashvani will be of no avail because he would still be able to get his way, he was asserting cynically albeit tacitly, that the culture of autonomy is all but gone in our country today. Men who run autonomous bodies can be made to bend to the will of the men in power. This is because the stranglehold of the State has spread wide and deep. It is safer to petition the Minister himself than petition the Court against the Minister. Fear of reprisal by the powerful State inhibits assertion of rights against it even though they are guaranteed by the Supreme Law of the land.
The prime architect of the Constitution, Dr. BR. Ambedkar was acutely aware of the grim realities of the Indian situation as he and his colleagues set about drafting the document, “Democracy in India is only a top dressing on an Indian soil which is essentially undemocratic,” he warned the Constituent Assembly on November 4, 1948 as he moved that the draft Constitution be taken up for detailed consideration.
The Founding Fathers hoped, evidently, that the working of the Constitution would instill and promote the democratic spirit which in turn, would buttress the Constitutional structure: The hope was not belied completely. One must not underestimate the reality and strength of India’s achievement. What cannot be denied is that the achievement has fallen far short of expectations. What is more to the point since the Congress split in 1969 and the promotion first of the personality cult and next of the dynastic principle with a brief experiment in personal dictatorship in between the very survival of the achievement democracy itself is now at stake.
The reason Democracy has worked in America is the existence of Independent institutions and independent men and independent judiciary with power to review work of Legislature and executive.
India was singularly fortunate in that it had in Gandhi a leader who taught the people to question and defy authority. Jawaharial Nehru continued the tradition and remained ever the great democrat that he was. The good fortune did not last. Mrs. Indira Gandhi had no compunctions in exploiting a trait in the Indian character which foreign observers have noticed for long. Three centuries ago Bernier noted that “the vice of flattery pervades all ranks,” Shortly after the Congress split, when the attacks on the judiciary mounted while the personality cult was fostered, Nirad C. Chaudhary was provoked to remark that Depthless cowardice before, power and limitless insolence before justice are the constants of the political behavior of the Indian people. The behavior of some journalists and academics during the emergency was worse than contemptible. These are the very professions whose members are expected to speak, in the Biblical phrase, truth to power.
Dispenser of services
India is nowhere near becoming a socialist State. Yet is has amazed enormous power over the life and livelihood of the citizen, The Supreme Court described the situation graphically a decade ago. The State is today “the regulator and dispenser of special services and provider of a large number of benefits including jobs, contracts, licenses, quotas mineral rights, etc. The Government pours forth wealth, money, benefits, services, contracts, quotas and licenses. The valuables dispensed by Government take many forms but they all share one characteristic, They are steadily taking the place of traditional forms of wealth….Licenses are required before one can engage in many kinds of businesses or work. The power of giving licenses means power to withhold them and this gives control to the Government or to the agents of Government on the lives of many people. Many individuals and many more businesses enjoy largesse in the form of government contracts. These contracts often resemble subsides.
The Court strove in that case to provide legal protection against arbitrary deprivation of privilege, the new form of wealth. But no court can strike at the root of arbitrariness which lies in the very possession of great power. As Lippmann pointed out, “The deepest issue of our time is whether the civilized people can maintain and develop a free society or whether they are to fall back into the ancient order of things when the whole of men’s existence their conscience, their scien, their art, their Labour and their integrity as individuals were at the disposition of the rulers of the State. The world is faced with a stupendous reaction peculiarly dangerous is that those who are leading this reaction are for the most part convinced that they are the leaders of progress. Not to believe that Government must regulate all human affairs is currently regarded as stupidly reactionary by those who imagine themselves the pioneers of a new world.
Obscene influence
This is not a plea for laissez faire. It is a plea for curbs on state power in the specific condition and context of the modern State which is bound to undertake welfare activities. Do we allow it to become a preceptor and a mentor as well? A patron of arts and a guardian of intellectuals, no less? State control over broadcasting and television is an obscenity. But are the influence which the State wields and the powers it exercises over the film industry any less obscene?
Governments are run by men. Be it remembered they are mere men, imperfectly educated, not wholly disinterested with very limited wisdom. Such men can operate only a government of limited powers. The challenge we face today is how to regulate and control! That power without in any way diminishing the State’s responsibility to protect the downtrodden and underprivileged. If this challenge is not met out, liberties will not survive for long.
A State which has amazed awesome power will be reviewed with awe. And the awe will be fastened on the person, of the Chief Executive. The personality cult transforms worship of the State to idolatry of the leader, Sample this: “In fact the history of the Nehru family is the history of the country’s struggle for freedom,” Mr. P.V. NBarasimha Rao declined while realizing a book entitled Bharat from Nehru to Rajiv. That was on August 16, 1982 when Mr. Rajiv Gandhi was less than a year old in politics. He became General Secretary of the Congress (1) only six months later.
To say that such sycophancy proclaims the person’s unfitness for responsible citizenship of a republic is to utter an age old truth. Few have expressed it better than John Stuart Mill did. A people may prefer a free government but if, they are unequal to the exertions necessary for preserving it if they can be induced to lay their liberties at the feet even of a great man or trust them with powers which enable him to subvert their institutions in all these case they are more or less unfit for liberty.” Addressing the University of Rochester on June 15, 1939 he said that one of the reasons why democracy has worked in America is that outside the Government and outside the party system there have existed independent institution and independent men. Foremost among the independent institutions has been the Judiciary with its power to review the actions of the Legislature and the Executive. But the judiciary has not stood alone outside the political government and the parties. There have been others notably the free churches, the free press, the free universities and no less important to the preservation of democracy free men with sufficient secured property of their own farms factories, shops, professions, savings which were protected by the law and not dependent upon the will of elected or appointed officials.
Article extracted from this publication >> March 10, 1989
