Human nature is so profoundly complex as to defy any definitive statement For there are ironies within ironies, like the wheels of a clock all linked to the great mechanism of life in a mysterious way. Now there are ‘some transparent human virtues and vices which constitute the black and-white choreography of moral life. There is however, a middle territory a grey area where virtue and vice begin almost to lose their force and the line between the two is erased. And it is in this middle market that the priestly vice of hypoensy, the grand dame of bourgeois ethic has set up shop. In a certain sense this ingrained vice which has always been a special subject for satire in art and literature, and a running theme for scriptural and pulpit homilies, is undoubtedly one of the greatest causes of chaos and confusion in the world. And yet, al the same time, it has virtually become something indispensable in the business and traffic of social life, such being the human constraints and conditionalities. And this deep contradiction abides even as the moral imagination is continually at war with it.
It is, them, to explore briefly this vice in politics in public life that I offer some inconvenient thoughts, And my context is the brutal and violent end of Rajiv Gandhi and the storm of tears and tributes that followed the traumatic event. It is to sift this theater of emotions that I turn to this national tragedy. A happening of this magnitude compels one to close with the truth whatever the opinion otherwise, and whatever the nature of the nostrums and the noise in the media.
Since political assassinations are as much a part of the power game as the throne and the crown, kings and queens, presidents and prime ministers have had to pay a fearful price from time to time throughout human history. There is, often, a strange equation in this gory business, and I can do no better than start the argument with that superb speech which Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Mark Anthony in that political play, Julius Caesar. The occasion, of course, is the funeral oration in honor of the assassinated hero come home in triumph to fall victim to a conspiracy of jealous hearts, misplaced idealism and sharp knives, That classic speech opens thus:
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them.
The good is off interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar.
Did Shakespeare, for once, misread the human he ant and believe that the evil actions of men in power survived beyond the grave, and their good deeds almost forgotten? Or, was the great historian of the human heart adding a dash of irony at the outset to Anthony’s psychological game? For the fact of the matter is that the common people when sucked into. a maelstrom of emotions and a political murder in high places almost always blows up their inner issues are in fact, more inclined to sing praises of the dead ruler for all his sins than to recall, on such occasions, the catalogue of his crimes, unless, of course, he has been demonically evil such as a Richard ITl or a Hitler. And there is a deep, psychological warrant for it, It is a genuine emotion even though its tenure is seldom long enough to become a sentiment A fallen crowned head lends to create its own pathos. And there are above all two factors that constitute the dynamics of this mass hysterical grief cathartic relief and transference. In that state of shock, there wailings are an indirect outlet for the destruction of their own lives, even if their nuisances might have been, ironically enough, brought about, in part by the very man or woman they mourn at that moment,
The moral of my summary so far is clear enough. True emotions and false reactions have a strong tendency to get mixed up when the people are under stress and strain. It’s a natural phenomenon, and no value Judgement is attached to it but, as you must have guessed, my quarrel really is with those worthies whose sense of values and vision thought not to have collapsed even in the face of such a major catastrophe. Why, I would grant even such persons more than a measure of authenticity, for when an earthquake strikes a nation, grief loses its caste and color and class. But there is a point beyond which the quality and quantum of grief becomes a suspect. And that’s the street where as I said earlier, hypocrisy status in style. And to my mind and these editors and scribes, leaders and eminent persons have rather ruined Rajiv Gandhi’s true image and worth. An induced halo doesn’t go very far, and a dubious immortality doesn’t wash for long. History as we know, is a stern judge, and knows how to go about its business. Rajiv Gandhi’s unnatural death has surely won him a small place in its pages, but in the long run, he would be no more than a commonplace leader hoisted by circumstance and dynastic politics to the throne of Delhi amidst an unpardonable bloodbath. No wonder the Rajiv coterie of intellectual retainers and rootless politicians is still trying desperately to pitch his poor window into the destructive element of Indian politics, and even wanting to induct his dignified and dynamic daughter in some form. And this al a time when the mined and desolated family is entitled to the sanctity of their great grief.
Hasn’t that congenital Indian vice hypocrisy in public life overshot the mark so much as to have turned a national tragedy into a provincial farce? Undoubtedly, Rajiv Gandhi had acquired amidst many a visible failing, an attractive and positive side to his personality the Camelot image of his earlier days in office, the male charm etc, and these and such other aspects helped create a charisma of kind. ‘And this was substance enough for elegies and nostalgic notices, if you like. Indeed the very sound of muffled drums and the ceremony of cease and the incense of praise that marked his last journey was 2 UNIQUE tribute to a man out of power and sol repeat, there was no need to work up an atmosphere of mindless adulation.
I can understand even respect the response of the populace, but I cannot somehow S’ v the litany of the more knowledgeable, and the more discernible. For they know well enough that there was a fair amount of falsehood in their song of sorrow.
‘Am I being fanciful and needlessly critical? Just wait and judge for yourself. All that you have to do is go through the articles editorials and statements of these very persons on the subject of Rajiv Gandhi’s misrule particularly around the time of the Bofors blow-up and the time of the 1989 elections. It’s a composite portrait of incompetence, arrogance, corruption and folly, variously described as a dynastic despot, a political profligate. Mr Dirty and what not, he is now being written up a great statesman, a noble visionary, a karma yogi and the lexicon of adoration continues to expand. So truly, Caesar dead is more powerful than Caesar alive! With the award of India’s highest honor, Bharat Ratna, presumably at the instance of supreme, but down-and-out, opposition called Chandra Shekhar and that Harvard harlequin and political pance, Subramaniam Swami, in concert with President, the wheel of hypocrisy has¢ full circle in Bhararvarshal To club Patel with him was to give another the wheel.
Darshan Maini in Tribune of Chandigarh.
Article extracted from this publication >> August 16, 1991
