Kiran's Adventures in Wonderland

Kiran Bedi has been a constant presence as an avid participant on India’s nightly television news debates these past years, railing with moral outrage against the hypocrisies and misdeeds of politicians and political parties. So it is a particularly stark irony that she has spent the last twenty-four hours squirming and evading an invitation to a public debate from Arvind Kejriwal. She has tried to use every excuse in the book to justify her sudden dislike for the whole concept of debating. With old tweets emerging of her exhorting national leaders to debate in the past, Ms Bedi’s position got even more untenable and indefensible. The transition into the political arena always takes some adjusting, but to do so while also being parachuted in as Chief Ministerial candidate is a tall order indeed, and the pressure appears to be taking its tool on Kiran Bedi’s hard-earned credibility. 

Her response to the offer to debate was that she was too busy ‘delivering’ and the debate with Kejriwal could wait till after the election on the floor of the state assembly. She is a new entrant to politics so perhaps she does not fathom that ‘delivering’ is what you do after being elected into government, whereas debating is what is expected from you during an election campaign. When an enthusiastic media did not buy into her first explanation, she went through a litany of more excuses ranging from the illogical to the farcical. My favourite bit was her saying that it was impossible to have 500 debates for 500 news channels, when she was well aware that the invitation was for one debate to be telecast by all channels. She was having a very bad day and the musings of BJP spokesman Sambit Patra only added to the mess the BJP found itself in yesterday. All the while Arvind Kejriwal and AAP were putting on a powerful display with a road show in the heart of Delhi comprising thousands of volunteers on the streets. In contrast the BJP was wracked by dissent in various parts of the city from supporters of those ignored in the ticket allocation, including at its headquarters by the upset followers of the Delhi state President himself. It’s becoming increasingly apparent to one and all that there is only one party in Delhi that has a comprehensive plan of an action for governance and a cohesive leadership team all set to put it into action from Day One. The overflowing crowds attending AAP’s jansabhas day in and day out get absolutely no media attention but are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore especially in the Outer Delhi area, a BJP bastion, that looks like it is about to flip over to AAP after the Modi Government’s scandalous Land Ordinance enraged rural voters. 

The brutal truth of the matter is that Kiran Bedi is not ready for the role she has been gifted by the BJP leadership. All doubt on this question was removed with her disastrous appearance on Arnab Goswami’s show last night, where she walked out in the middle of the interview, after she faltered badly in her attempt to answer basic questions about her divinely-inspired political conversion. Her particular brand of antics did not help matters, especially when she began to wave around a blue folders with the PM’s name visibly written on it. Also her habit of speaking about her plans for Delhi in unintelligible acronyms like 6P and 6S only added to the general sense that she was out of her depth. Apart from her greatly reduced zeal for the issue of anti-corruption, there is also a glaring contradiction in her main campaign pledge of promising safety for Delhi’s women, in that she still believes the Delhi Police should continue to report to the Union Home Ministry, which will mean police continues its old ways without reform and without paying much heed to the views of the Chief Minister of Delhi, irrespective of whether the incumbent is a former IPS officer or not. As for her turbulent IPS career, controversy seemed to trump accomplishment at every turn, especially during mid-career postings in Chandigarh, Mizoram and Tihar. As a result successive governments avoided giving her senior posts of consequence, ultimately leading to her premature retirement. This does not disqualify her from the post of Chief Minister of Delhi by any means, but it does mean that voters should take her boasts of administrative excellence with a very large pinch of salt. And even better, it demands that her claims bear the scrutiny of a debate between Chief Ministerial candidates. Could it be that’s exactly why she doe not wish to take part?

The Great Indian Debate: Kejriwal vs Bedi

Finally all the players are in place and Delhi is ready for the last act of the most fascinating elections in a generation to play out. Personalities and media sensationalism aside, the contrast between the Aam Aadmi Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party could not be more clear-cut and the voters have a fateful decision to make in the next fortnight. A debate between Chief-Ministerial candidates of AAP and BJP would certainly help voters in making up their minds.

Ever since the televised Kennedy-Nixon presidential debates of 1960, election debates between leadership candidates of the main political parties have become a staple of democracies in most parts of the world, even in the home of Westminster democracy, but the world’s largest democracy has been a conspicuous hold out. It is a particularly glaring anomaly considering how fast television news has boomed in India in the last decade, especially the transformation of the evening news into nightly bouts of verbal warfare. 

In the absence of leaders challenging each other face-to-face the voter is left to rely on unintelligible skirmishes between party spokespersons and the point of view of an increasingly partisan media universe, where certain parties, leaders, and issues can be blanked out for months on end without the recourse of appeal. No real debates seem to take place in Parliament and state legislatures anymore with proceedings becoming increasingly fractious. So it is time India breaks out of this electoral straitjacket and what better time than elections in the nation’s capital to kick off this new tradition of leadership debates. Let the untested and unchallenged political rhetoric of Indian elections be put through the crucible of a debate and let voters see for themselves which candidate is speaking credibly from hard-won experience and which candidate is spouting unsubstantiated inanities. 

Arvind Kejriwal has taken the lead and made the offer to Kiran Bedi, a debate between Delhi’s two main Chief Ministerial Candidates, moderated by a neutral person and telecast by all. Will Ms Bedi accept the challenge? She seems uncharacteristically reluctant, but the voters of Delhi, and India, certainly hope she rises to the challenge.      

"JUDGING NEHRU"--Fragment of a one-act play in progress, extracted from my novel The War Ministry

‘Jawaharlal Nehru, you have been remanded here to stand

trial and answer for the sins you committed against the people of

India. How do you plead?’

‘Where am I?’ Pandit Nehru blinked and shielded his eyes from

the lights blinding him. He stood up looking around, trying to

discover the source of the booming voice.

‘This is your purgatory, dear Prime Minister.’

‘Purgatory is for Catholics and I am definitely not one of the flock.’

‘This is the only part the Catholics got right, but here religious

identity is superfluous, only applicable to the living. Of course,

you were a famed atheist, weren't you? Apparently without faith,

but yet encouraging everyone to call you Panditji, the unbelieving

Brahmin. Your life’s story abounds with such ironies, doesn't

it? The most English of Indians who turned on the Empire, the

socialist who loved the finer things in life, the democrat who gave

birth to a family of dynasts. Does your hypocrisy know no bounds,

Jawaharlal?’

‘Ridiculous. Who or what are you?’

‘It depends. Now that you are here in this place beyond

existence, do you still cling to your atheism?’

‘I assumed death, one way or the other, would answer all

these metaphysical riddles we encounter in life…obviously not. I

never explicitly said I was an atheist, but neither did I concede to

identifying myself as a spineless agnostic. I yearned for far more

than mainstream religions could provide and had no patience

for the simplistic piffle they fed the masses. Perhaps the non-dualistic

nature of Advaita Vedanta and the ethic-based teachings

of the Buddha got closest to the truth. They directed us to look

within for the answer to the universe’s mysteries. But no religion

ever completely swayed me and I always maintained that I was

far more interested in the real world than worrying about the

unknowable. My dharma was always to help the people and I gave

my life to that purpose.’

‘So you are not an atheist but you still do not believe in a higher

power? Then you may call us vox populi, the voice of the people,

the judge and jury of every great democrat such as yourself. But

you should bear in mind that “vox populi, vox dei” is a belief held

by many of your fellow democrats. I’m sure you remember that

quote from Harrow and Cambridge, only the best education for

daddy’s pride and joy, an Englishman’s education.’

‘The voice of the people is not the voice of God, of that I’m sure.’

‘So you say.’

‘It has also been said by Alcuin, a man far wiser than me, that

we must not heed those who keep saying the voice of the people

is the voice of God, for the riotousness of the mob is very close to

madness.’

‘Bravo, Panditji, your memory holds beyond your earthly

passing. But then you would know about the mob more than

anyone, having subverted the people’s love for you into your own

version of demagoguery!’

‘What rot. Is that the charge against me? Being a demagogue?

I refute it with the contempt it deserves. You are going to have to

come at me harder than that because even my enemies could not

doubt that I put my country’s interest before my own. My years in

gaol are proof of my commitment.’

'Granted, but did you not once write a pseudonymous article

about yourself, warning readers against your worst impulses? What

did you refer to yourself as? An Indian Caesar, of course. Your ego

could not tolerate any smaller comparison. Is that not what you

had turned into, feeding high-minded dreams and honey-dripped

rhetoric to the people while you built a dynasty just like Caesar

did? The charge against you is that you turned the Indian republic

into a monarchy for you and your heirs.’

‘That is ludicrous; you cannot blame me for what happened

after I left the scene. Shastri succeeded me, not Indu; she had to

wait her turn.’

‘And she did wait, perhaps for the last time in her life, but not

for long. She was your secret weapon, fulfilling your covert agenda;

to turn India’s polity into a royal court for your daughter, the

empress. How you must have looked on with pride as she trampled

on the very Indian democracy you so claim to treasure, which

she did not stop destroying till she completed her task with the

proclamation of Emergency. India was officially transformed into

a monarchy with a sullen and vicious crown prince to complete

the cast.’

‘If you had to judge me, why did you wait so long?’

‘You are a great man, Jawaharlal, and history takes its time

giving its verdict on great men.’

‘History is on my side, you may hold to account my family

for their subsequent conduct and that’s fair enough, but Indian

democracy survived even the worst that my heirs, as you call them,

put it through. The fact that democracy has flourished in India

is the ultimate verdict that I will be judged by, because there was

no cause I pursued with more vigour than to ingrain democratic

values in the Indian people and build institutions. I consider that

to be my legacy and it will withstand the test of time.’

‘Don’t be impudent; you have much to answer for beyond your

family’s doings. You will be judged, just like everybody else who

was taken over by hubris and dared believe they could lead men

and nations without having to answer for the consequences of their

actions. A day of reckoning comes for everyone and to be purged of

your sins you must first accept responsibility…if you had stepped aside in 1958 you would have avoided all the indignities that were to befall India in the years to come, and you would not have died a broken man, Jawaharlal...’

‘…I admit fault for everything that transpired during the 1962

war, for the war dead, for the national humiliation, for having

to betray the path of Non-Alignment and beseech the Kennedy

Administration for emergency military assistance. Those were

grave errors and I admit them, but historians have the benefit of

hindsight; leaders, however, are forced to lead even in the fog of

war with limited information, while facing multiple pulls and

pressures, which is why I stand by every one of my decisions in

office from September 1946 onwards, irrespective of how they may

have turned out.’

'So be it, you have said your piece. Your judgement awaits you...'

Social India: 'The digital divide separates the country'--My view on social media's effect on India's general election in The Guardian

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/10/india-digital-divide-politics-krishan-partap-singh-raisinaseries

Why I joined the Aam Aadmi Party...

Last night I visited the website of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and for the first time in my life applied for membership to a political party. Considering I’ve spent the last decade totally consumed with observing, discussing, researching, and writing political novels about India’s incomparable democratic drama, it is not a step I took lightly. Every General Election is important but the upcoming one is likely to be especially so. No matter the result it will bring elemental change to India’s polity that will reset the battle lines for many an election to come. The current campaign is about more than individual personalities, it is about voter anger against the establishment of such ferocity that it could cause the complete recasting of the polity. The old rules no longer apply, political leaders will have to either adapt or depart.

Since 2010 India’s polity has been in a downward spiral. An age of corruption and excess came to a grinding halt as scandal after scandal crossed our television screens every night without respite. The government got pummelled every day but continued to survive because a divided and complicit opposition abdicated its role. Thus the Indian people found themselves hostage to an unacceptable and interminable stalemate. Cynicism pervaded in every nook and cranny of the land, and so it remained during the intervening years. 

India’s two national parties must bear the brunt of the blame. On the surface the Congress and BJP may appear separated by the gulf of ideology, but in actual fact they mirror each other from across the political divide, they are in fact conjoined twins. If one party raises the 2002 riots in Gujarat, the other brings up the 1984 Delhi riots in response. If one speaks of the Gandhi family son-in-law’s alleged venality, the other threateningly whispers of Vajpayee’s foster son-in-law. If one follows the Sangh Parivar’s diktat without a word of protest, the other readily surrenders all autonomy at the feet of the Gandhi family. Both rail against the media when confronted by their own varied shortcomings, and they both go deaf and dumb at the mere mention of the name of India’s richest man. To choose between the BJP and the Congress is a false choice, India deserves better than the politics of division and opportunistic backroom deals. It is time for a third way.

I now believe the Aam Aadmi Party could be on its way to becoming India’s third national party. Having written three novels on precisely this very subject, I have found it impossible to witness this exciting new development from a studious distance. Arvind Kejriwal may not look the part of a maverick, and like everybody else I too initially underestimated his determination, but the Delhi election campaign changed everything. He and his motley crew campaigned tirelessly to make believers out of us Dilliwallahs and long voter lines into the night were proof that something special was taking place. Voters love an underdog. 

Joining the AAP was the furthest from my mind till an unexpectedly electric moment in Arvind Kejriwal’s speech in the Delhi Assembly during the discussion of his government’s trust vote on January 2^nd when he broadened the definition of who an Aam Aadmi was to include everyone who possessed a moral outlook of honesty and truth regardless of what their bank balance or background was. In one stroke he had made it possible for everyone to conceivably consider themselves within the rubric of Aam Aadmi, even the middle class. For the first time since Vajpayee left the public stage I found myself unconsciously nodding along as I listened to a political leader speak. The message was unambiguously inclusive, unifying and optimistic, my very favourite words. It was not just a Chief Minister delineating his governing agenda but also a leader with national ambitions for his party using the media spotlight to address the country. We got the message loud and clear.      

    

The first days of governance in Delhi have been tumultuous, but governance is never easy and the inexperienced ministers will take time to adjust to the shock of being catapulted into office. They over-promised in the campaign but moved quickly to meet the most high profile of the promises. Accusations of fiscal irresponsibility and populism are flying thick and fast but they have marginal electoral relevance. Issues of execution could arise but Kejriwal’s IRS experience is showing in the way he’s marshalled the bureaucracy so far to come up with crafty solutions to the water and electricity campaign pledges.

I worry about the one-size-fits-all attitude of AAP leaders who see referenda or other forms of direct democracy as the instant solution to even the most intractable issues; an example being the recent furore on Kashmir which was an eminently avoidable misstep by Prashant Bhushan. Kejriwal must be prepared to make tough decisions which may be correct but yet unpopular. To govern effectively a leader must inform, persuade and show the way.   

Clearly I don’t agree with every last thing AAP has proposed, but nor is that necessary because I’m wholly on board with their core agenda of fighting corruption in all its forms, empowering the common man, and reining in crony capitalism with a more progressive path to economic growth. The legacy of the age of loot and incompetence during the hideously technocratic premiership of Sardar Manmohan Singh must be rolled back. I doubt Narendra Modi and his billionaire cheerleaders have any such house-cleaning in mind. 

With work on a national manifesto in its early stages there are swathes of policy areas about which AAP is only just initiating an internal debate to finalise its stand and those gaps will be filled in due course. It is a national party being born right in front of our eyes, Gandhian in its origin, sprouting forth in that quintessentially chaotic Indian manner, men and women, young and old, rich and poor, standing shoulder to shoulder, all proudly wearing their white topis, jharus held aloft, and there is untold promise in all that they can accomplish. As a result Indians everywhere have begun talking passionately and idealistically about participating in the political process again. Youth voters have been energised. Hope resides in India once more, the cynicism and rancour of recent years is finally dissipating because new leaders, new ideas, and new possibilities are breaking through the mist. Could it be a false dawn, you ask? Possibly. There are no sure things in life, all you can do is make your best judgment and then jump in with both feet. I could not resist the call of the Aam Aadmi. Can you?  

The Ruler of Hindu Hearts?--My op-ed piece in the International Herald Tribune

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/26/opinion/26iht-edsingh26.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

The Communal Conundrum

On the eve of its ninth anniversary the UPA government is besieged by scandal and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is under personal attack from every end of the political spectrum, including from within his own party. These are the dying embers of a failed ministry and an election is the only remedy. So we must first attempt to pick through the fog of scam after scam that engulf our television screens nightly and only then look past the chaotic immediate to the far ground of the electoral battlefield, our ultimate concern.        

Modi, Rahul, Mulayam, Advani and the rest of the pack of aspirants have had their chances ebb and flow in recent weeks. But their prime ministerial ambitions have had to play second fiddle to an astonishing period of news that has involved everything from a border standoff with China, tit-for-tat murders of inmates in Pakistan and Indian jails, the Supreme Court ravaging of the government on the Coalgate cover-up, the Railway Minister involved in high corruption, the resultant sacking of two senior cabinet minister after their protector the PM was brutally and publicly cut down to size by the Congress President. The astrologers blame these events on Saturn’s presence in Libra, and no doubt there are more than a few politician like the desperate Pawan Bansal who will resort to such horrid rituals such as sacrificing a goat in full media glare to appease the gods. Indeed even the PM found a scapegoat for his troubles in the form of an unrepentant Ashwani Kumar.

How can a political novelist possibly compete with such a reality as currently exists in sarkari Delhi. The rules of the game in the political arena have been irrevocably transformed by a lethal combination of the Right to Information Act, feral television news channels, an aggressive Supreme Court, and a booming economy being matched by an exponential growth in opportunities for graft. But India’s politicians seem still to be playing by the permissive rules of the past, incapable of adapting to a new world, and so all their shady doings have become transparent to the world. It beggars belief that so many senior politicians thinks it a good alibi to claim to be blessed with a family full of genius entrepreneurs in industries that plainly mirror their ministerial portfolios. Times have changed and voters are angry. Thus, after nine years in power the UPA government has stalled under the weight of a lengthy incumbency, accentuated by it owns incompetence and blatant corruption. No CBI witch-hunts or glitzy PR blitzkrieg like the government’s recently launched Bharat Nirman campaign, carrying with it the stench of desperation as it does, are going to make people forgive and forget. It is time for an election, and for us to continue our foray into the electoral landscape once again. When election season does arrive at our doorstep in four to nine months the scams and cover-ups that so intensely cloud our horizon now will become a part of the larger tapestry of issues that will sway voters and affect the formation of post-poll coalitions. The communal conundrum is sure to be foremost in everyone’s thoughts.

There is no greater insult in Indian public life than to be tarred with the charge of being ‘communal’, even a murder indictment may not be perceived as being equally damaging to a leader’s electoral prospects. To explain how this state of affairs came to pass is also to retell the story of India’s creation and historical experience as a nation-state. The debate about who and what is communal and secular goes to the core of the argument of what is India and who is Indian. It is the defining issue of our times and shows no signs of being displaced from its perch in the foreseeable future. Without satisfactorily coming to terms with the secular-communal divide, no political party or leader can hope to rule India with any degree of coherence.

Let’s start at the beginning, as to how the word ‘communal’, generally recognised as a hospitable term for community and inclusiveness in the English-speaking world outside South Asia, came to take on a sectarian connotation in our part of the world. The British Raj and its cynical policy of divide and rule are to blame, initially at least. The Communal Award of 1932 provided separate electorates on the basis of religion, thereby assuring that division and discord would forever more be equated with the communal. It set the stage for the partition of India and extension of sectarian strife for generations into the future. It is the main fault line upon which India’s polity still rests.

At first there was a bit of confusion in south India regarding the meaning of the term as there had been an existing communal award in the form of a 1927 government order dealing with caste-based job reservation aimed at loosening Brahminical dominance in Madras state. But by the time India and Pakistan come into existence in 1947 there was no doubting what it meant to be communal, it was a lesson drenched in the blood of untold masses across the breadth of the sub-continent. The word embodied a scar to the national psyche.

Equations changed after Independence with the Congress and Muslim League rivalry giving way to the Congress and the Sangh Parivar. Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination brought a flashpoint to the new rivalry that continues to this day with the argument ebbing and flowing with the tides of history. The Congress Party’s role transformed from being seen as a threat by Indian Muslims in the pre-partition period to being seen as their protector after partition. The Emergency and it excesses, particularly strong-arm tactics like forced sterilisations and slum removal, alienated the Muslims from the party. But by Rajiv Gandhi’s 1984 landslide election win all was well again and they were firmly back inside the Congress electoral tent.

Meanwhile there was trouble with another minority, the Sikhs, who the Congress had enraged after Operation Blue Star and riots that followed the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. A decade of strife followed before Punjab could be brought back into the stream, but return it did. In the meantime the forces of Hindutva had found their voice thanks to the ham-handedness of the Rajiv Gandhi government in its handling of the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute. While pandering to the ulema by legislating to overturn the Supreme Court’s Shah Bano judgement that awarded maintenance rights to Muslim women, the government sought to counter accusations of Muslim appeasement by opening the locks of the disputed site in Ayodhya, hoping to play the saffron card but not realising they had set in motion forces inimical to the Congress Party’s own political fortunes. Rajiv Gandhi’s irresponsible display of pendulum politics left the whole country dizzy.

L.K. Advani found his voice in his Rath Yatra that traversed the Hindi belt in 1990 as he accused the Congress of propagating ‘pseudo-secular’ policies, finally finding a political phrase that could act as a worthy rejoinder to the decades of unanswered political taunts. Although Advani immortalised the word, it is less commonly known that it was Atal Behari Vajpayee who is said to have coined it in his 1969 piece titled ‘The Bane of Pseudo-secularism’. Thus ensued a rivalry between the communal and pseudo-secular, for the first time it seemed like a fair fight and the BJP’s increasing seat tallies in election after election bore that out. Backed by a rising tide of support Advani seemed destined for the Prime Minister’s chair. But the Sangh Parivar overplayed its hand and the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 took the steam out of the movement as nation-wide riots and the Bombay bombings that followed in retaliation awoke the country to the dangers of religious extremism in all its shades.

Nonetheless, in 1996 the BJP found itself the largest party in the Lok Sabha but politically untouchable and marooned, a pariah to most other parties. It formed a government that lasted a mere fortnight. The party realised Hindutva had only brought them halfway to their goal and it would take a moderating touch to take them the rest of the way. Cometh the hour, cometh the man, as they say and that’s exactly what happened. Vajpayee gave one of the great parliamentary speeches of India’s television age, or of any age, when in a single peroration he reset the political map and how his own party was perceived by allaying the fears of voters by making a flawlessly delivered argument for the BJP as a safe pair of hands and the natural party of governance. Vajpayee single-handedly dragged his party kicking and screaming towards the respectability of the political centre. He won India’s trust that day, and became the dominant politician of the land for the next decade, decisively eclipsing Advani. He ended his speech by announcing his resignation, saying that the BJP had shown its mettle by fighting its way into the mythical maze that was the Chakravyuha and would soon enough show how to fight its way out and return to power. It’s a speech that I often return to, as a way to remind myself how political rhetoric, properly deployed, can inspire and sway minds.

Two years later Vajpayee was indeed returned to power at the head of a broad NDA coalition government. It wasn’t smooth sailing at first but after the Kargil War the NDA was re-elected in a mid-term election with an increased majority and the Vajpayee government found its footing. So much so that I would venture to say that in January 2002 had there been a snap election, the BJP on its own would have crossed the 200-seat mark. It was the only period in my adult life that I would have voted for one of the two main national parties, it would have been a vote for Vajpayee and not for the BJP. A lot of people felt that way at the time, they trusted the Prime Minister not his party. But then came the violence in Godhra and riots in Gujarat thereafter, followed by Vajpayee’s failed attempts to remove Narendra Modi as Chief Minister of Gujarat. That was the end of the dream, the attempt to capture the political centre of India. So close, but not to be. Vajpayee would continue in office for two more years but it was not the same government and he knew it, almost resigning as Jaswant Singh has previously recounted. If he had resigned, Vajpayee may still not have triumphed politically but his legacy would have been unstained and set a precedent no PM has been equal to, that a leader is known by how he relinquishes office just as much as his conduct during his stay in power. One of history’s missed opportunities.

So this brings us to our current political scenario where the Congress and BJP fling charges related to the 1984 and 2002 riots at each other almost weekly. Each party and its allies try to win nightly debating point by saying your riot was much worse than our riot. Such is the state of political discourse in the India of 2013. Comparing the innocent dead from two politically-motivated massacres that the respective ruling governments oversaw and both used the same self-exonerating alibi that the bloodshed was an understandable reaction to an act of terror. As a Sikh who was in Delhi in 1984 which was my introduction to Indian politics as an eight-year-old, and then again as someone whose political worldview was completely transformed by the horrendous television pictures and stories of what took place in Gujarat in 2002 propelled me on the path to becoming a political novelist, I can unequivocally declare that there is no differentiation to be made between riots when innocents are murdered, raped, burned, mutilated, orphaned. Both riots brought shame on India and Indians everywhere, but even now the Congress and BJP are reluctant to accept  responsibility for the blood spilt by their leaders and cadres in the riots.

These differing perceptions and competitive propaganda about the riots is also reflected in the response of Sikh leaders to the Gujarat riots and Muslim leaders to the 1984 riots. BJP ally Akali Dal goes missing when any 2002 Gujarat riot-related court case comes up and similarly the part-time Congress ally Samajwadi Party goes uncharacteristically mute when 1984 riot-accused Sajjan Kumar and Jagdish Tytler burst into the headlines. Competitive secularism is a game that can only be played if you have a requisite quota of hypocrisy in the tank. Its this same fixation on sectarian politics that forces Narendra Modi to avoid skullcaps like the plague and confess to his biographer with pride that he never ever wears the colour green. Conversely Congress slavishly panders to Muslims on issues as varied as the Batla House encounter, religion-based reservation, and Rahul Gandhi’s continuing obsession with a mythical creature called saffron terror that is visible only to him and his acolytes. This dance between parties will continue till the 2014 elections and beyond as Congress tries to brand the BJP communal in the eyes of prospective allies and the BJP tries to evade that tag by winning so many seats that the lure of power attracts allies to their cause, even if the allies have to hold their noses while shaking hands. How the BJP fares in the coming election only time will tell but without Vajpayee, clearly irreplaceable, the BJP is struggling to find the right tone. Modi may be an electoral asset but he does not bring the BJP closer to the political centre, if anything he may push them further to the right. That’s not how you win elections or form stable governments. If the BJP does not heed Vajpayee’s example, it does so at its peril.

Nowadays the cloak of secularism provides the perfect alibi for every non-NDA party to trot out when caught in an act of loot or blatant political opportunism. A case in point, corruption-tainted Mulayam and Mayawati have for years proclaimed their dedication to secularism in order to avoid talking about how Congress ruthlessly extracted their critical outside support for the central government with the CBI used as a spear in their backs. To be secular in modern India is to be beyond the bounds of morality. Indira Gandhi used the fight against communal forces as one of her excuses during her infamous and shameful address to the nation on June 26, 1975, as she attempted to explain why she was declaring Emergency and stomping on her father’s vision of a democratic India. Just to drive home the point she even thrust the word ‘secular’ into the preamble of the Constitution. Needless to say the secular principle in its truest form is a non-negotiable part of what India must stand for, so there is no excuse for the Sangh Parivar’s utterly sectarian ideology that would leave no room for most minorities to live in India with self-respect. The Sangh must realise that though Muslims will not vote for the BJP anytime soon, the Muslim vote in the normal course is as divided as any other caste or community, unless they feel threatened and then they vote strategically for the party that assures them of security and the defeat of the BJP. There is a reason why Maulana Mulayam wears his title with pride. It is in the electoral interest of the saffron forces to put Hindutva in cold storage and provide some reassurance to Indian Muslims and Christians. I wouldn’t hold my breath on this one, though.   

Being secular to the Akali Dal in Punjab means to be pro-Sikh, to the Congress and Samajwadi in Uttar Pradesh it is to be pro-Muslim, and so on and so forth. To be truly secular is to speak against religious extremism in all its shades. The sad truth is that there are no secular parties left in India, the concept died with Pandit Nehru and he had no ideological heirs. Pandit Nehru, perhaps the most reviled Indian politician currently, understood something his daughter and grandson forgot, that the Nehru family itself was left refugees after the British recaptured Delhi in 1857 and wreaked havoc in the city. Which was why Motilal Nehru was born in Agra in 1861. You could say the carnage of 1984 in Delhi was also the second death of Jawaharlal Nehru, just as the 2002 riots in Gujarat showed how very far the land of his birth had strayed from Gandhi’s path. History has shown that without moral leadership, and left to its own devices, a nation will revert to its worst self.        

A symptom of this skewed perception of religion in India’s polity is the one issue that no contemporary political party knows how to deal with and that is relations with Pakistan. There is an impression among the so-called secular parties like the Congress, Samajwadi Party, and Janata Dal (United) that talking peace with Pakistan even in the face of terror will safeguard their Muslim vote at home. On the other side you have the BJP, its Parivar and not to forget the Shiv Sena whose hawks have yet come to terms with the very existence of Pakistan even after almost seven decades. But what is more interesting is how some among them like Advani and Jaswant Singh have tried to showcase their moderate streaks by bizarrely talking up the supposedly repentant deathbed pronouncements of  Jinnah, whom I personally consider the villain of the partition story and no amount of bogus revisionist history is going to change that reality. Jaswant Singh wrote a sympathetic biography of Pakistan’s Quaid-e-Azam and suffered expulsion from party and parivar. Advani paid his respects at Jinnah’s tomb in Karachi and was soon after forced out of the BJP’s presidency.

So both sides of the secular divide share a warped idea of how Indian Muslims and their place in India. Neither realise that Pakistan through its thoroughly dysfunctional history as a failed state is conclusive evidence proving that the two-nation theory belongs in the ash heap of history right next to Communism and the Berlin Wall. More than anybody Indian Muslims realise this reality and for the most part no longer think of themselves in relation to Pakistan, in fact they  yearn to break out of this enforced marriage of identities thrust upon them by every secular fundamentalist on a book tour. They want the same thing the rest of India wants, a chance to live in peace and have their children be part of the promised Indian dream. Our politicians need to bury Jinnah once and for all.

Political parties in India have a long electoral history of preying on the insecurities of the populace and winning elections as a result. The Congress won an unprecedented super-majority in the general election of 1984, and Narendra Modi swept back to power in the Gujarat elections of end-2002. The bare truth is that the politics of hate pays electoral dividends. That’s why they do it. Some believe that in the age of television news the atrocities of 1984 and 2002 cannot be repeated. Maybe not in metropolises like Ahmedabad and Delhi perhaps, but India is a large country and ancient animosities linger in innumerable dark and forgotten corners. Last year’s sectarian clashes in rural Assam also had chilling repercussions in Bangalore and Mumbai, showing us how new technologies can be used to spread fear and violence at lightening speed.  

We all bear hatred in our hearts born of prejudice, each of us has a small part within that is a bigot and a hater, it is the part most of us repress by silently admonishing ourselves when unacceptable feelings well up involuntarily. Whether we speak of the barbaric events of 1984 in Delhi, 2002 in Gujarat, 2008 in Orissa, or 2012 in Assam, our blood-soaked history is littered with countless similar atrocities where we the Indian people allowed these horrible little men, who call themselves political and religious leaders, access to that weak, insecure, hatred-filled, bigoted corner of our psyches and thereby ensured that we remain shackled to decades and centuries of contentious and ulcerous history that should have been wiped away when we started afresh with a clean slate on August 15, 1947, at the midnight hour when our poet-Prime Minister so eloquently declared a new beginning for all Indians and a promising future ahead. Whatever you may or may not think about Jawaharlal Nehru, unlike Jinnah he spent his life searching for the better angels in his countrymen and tried to inspire them to better action. He was not perfect, possessing some grave personality flaws, making more than his share of ghastly mistakes and, god knows, his last years in office were disastrous, but not since his death has any Indian Prime Minister really picked up the threads of the India story and spoken unreservedly in full voice about the principles of tolerance and strength though unity that above all else form the bedrock of the Indian ideal. Democracy is about more than winning elections and managing fiscal deficits, it is about a country’s common purpose as enunciated by its leadership. Indians are now thirsting for an inclusive and inspirational vision of India fit for the times.

No leader currently in Indian public life appears up to this task, at least as far as I can see, so let’s instead identify the qualities that would allow us to construct a composite of this purely hypothetical leader. A leader who will be equally at ease wearing a tilak on the forehead or a skullcap but would not hesitate to put a meddling Shahi Imam or a scheming Shankaracharya in their place when they tried to infiltrate the political arena with their medieval mindset. A leader who will accept that overwhelmingly terror in India is of Jihadi origin but also understand that an unacceptable proportion of Muslim youths in jail on terror charges are apprehended for no reason other than the names they bear and how they look. A leader who will take pride India’s multi-faceted heritage in all its hues but also understand scars of the past will not heal overnight by themselves and require the careful balm of rhetoric from the bully pulpit by a Prime Minister able to reach the hearts and minds of every Indian. A leader, in short, that India deserves and still awaits.

For these thoughts I fully accept some may think me among other things communal, pseudo-secular, naïve, insensitive, anti-Congress, anti-Sangh, and god forbid even a Nehruvian—or New Nehruvian if you please. Guilty as charged!