Men, Matters & Memories
M L Kotru
I am sure that someone somewhere in an unknown corner of India has by now put in many extra hours to put together a bagful of unquotable quotes from the ugly election debate raging in the country for over three months and which one can only hope yields place to a more peaceable, less noisy India after the campaign 2014 ends. Rarely has the poll time discourse seen the level of debate/discussion sinking to such low depths as it has this time over.
From public platforms and in the really coarse verbiage, mouthed by “select” panels of party spokesmen each evening, unfailingly indulging themselves with so much relish and unabashed vulgarity, we have seen the death of serious debate. Almost each day, you cannot avoid noticing unknown hands slipping in papers into the hands of onscreen spokespersons, the old-fashioned prompters, unafraid of cameras. The slips obviously are a kind of aide memoire, ideas often directly whispered into the spokesperson’s ear, taking care to keep away from the camera, providing fresh fuel to be hurled into the fiery, abusive discussions on view.
On top of it we also have seen news anchors shouting themselves hoarse, not to bring an ongoing debate back on course, but only to yell at one and all, adding to the pointlessness of the so-called debates/discussions. You have one of these monster-anchors often invoking the name of the nation with every change of breath or rudely demanding to know from missing leaders, like the Prime Minister to answer the questions which he chooses to ask. “Tell me, Prime Minister-yes, the nation wants to know……….
“The disease of unbecoming anchoring has since caught up with two other English language and two Hindi channels. A competition of sorts, as it were, between the anchors to select the rudest anchor of them all.
The same spirit of vulgar abusiveness is very much to the fore in the public utterances at big rallies of the principal campaigners. The tone was, of course, set by the BJP’s Narendra Modi, who, with no regard for facts and the help of a selective memory, feels free to say anything he likes. He started by raking up the long dead issue of Sonia’s Italian origin and sure enough as the polling day for the first phase comes nearer he has returned to the theme, unsparing as usual in his sharp personal attacks on Rahul Gandhi as well.
Rahul had midway through asked his partymen to avoid personal attacks on rival candidates has finally discovered that politeness does not pay in the hurly burly of elections. The Congress Party has as a consequence decided to lace its campaign with as much personal invective as it has lately been subjected to by Modi and his campaigners. Even seasoned campaigners like Sharad Pawar, the NCP strongman and Union Minister, was forced to depart from his self-imposed restraint when on the eve of Maharashtra’s New Year day (‘Gudi Padwa’) he declared an unsparing war of words on Modi.
Attacking the BJP’s Prime Ministerial hopeful, Pawar described him as a “mentally deranged person” who needs to be treated in a lunatic asylum as he poses a threat to the country. “His speeches are worrisome”. Modi in his turn had the same day attacked Pawar’s performance as the Union Agriculture Minister, blaming farmers suicides in Vidharbha on the faulty policies pursued by the Martaha leader.
Sure enough in the ensuing free for all the Congress’s venomous Digvijaya Singh was not to be denied and he delivered it with his usual panache. If Mani Shankar Aiyar, the originator of Modi, the chaiwallah script, has not been heard from of late, it may be because he is trying to get back into the Lok Sabha from his Tamilnadu constituency.
Narendra Modi has hoped to be spared the tag “maut ka saudagar” etc. of the Gujarat 2002 anti-Muslim riots post his judicial reprieve, but the ghost continues to haunt him. Putting Modi and himself on a high moral pedestal Arun Jaitley, a Modi confidant and BJP candidate from Amritsar, has argued that those asking for an apology from Modi for the post-Godhra happenings actually want to turn the apology into a confession.
Modi himself should rank among the peer purveyors of the ongoing vituperative campaign. Like, two days back he chose to hark back to Sonia Gandhi’s Italian origin, accusing her of having tried to save two Italian “murderers” of two Kerala seamen, shot at sea, probably mistaken for sea pirates. “Sonia should answer the people who helped Italian marines get safe passage after killing the two fishermen”, the all-knowing Modi demanded.
The fact is that the two were allowed to go home by the Supreme Court and have since returned to stand trial in India. Mr. P. Chidambaram quickly observes that this only shows that Modi suffers from serious character flaws………. I feel sorry the BJP has not yet pointed out to Modi these serious flaws in him”. And Modi shoots another oblique one in the meanwhile. “Aren’t rhinos the pride of Assam? These days there is a conspiracy to kill rhinos. And why? Because the Assam government wants to clear the area of the endangered rhinos to rehabilitate illegal Bangladeshi migrants there”. This one from the Modi book as revealed in Assam.
The Mulayam Singhs, the Kejriwals, the Mayawatis and the Jayalalithas and Mamtas are doing their bit, too, adding to the bitterness of the campaign.
A reluctant Congress has finally, as I said earlier, decided to make the political persona of Narendra Modi the central theme of its continuing national campaign. Sonia and Rahul are to address over a hundred rallies between them to lead the attack on the BJP’s superstar. The Congress had for long seemed unsure whether to campaign hard on its achievements of the past decade or to defend its weakness or to make a frontal assault on Modi.
It has now chosen to attack at the very heart of the saffron campaign. The more the BJP projects Modi as Prime Minister as its single point agenda the easier it may be for the Congress to focus its attack. As Chidambaram has said it is no more a BJP or a Modi-led BJP. But a BJP supplanted by Modi. It is dangerous for a democracy when one man becomes bigger than the party, he has said. Congress leaders conclude that the 24×7 showcasing of Modi’s aggressively noisy and determined bid for power is leading to a silent but solid consolidation of many Modi-wary social segments, including Muslims. It has also been noticed by the Congress that senior leaders of the BJP are being pushed around by Modi. The contradiction between the BJP and its allies over other issues will also be exploited. The manner in which seniors leaders like Advani, Sushma, Joshi, Jaswant Singh and others in the States have been pushed around is a simmering issue within the party which needs to be exploited. Sharad Pawar in the end may have provided the direction in which his main UPA lead partner should move in what is left of the poll campaign. And a bitter war of words it promises to be.
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