The Hindu : Dreadful diatribe

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Aug 27, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

Dreadful diatribe

REFERRING TO THE abhorrent personal attack he launched on the Chief Election Commissioner, the unrepentant and unashamed Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, now quips that "the controversy is over". But why did it begin in the first place? Surely, what is relevant about the so-called Narendra Modi-J.M. Lyngdoh face-off is not that it has been `skillfully' tidied up by the intervention of the Prime Minister but the squalid and totally unforgivable nature of the former's diatribe against the latter. In a litany of insults, the Gujarat Chief Minister linked Mr. Lyngdoh's decision ruling out early polls in the State with the fact that he is a Christian and with the fiction that he is a closet Congressman. Remarks which suggest the Chief Election Commissioner is a `foreigner' or biased against the majority community cannot be explained away merely in terms of resentment against an Election Commission order which strongly criticised the Gujarat Government for its failure to restore normality in the riot-hit State in the context of its announcement that it would be impossible to conduct a free and fair election there immediately. Mr. Modi's statements reflect more than anger at being denied the opportunity of using the existing and communally polarised situation to his party's advantage in the election. His utterances reek of communalism and xenophobia — bad enough by themselves but even more dangerous when one considers this is a reflection of not merely his pique but his very philosophy.

In so much as it has persuaded Mr. Modi to call off low and personal attacks against a high Constitutional dignitary such as the Chief Election Commissioner, the intervention of the Prime Minister to end what he referred to as an "unseemly controversy" is a welcome one. But the Prime Minister has been much too mild when dealing with the errant Chief Minister. In expressing his distress about the "undignified remarks" made about the Chief Election Commissioner, Mr. Vajpayee's statement made no direct reference to Mr. Modi. The tenor of the Prime Minister's remarks were more oblique than even that of his senior Cabinet colleague, Murli Manohar Joshi, whose reprimand of Mr. Modi was relatively more blunt and straightforward. Given the scurrilous nature of the Chief Minister's remarks, what Mr. Modi really deserved was a direct dressing down and not merely a response couched in the language of an appeal.

Mr. Modi's attack on Mr. Lyngdoh comes at a time when a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court is examining the legal validity of the Chief Election Commissioner's decision to defer the Gujarat polls. Among the questions the Court will consider is whether the Election Commission had violated Article 174 (1), which stipulates that not more than six months must elapse between the end of the sitting of one session of a Legislative Assembly and the commencement of another. When the very issue that agitates Mr. Modi and his political fellow travellers in Gujarat — namely, the delay in holding the polls — is under the scrutiny of the Supreme Court, attacking Mr. Lyngdoh is an affront not only to the office of the Election Commission but also an affront to the highest court in the land. It is doubtful whether Mr. Modi, whose insensitivity during the Gujarat carnage plumbed new depths, is concerned about such niceties. If he was, he was unlikely to have launched such a tasteless and offensive attack against Mr. Lyngdoh. Rubbishing a Constitutional dignitary such as the Chief Election Commissioner in such a manner is unacceptable at any time. But doing so when the Supreme Court is seized of the Gujarat election matter is even worse. It reflects not merely indecorousness but also a contempt for the law.

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