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No excuse for unconscionable excesses

B. S. Raghavan

in the US

The Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, Ms Jayalalithaa, no doubt, expects the people of India, in general, and Tamil Nadu, in particular, to take in their stride the excesses committed in the course of arresting the former Chief Minister, Mr M. Karunanidhi, and the roughing up of Central Ministers, Mr Murasoli Maran and Mr T. R. Baalu, as a tit-for-tat for all that she underwent during the DMK regime. Obviously, the memory of her incarceration for close to two months and the repeated telecasts laying bare her o stentatious lifestyle has been rankling. She had often given vent to her desire to pay Mr Karunanidhi back in the same coin if and when she came to power. Indeed, in a sense, the raison d'etre for her wanting to come to power was itself for the purpose o f savouring the sweetness of revenge.

Of course, nobody expected that Ms Jayalalithaa will show any nobility or generosity in dealing with her political opponents, and those who, in her view, did harm to her and her party, in a spirit of letting bygones-be-bygones. But everyone, including pe rhaps those such as Mr G. K. Moopanar, Ms Sonia Gandhi and other leaders who threw in their lot with her during the recent elections to the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly, hoped against hope, despite having studied her from close quarters sufficiently l ong to know her traits, that she would keep her burning urge for vengeance under control and that her style of governance will be within bounds of decency and civilised conduct and will maintain at least a semblance of respect for human rights and human dignity.

There were three regimes in history notorious for midnight arrests without warrants, monstrous manhandling of victims, removing them to faraway prisons where they cannot have the comfort of visits by their relatives and friends, and levelling draconian t hreats against the publication of visual and verbal reports covering these pernicious perpetrations: The Gestapo under Hitler, Stalinist Terror and Indira Gandhi's infamous Emergency. That the present AIADMK Government should join their ranks is a traves ty of the so-called democracy and rule of law by which we mechanically swear in season and out of season.

There is yet another concomitant of the concatenation of deplorable events. And that is the readiness with which the minions of law and investigating agency, under cover and colour of authority derived from the instructions received by them, indulged the animal in them and tried to ingratiate themselves with their current political masters by pulling, dragging and slapping someone who, after all is said and done, was a person of literary eminence and notable achievements in public life. This shows how d eep the rot has spread in the civil, administrative and police echelons and how dangerously politicised they have become.

Now that the deed is done, everyone gifted with some degree of sensitivity to right and wrong will make appropriate noises of disapproval which will soon subside, with everyone working overtime to put forward any number of time-dishonoured rationalisatio ns for not standing up and being counted to fight to the finish the egregious transgressions of common human decency and tearing to tatters the fabric of a society of such unexcelled vintage as that of the Tamils. Let me take them up one by one.

Rationalisation 1. After all, the arrests are in pursuance of a criminal case for corruption duly registered by the CB-CID. True, there have been some excesses committed by the police, but this is not unusual, nor is this for the first time. Did not the police some time ago under the DMK Government chase the demonstrators into a river leaving many dead by drowning? One does not know what the facts of the case are. We must wait until they unravel and let the law run its course.

Rationalisation 2. This will be mainly the plea of parties in alliance with the AIADMK. That party, with Ms Jayalalithaa declared in advance as the Chief Minister, and the alliance under her stewardship, have been triumphantly swept to power with more th an two-thirds seats in the legislature, giving the AIADMK an overwhelming majority in its own right. People, with the voice of God, have unequivocally expressed their backing for the AIADMK and its alliance, and all that they stand for. This they have do ne after hearing both the fulminations of Ms Jayalalithaa's political enemies and her explanations and future courses of action. We should do nothing to befoul the sanctity of the electorate's verdict and besmirch someone who has given evidence of comman ding such widespread support. The people are watching and they will be the final judges. Who are we to interpose ourselves?

Rationalisation 3. This is from the constituents (except the DMK) of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Let the Dravidian parties, which are in a class of their own in India's political spectrum, and which, in any case, are of only marginal conseque nce to the national mainstream politics, fight it out between themselves. We can always make a deal with the remnants of the bloody feuds in God's (that is, Rama's) own good time. Meanwhile, as Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Mr Arun Jaitley have already sai d and done, they will ask for facts and order the Chief Secretary, who may be wondering when he is going to be stood up against the wall and by whom, to post them with daily developments.

The DMK representatives will demand the dismissal of the Tamil Nadu Government for not functioning in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution and keep lodging their protest at NDA's inaction. They will find themselves outnumbered and, rather t han quitting the one perch of power giving them some leverage, will decide to keep the heat on and wait it out.

Rationalisation 4. This is for the media. They have an excellent excuse: Their mission is not to jump into the fray, but to report accurately, and comment fairly. With that their job is done. They are not crusaders or knights-errant to war against injust ice and foul play.

Rationalisation 5. The most supine of all will be the intelligentsia, intellectuals, and elites as they have demonstrated time and again. They are not the ones to leave the cosy comforts of their home and take to the streets to confront authority for any reason whatsoever. That will be undemocratic, unconstitutional and unseemly. They will suddenly transform themselves into multiple-handed personae, dissecting the developments to death with all their hands (On the one hand, on the other hand, on the thi rd hand ad infinitum.) By the time they are through, hopefully, there will be nothing left for them to concern themselves with.

I want to make only one point against all these rationalisations. The most important reason why evil prospers and injustice triumphs lies in the tendency of good people to look the other way when unconscionable violations take place. In doing so, they, l ike sheep contentedly chewing the cud watching their kind ahead in the line being taken to slaughter, only postpone the day of reckoning for themselves.

However, there is a redeeming feature in all these events that have shocked persons of finer susceptibilities. It would have brought realisation to every party and every leader that the process of vendetta, if allowed to go too far, will simply end up in total mutual decimation. This may bring about a sense of sobriety to the state of politics in Tamil Nadu and India which, after a few more Nights of the Long Knives, may settle down in a dynamic equilibrium of understanding and accommodation, as in othe r genuine and mature democracies.

Pic.: The former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and DMK president, Mr M. Karunanidhi, and the Commerce Minister, Mr Murasoli Maran, being taken in to custody... Can the TN Government's actions be rationalised?

Picture by Bijoy Ghosh