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A stain on Indian democracy
By Rajeev Dhavan
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Good constitutional practices include the duty of political parties and their leaders to ensure that chargesheeted and communal persons are not permitted to stand for election on their party ticket.
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THREE YEARS ago, on January 23, 1999, Graham Staines and his two sons, Timothy and Philip, were murdered as they slept in their jeep. It was a ghastly incident. It needs to be remembered. Indian society is the greatest multicultural and multi-religious society that has ever graced human history. This is India's strength and uniqueness. Like the destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992, the murder of a missionary in 1999 must give us pause. Communal history, now being officially written into children's textbooks, is being reinforced by intrigue, murder and mayhem. An effort is being made to redesign India as a powder keg to blow up its unique and unparalleled history. But, India's electoral politics knows no limits. Those accused of committing ghastly communal crimes are being rewarded as politicians.
How do we honour Staines' memory? One way is to remember his death as a ghastly monument of contemporary history. The other way is to reward the alleged goondas and goons by inducting them as politicians. After the Staines' murder, the Justice Wadhwa Committee examined these events and expressed anguish, but refused to take a conclusive view on the political links between the alleged perpetrators of the murder and the various communal outfits, which are friends of the BJP. Justice Wadhwa's report has been criticised. But the story does not end there. After the Staines' murder, Dara Singh and others were accused of the crime. But humility does not come easily to those accused of communal crimes and a new organisation called the Dara Sena (Dara's Army) was created to protect the faith. Dara Singh himself has been socially elevated as a Dharma Rakshak (defender of the faith). Even though in custody, his message is clear. He wants to make a transition from rabid communalism into politics to stand for elections in Uttar Pradesh. Some members of the VHP applaud this. The script of the link between politics and the murder, which had eluded Justice Wadhwa, is now being written as future communal history.
Where do these political links take us? Why Dara Singh? Why Uttar Pradesh? The battle for Uttar Pradesh is the biggest electoral war in the Assembly elections. With over 140 million people, the State is greater in demographic size than most countries of the world. The BJP desperately needs to win there because it rules only in the smaller States such as Uttaranchal and Himachal Pradesh.
The trump card of the BJP and its allies in the State is Ayodhya. At the Kumbh Mela in 2001, the Ayodhya campaign to build a temple on the site of the Babri Masjid was reinforced following Mr. Vajpayee's "Musings from Kumarakom". Since then, there have been vast preparations amidst weak protests. The VHP says it wants 45.77 per cent of the 67 acres of the Babri Masjid, which it says is "unencumbered". Even law is twisted to fan politics.
The construction of the proposed Ayodhya temple will commence on March 12. By clever interpolations, it is made out that Mr. Vajpayee opposes what the VHP proposes to dispose. Into this enters Dara Singh — the dharma rakshak.. His proposed presence in this election underlines the worst of Indian politics. It has both political and social implications. Politically, the communal factor is set ablaze. Socially, people like Dara Singh are set up as an example to ordinary people as the heroes of our times. This is done unashamedly.
The Uttar Pradesh elections are bringing out the worst in Indian democracy. The BJP combine plays the Ayodhya card. The Congress(I) replies with secular affront rather than a secular front and combined strategy.
The Congress(I) pride has still not learnt the value of devising the kind of coalition strategies that have got the BJP in power. But while upholding secularism, the Congress(I) is not averse to goonda politics. There are reports that it may field Jai Narayan Tewari — an alleged mafia don — in the elections. This is after Sonia Gandhi gave a strong speech in Kanpur against the criminalisation of politics. But this is not reflected in the party's distribution of seats.
Promoting goondas has become a regular feature of, and has been inbuilt into, Indian politics. This is disconcerting — all the more so because nominations are distributed centrally. Why do parties give tickets to self-avowed communalists and persons chargesheeted in criminal cases who are increasingly filling up India's legislatures? How is this rot to be stopped? By politicians themselves? By the Constitution? Or by the law? This is the crucial question.
Politicians claim refuge in the law. Their effective defence is that the law permits them to nominate communal thugs and goondas as candidates for elections as long as such thugs and goondas have not been convicted of a disqualificatory crime. No doubt Section 8 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 disqualifies those guilty of listed socio-economic crimes and offences punished with more than 2 years imprisonment. This means that a person may be accused of hundreds of murders and even chargesheeted for them, but he will not be disqualified as long as he has not been convicted of the crime. An anguished Law Commission's report on electoral reforms (1999) says that those chargesheeted by a court should also be disqualified. This solution is not perfect but may merit consideration in the face of the rising tide of the criminalisation of politics.
But what if the law permits accused goondas, thugs and murderers to fight elections? Surely the high command in India's political parties should not be looking at legal loopholes but for opportunities to develop and sustain healthy constitutional practices. There is a distinction between mere legality, constitutional validity and constitutional practice. The law may permit certain things, which though constitutionally valid are nevertheless not sound as constitutional practice. Take the case of anti-defection. Even after the Anti-defection Amendment (1985), both the law and the Constitution permit defection within limits.
Since 1985, many Governments have been toppled by unscrupulous defections. Though legal, these are unsavoury constitutional practices. Ministers accused of policy failures used to accept responsibility by resigning — such as Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1956 and Krishna Menon in 1962. But, now Ministers do not resign even when accused of serious crimes. A healthy constitutional practice has not been developed because the law does not require ministers to resign in these situations. Similarly, giving seats to persons accused of serious crimes or of communal dispositions is not strictly illegal or unconstitutional, but is a wrong constitutional practice.
Amidst crisis, the strength of English parliamentary democracy is the existence of constitutional practices to govern political behaviour. Elsewhere in Asia and Africa, the parliamentary system has either failed or sustained dictatorial rule. Without good constitutional practices as part of day-to-day policies no Constitution can be sustained or survive.
Good constitutional practises include the duty of political parties and their leaders to ensure that chargesheeted and communal persons are not permitted to stand for election on their party ticket. There is nothing in the law or Constitution which forbids them from doing this. But the sad tragedy is that political parties prefer to have musclemen and communalists as part of their electoral armies.
Now let us return to Dara Singh and the memory of Staines. Dara Singh and Ayodhya are earmarked for Uttar Pradesh's elections. Outwardly, Mr. Vajpayee is lukewarm on Ayodhya. But with the implicit nod of Mr. Vajpayee, the BJP and its allies wish to exploit Ayodhya to the hilt. Mr. Vajpayee's foreign policy espouses secularism for India and Kashmir.
But the BJP's electoral policies espouses communal fundamentalism. That secularism is not just the basic structure of our Constitution but binds India together is ruthlessly forgotten.
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