As in the past, elections for the15th Lok Sabha are also being fought in a less-than-egalitarian ambience and for less-than-laudable purposes. It is pure greed and un-alloyed lust for power that has pushed most of the contestants towards the electoral arena. Higher ideals continue to occupy the back seat.
The tragedy is the over-a-billion strong plural Bharat has no model contestants, believing in abnegation, service and sacrifice. Although the womb of mother India has not gone dry, it has, since long, failed to produce the Nehru-like “first servants” of India. That is why, clean politics and cleaner politicians still remain a distant dream. Politics is a somewhat less-than-clean profession now. Its avid practitioners do not believe in “wiping every tear from every eye.”
FACTS & FIGURES
Despite some efforts at cleansing the electoral system, corruption continues to corrode it. Political hypocrisy carries a premium. Basic honesty is at a discount. That is the reason why corruption in our country is immune to regime change.
One need not quote facts and figures to prove that the BJP-led NDA dispensation was punctuated with scams, exposed by the Tehelka, involving the purchase of AK-47 rifles and allotment of prime land to the Saffron Parivar.
The Cong-led UPA had also its share of shame in the form of wheat import, cash for vote and Volcker scandal. According to the Transparency International (T.I.) the global barometer for corruption, India has slipped to 85th position from the earlier 72nd on the integrity index , a mere 3.4 on a scale of 10 for honesty.
SIMPLE POINT
Corruption – need one repeat to drive home the simple point – generates the unhealthy sense of resignation, which ultimately saps any robust set-up. It accelerates inefficiency and its worst victims are the poorest of the poor. It is sad to point out that the efforts at electoral reforms too were not taken to their logical conclusion.
In the General Elections of 1996, the Election Commission seized illegal arms, which included 2,000 guns, 11,000 cartridges, 175 explosives and 57,000 bombs. Of the 13,952 candidates who contested nearly 1,500 had criminal records. Almost 700 MLAs out of 4,722 in the country were involved in criminal cases and trial was pending against them. This issue figured prominently during the special session of Parliament held in August 1997 and it was unanimously agreed to carry out meaningful electoral reforms.
UNCHANGED
But, moans Mr. Joginder Singh, a former Director of the CBI, “the situation remained unchanged.”
How easy is the entry of criminals in the portals of power can be imagined from the fact that of the 543 Members of Parliament, the Lok Sabha 2004 had 120 MPs with criminal records. Among the major parties, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had 29 MPs with criminal record, the Indian National Congress 24 , the Samajwadi Party (SP) 11, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) eight, Communist Party of India (Marxist) seven , Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) five, and Communist Party of India (CPI-M) two and Independents 27. Six MPs won while in prison.
THE QUESTION
Will the up-coming Parliament be free from the thugs? The question stares right across the face of political thinkers.
Ponder over the question in the light of the fact that a sum of estimated Rs.10,000 crore will be spent on organising the election!
Besides the all-pervasive corruption, another “seasoned” canker that has been eating into the very vitals of heterogeneous Bharat is hatred of the minorities. Although the RSS, the monster-mother, has fully realised its futility, the blighter continues to corrode the plural polity. The exponents of the dubious dogma, the Hindutva, want the nation to believe the Indian Muslims, the principal minority of the country, who also happen to be the second largest chunk of Muslim population throughout the world, are outsiders.
“FIMILIAR STENCH”
In a 1,225-word article titled “A Stench That is All Too Familiar” Mr. Siddharth Varadarajan (Asian Age, March 24) traces the genesis of the pernicious thinking: “As Jyotirmaya Sharma convincingly demonstrates in Terrifying Vision: M.S. Golwalkar, the RSS and India, Muslims have always been seen by the Sangh Parivar as alien, violent and threatening – “incomplete, uncultured and demonic” in the words of its most important sarsanghchalak. Muslims (and Christians) were scary like rakshasas and had no loyalty to India because they did not accept their kula dharma or ancestral duty towards Hinduism. They were ghar ke baharwaley – those who are not part of our home – and had to agree to be assimilated to the point where they no longer called themselves Ali , Hassan, John or Thomas. And if they refused, how should Hindus deal with the desecration of their motherland? “Parashuram avenged his father’s humiliation by offering him libations of blood of those who had insulted him,” Professor Sharma explains. “Likewise, the only way to worship the motherland after she had been defiled,” warns ‘Guru’ Golwalkar, “would be to wash it with the blood of those who dared commit such an act.”
GENESIS
It is this odorous thinking that produces the Varun Gandhis, the latest version of the Parveen Togadias, the Uma Bhartis and Ms Sadhvi Rithambharas. And why these poor, small fries alone? Listen to the urbane, soft-spoken and said to be tolerant and accommodative Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee: “Wherever Muslims live, they don’t like to live in co-existence with others, they don’t like to mingle with others and instead of propagating their ideas in a peaceful manner, they want to spread their faith by resorting to terror and threats.” He said so at Goa after violence in Gujarat on April 2, 2002, when mind it he was Prime Minister.
2007 V.C.D.
The eminent journalist also recalls: ‘On the eve of the 2007 Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, the BJP officially produced and distributed a VCD, Bharat ki Pukar in which a number of actors play out scenes of Muslim villainy to underline the Sangh’s message that Hindus are under siege. The VCD’s hero was a school teacher (masterji) who goes around telling Hindus to act before it is too late. “If you don’t vote (for) the BJP, you will regret it. The country will be enslaved by the Muslims and these tikas on your forehead will have to go and in their place you will have to grow beards.” His commitment to the cause eventually causes him to have a stroke and die. At his funeral, one of the mourners sounds a dire warning. “That day is not far away when we will be afraid to even call ourselves Hindu, and you will never be able to find a Sohanlal, Mohanlal, Atmaram or Radhekrishan anywhere. Wherever we look, we will only see Abbas, Naqvi, Rizvi and Maulvi.’
The BJP, when cornered, unabashedly disowned the above-mentioned C.D. as they initially disowned Mr. Varun’s speech. But now the Saffron is not only defending Mr. Varun but his speech also as they cannot disown their doctrine, Hindutva.
MUSLIM VIEW
It needs to be underscored in bold letters that Muslims expect the Saffron brethren to give up arms and venom. “All the Hindus stay on this side and send the others to Pakistan…. This is the lotus hand. It will cut their throats after elections.” These profane words of the boisterous boy, we feel, not only need to be disowned but condemned in superlatives at least for the sake of decency.