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Wholly negative occurrences in recent weeks, including threats from the treasury benches to debar the leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha for life – lately topped by the arrest of ‘shirtless’ protesters against a government-sponsored international AI jamboree under non-bailable sections of the law – make a mockery of democracy as we have known it, and the way the term is generally understood. 

Even in a reduced democracy – where elections of a kind are conducted but that is where it stops – open threats cannot be made to evict the leader of the opposition from parliament through the use of brute majority, or by obtaining false confessions of wrongdoing from supporters through the use of coercive tactics. 

Rough methods such as these also raise questions: can there be a democracy without an opposition? Or, will only a loyal opposition be tolerated even as the system is called democratic? To these, add a third query: what kind of regime is it that demands only a quiescent opposition – one that will refuse to interrogate the government? Indeed, that roughly seems to be the kind of government we have landed.  

In a recent interview to ANI, Union parliamentary affairs minister Kiren Rijiju, no less, went to the extent of handing out open warnings. He identified Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to be “the most dangerous person for India’s security”. Why? Because the leader of the opposition meets “extremists” and “Naxalites”, and because he “associates with anti-India forces” and “with people like George Soros”.

Who or what exactly are these forces? That’s not stated. Are they Americans, Chinese, Russians, Arabs, Africans, or just plain Indians? How much power do they have even if they exist?  Or is this whole thing just a bogey built up by the regime in order to appear holier than thou “nationalists”, and on that basis spread pro-regime propaganda and play the victim when under opposition fire.

At any rate, who is this Soros, the regime’s bugbear frequently invoked by all and sundry in the ruling establishment in an illiterate effort to denigrate Rahul Gandhi? 

The plain facts are that 95-year-old Soros is one of America’s most famous investors who founded the Open Society Foundation after making great sums of money in the hedge fund business. He was a Nazi Holocaust survivor in his native, Hungary, and fled to England when the communists took over after the Second World War. He is clearly at odds with Nazism/fascism as well as communism. 

He worked as a railway porter and night club waiter to earn enough to study at the London School of Economics. Later, he emigrated to the United States, became a hedge fund tycoon and famously an adherent of the concept of “Open Society” propounded by the philosopher Karl Popper. Soros also supports the European Council on Foreign Relations and the International Crisis Group and holds honorary doctorates from Yale and Oxford. Where are the anti-India credentials here? Does Gandhi meet him? If so, what is objectionable about it?

Rijiju and others like him in the Modi orbit should dig more and let the country know why Soros is an undesirable character in their eyes. At any rate, they should explain why associating with this man in his nineties endangers India’s security. Is it because he speaks out against fascism and dictatorial regimes? 

What about the nonsensical chatter about Rahul Gandhi meeting Naxalites and extremists? Jayaprakash Narayan, whom the BJP once pretended to revere, also used to meet Naxalites and dacoits. That only added to the glow around him. If Mahatma Gandhi were around, he would have been the first to talk to them no matter how much he may have differed with them and their methods. 

In fact, it is only in the ideological ecosystem which sustains the regime that discussion, debate and dissent are deemed alien and dangerous. That ecosystem runs by command from the Great Leader who is beyond question. 

The move by the BJP benches in the Lok Sabha to evict the leader of the opposition from parliament, and Rijiju’s follow-on interview, ominously recall the case of Antonio Gramsci, a founder of the Italian Communist Party and a member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies (parliament), who came to be hailed as a political philosopher of standing after his prison writings under fascism came to notice.

Gramsci’s sharp questioning of the Mussolini fascist dictatorship in parliament led to his trial, arrest and imprisonment. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, at his trial the fascist prosecutor argued, “We must stop his brain from working for 20 years!” Gramsci’s party was then outlawed. He was arrested and imprisoned. His already frail health collapsed in confinement and he died practically right after his release.

As precedent, this is scary. Goings-on in India’s parliament and open attacks and violent conversation against the leader of the opposition and leader of the principal opposition party in parliament – whatever the rising weaknesses and multiplying deficiencies of that party – are becoming frequent, and are done without a cost attached to such acts. 

It is not as if the top leaders of government pull up their followers who so casually hold out unseemly threats that ought never to be uttered. The matter does not merely concern a particular individual, it goes to the root of the health of the institutions and practices that make a parliamentary democracy.           

Seen in light of the ‘shirtless’ protesters being rounded up under non-bailable sections of the law with a view to establishing a “conspiracy” in the AI Impact Summit protest case, and Delhi Police visiting other states to arrest protesters, it does seem that the aim of the authorities appears to be not so much to rough up a few individuals linked to the Congress party but to involve Rahul Gandhi with a so-called “conspiracy” against the state. 

In such a schema, disapproving a government programme through a protest is equated to a crime against the state.  The idea of a “conspiracy” is easily presupposed by the country’s rulers these days. Opposing government’s actions and criticising its leaders comes at a price, as was the case in the era of kingship. Expressions like “Rajdroh” (sedition) and “Deshdroh” (crime against the country) are bandied about with regularity when the government is criticised. 

In an India where debate and discussion, even in legislatures, are positively frowned upon by those in authority, and important issues are decided with no questions asked and no clarifications given, every action or thought of political opponents is viewed with the deepest suspicion. 

Such is the state of affairs, although no single party, or an agglomeration of parties, is at the moment in a position to effectively challenge the waywardness and the hollowness of the propaganda-propelled Modi government, or may be such is the case because the regime sees no effective challenge to it. 

There is, however, a one-man army constituted of Rahul Gandhi alone, which appears to routinely disturb the equanimity of the Prime Minister and his courtiers. Since Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra of 2022-23, everything the Congress leader says in the parliament or outside of it, seems to make the regime jumpy. Perhaps it is this nervousness that is leading some of its key figures to think up strange thoughts about having him put away.   

It is Gandhi’s natural proclivity to pose inconvenient and sharp questions that is clearly behind the decision of the Lok Sabha Speaker to silence him and not let fully participate in the debate on the motion of thanks to the President’s address with which the budget session of parliament opened.

For the parliament, the President’s address outlines the government’s priorities and intentions. It is no small irony for India’s democracy that the leader of the opposition was prevented on the flimsiest count from taking the floor and dissecting the government’s actions on behalf of the country on such an occasion. He had barely begun when he was stopped mid-stride after making a few perfunctory remarks.

The ostensible reason was a technical one – that the leader of the opposition could not be permitted to quote from a book that had not been published. But Gandhi was quoting from an article in a well known publication, not a book.  The article referred to the forthcoming publication of the memoirs of former Army Chief General M.M. Naravane whose working title is “Four Stars of Destiny”. It purportedly drew on the contents of the memoir whose publication has so far been blocked by the government.

Although the questions raised are of a stinging nature, the LoP had not risen to enquire about the status of the publication of the book. He was enquiring whether in the military conflagration with China in May 2020, it was true that then Army chief, General Naravane, had been instructed not to order firing without prior clearance from the prime minister.  

However, after frantically seeking clearance as Chinese tanks advanced in the Kailash Range, the chief was fobbed of for many hours until the enemy tanks were just about half a kilometre away. Then the instruction came, “Do as you see fit!” Defence minister Rajnath Singh conveyed that message on the phone. The PM did not communicate directly with the Chief. 

In effect, the Indian Army was left high and dry in a crucial situation. It had been prevented from taking action when it could have. The inference is the Army had been let down in war and its chief felt an acute sense of isolation. Had the PM, by inference, abdicated his responsibility when the going got tough? This is the unsaid poser.

All that the government needed to confirm or deny on the floor of the parliament was whether or not this chain of events, referred to by Gandhi, actually transpired. It was immaterial where the opposition leader had got his information. But the government chose to remain silent on the facts. It chose instead to engage in technicalities as regards the publication of the memoirs and on parliament rules about what is permitted to be quoted, thus denying the country access to facts on a crucial matter of national security. 

Also read: Rahul Gandhi Acted Within Parliamentary Norms When He Brought Up Ex-Army Chief’s Memoirs

On the floor of the parliament, it showed a clear disinclination – and the courage – to come out with the facts. The journal article, which narrates the story, is very much in the public domain and has been widely disseminated. No denial has so far been issued by the government.

It is evident that the government decided to avoid a discussion on the China military confrontation issue and therefore prevented the LoP from carrying on. The bitterest irony was that Prime Minster Narendra Modi gave time-honoured tradition the go-by and himself declined to appear in parliament to reply to the debate on the motion of thanks to the President’s address, possibly anticipating opposition questions. 

Did he duck a crucial responsibility? Was he afraid to stand up in the House lest he be asked more questions regarding the border conflict of 2020? 

The Speaker blandly informed the Lok Sabha that it is he who had advised the PM to keep away since he had – presumably secret – information that women MPs of the Congress planned to gherao the PM when he came to the House. Should the PM run away in anticipation of such a possibility even if the so-called threat is genuine? The country would think he was made of sterner stuff. 

In any case, Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has strenuously sought to refute the Speaker’s observation on this matter. She is certainly in a position to know. So, the question is did a substantive threat actually exist, or did the Speaker just make up the plot? Or, was he, in reality, advised by the government to do so and duly obliged? 

Questions such as these have a direct bearing on the functioning of the parliament, on the role of the Speaker as envisaged in our constitutional scheme, and with the prime minister keeping away on the issue of the government’s responsibility to the parliament in a parliamentary democracy. Such and similar questions remain unanswered. The longer they hang in the air, the worse will be the testimony to the health of our democratic order. India has a real parliament, not a sham so-called law-making body that operates on the pleasure of the rulers.

These are extraordinary and unprecedented happenings for the country. They strike at the very root of our parliamentary democracy. It is none of the Speaker’s business under the rules to ask the PM not to come to the parliament for fear of being politically cornered. His job is to conduct the proceedings smoothly, according to the rules, by giving all sides of the House fair opportunity and not favour the government. It is also no less surprising that the PM supposedly took the Speaker’s advice and stayed away!

It is truly a strange parliament in which the leader of the opposition is silenced from asking questions while the prime minister absents himself and is voluntarily silenced by his own inability to proffer the facts before elected representatives of the people, and the parliamentary affairs minister plays his part by attacking the LoP as “the most dangerous man for India’s security!” 

What seems to be going on is that the political executive is making concerted attempts to turn the clock back on the Indian State and Republic inaugurated upon the defeat of British colonial rule through a mass movement in which ordinary Indians, led by selfless men and women of high stature, made heroic sacrifices over many decades. Men with feet of clay are seeking today to undo that history suffused with glory.

In its first meeting held at Seva Teerth, the new PMO Complex, the Union cabinet passed a “Seva Sankalp” or ‘Resolution to Serve’ on February 24, pledging to take all future decisions in the interest of 140 crore citizens. According to the PTI, this was announced by Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw.

So, the question is what was the Modi government doing these past 10 years?

“Nagrik Devo Bhavah” – which translates in English to, ‘citizen is the equivalent of god’ – is a clever play on the ancient Indian saying “Atithi Devo Bhavah” (guest is the equivalent of god).

This is an administrative philosophy introduced by PM Modi and will be the guiding principle at Seva Teerth.

Anand K. Sahay is a veteran journalist.

© The Wire