The RSS has always been a canny outfit. Realising that the unleashing of the ‘India shining’ and ‘feel good’ campaign may have been a major tactical blunder — 64 per cent Indians across the country have identified ‘unemployment, poverty and prices’ as the main issues in elections 2004 — it has now taken recourse to flogging two old dead horses: ‘foreign origin’ and Bofors.
Crucially, these issues are not dead simply because of the time lapse or public ennui. They have been rendered dead by the due processes of democracy. The RSS’s refusal to accept these due processes is a clear pointer to its repeated self-exclusion from the main lines of India’s struggle for independence and its post-Independence history.
It needs to be recalled that when the authors of India’s Constitution were formulating the rights and principles of citizenship, they had before them, among other paradigms, the American model. And yet, if they chose to inscribe only one non-discriminatory category of citizenship, they did so because the American model seemed a regressive one that undermined the very spirit of democracy.
That the Constitution Review Committee set up by the present government thought it better not to tamper with the ideals of the Constitution, despite the presence on the commission of the redoubtable Purno Sangma, can only be interpreted as the government’s own endorsement of the existing constitutional provisions.
Subsequently, the two other decisive sources of legitimisation besides the Constitution that inform and constitute the democratic system, namely the Supreme Court and vox populi, have both ratified Sonia Gandhi’s status as a citizen of India. That Sonia Gandhi was to receive a thumping mandate from both the north and south of the country must be seen to comprise acknowledgement of a rare kind.
{{/usCountry}}Subsequently, the two other decisive sources of legitimisation besides the Constitution that inform and constitute the democratic system, namely the Supreme Court and vox populi, have both ratified Sonia Gandhi’s status as a citizen of India. That Sonia Gandhi was to receive a thumping mandate from both the north and south of the country must be seen to comprise acknowledgement of a rare kind.
{{/usCountry}}Additionally, for five long years, the RSS and the government it has been back-seat driving at the Centre have been happily accepting Sonia as the authorised leader of the opposition — a cabinet rank position under the Constitution. This is important to state because, unlike the Congress which refused to accept George Fernandes as defence minister post-Tehelka, not once did the BJP or its allies express a similar refusal of Sonia Gandhi’s legitimacy in Parliament.
The only remaining option open to the government of the day was to seek an amendment to the Constitution to alter the provisions of citizenship. Difficult as it would have been to obtain such an amendment, a fact that testifies that the RSS-BJP notion of citizenship has never been shared by the vast majority of parties or people’s representatives, is that the measure was never attempted.
Clearly, since due process has everywhere failed to satisfy the skewed, medievalist requirements of the RSS/BJP, the election campaign has now offered them the scope to vent racist and patriarchal spleen. The ugly episode is proof that should the RSS/BJP come to power on their own steam, forms of State, nation and polity that Indians have struggled to achieve within a constitutional republic will be imperilled.
The campaign on Bofors provides more proof of the contempt with which the RSS views both the due processes of democracy and the principles of human decency. Those principles, clearly, seem to form no part of the much-touted category called dharma.
For 18 long years — during which the Congress remained out of power most of the time — the Bofors case has received threadbare scrutiny. At the end, the high court pronounced that there was not a ‘scintilla’ of evidence to implicate the Gandhis. At no time during the proceedings was a finger ever pointed at Sonia Gandhi. It is indeed an astonishing irony that the Hindujas, who admitted to receiving money from Bofors, were to find no less an advocate than Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the then leader of the opposition who, reportedly, wrote to Narasimha Rao on their behalf in the Bofors case. Indeed, Vajpayee also wrote repeatedly to the government on behalf of Quattrocchi’s company, Snamprogetti, to say that the latter had no involvement in an Indo-Oman joint venture. That Vajpayee changed that stance after becoming prime minister is another matter (The Hindu, April 11).
While we are told Sonia Gandhi can’t be trusted, being of foreign birth, Sten Lindstrom, a foreign police officer, has been pulled out of the rubble by an obliging newspaper editor to seemingly pronounce, via insinuation and innuendo, that Sonia Gandhi is, after all, in possession of the guilty truth. Never mind that the Lindstrom piece, as it turns out, is old hat, having been published some five years ago in another leading daily. Never mind that Lindstrom, in intimate knowledge of the Bofors case throughout its pendency, should have failed to produce any results out of that intimate knowledge — results that would stand the test of due process. Perhaps Lindstrom and those who now resurrect him need to tell the nation why. Perhaps the nation also deserves to be told why Lindstrom and his espousers have somehow always failed to investigate the mysterious ‘N’ of Ardbo’s diaries.
Every respectable theory of fascist politics tells us that the beast flourishes best when in State power. When not, it is known to slink, capitulate, ask for pardon. This is the recorded story from the days when Savarkar pleaded with the British, Golwalkar with Nehru, Deoras with Indira Gandhi, as satrap after satrap signed on the dotted line of the 20-point programme during the infamous Emergency and escaped to the comforts of home and hearth. Given that reality, what we are witnessing now is a no-holds-barred bid to retain State power through means fair or foul. The current contexts then are not of concern merely to the RSS and the Congress.
Every citizen who is committed to constitutional democracy and to the universe of processes and legal and behavioural practices it comprises must feel complicit in the goings-on. It is the Republic that is at stake.