Chomsky’s Hypocrisy over Nandigram

Noam Chomsky, the intellectual icon, is the biggest draw for a cause the Leftists all over the world hold dear. That is why when the left-wing intellectuals — who were protesting the other day on the streets of Kolkata against the brutalities of the Left Front government in Nandigram — read out an e-mail message of support from Noam Chomsky, they must have thought that it was a big chastisement for Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the chief minister.

But some rearguard action by the Left Establishment in India seems to have done the trick. An open letter written by Chomsky and some other intellectuals to ‘Our Friends in Bengal (published in the Hindu dated November 22) has virtually taken the case away from the Left critics and reinforced the hands of the Left Establishment.

Take, for instance, how deftly the letter is framed. It begins like this: “News travels to us that events in West Bengal have overtaken the optimism that some of us have experienced during trips to the state. We are concerned about the rancour that has divided the public space, created what appear to be unbridgeable gaps between people who share similar values. It is this that distresses us. We hear from people on both sides of this chasm, and we are trying to make some sense of the events and the dynamics. Obviously, our distance prevents us from saying anything definitive. We continue to trust that the people of Bengal will not allow their differences on some issues to tear apart the important experiments in the state (land reforms, local self-government).”

This ‘unity of the Left’ principle, come what may, is the bane of the Chomskian intellectual paradigm. Chomsky himself has said: “It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies.” And that is exactly what the intellectuals, who have been friends of the Left politics in the state for decades, were doing on the streets of Kolkata and other cities.

Yes, they shared the values represented by the Left. But when they found a political party, which is supposed to be the vanguard of the Left politics, resorted to thuggish methods of an arch reactionary outfit. They had no other option but to give vent to their anger. And they did it, not by wreaking havoc on the streets, as the Left and the Right hoodlums often tend to do; their silence spoke their angst.

Instead of giving moral support to their cause, what Chomsky et al are doing? They are exhorting the presumably misguided Left activists not to ‘tear apart the important experiments undertaken in the state land reforms, local self-government).’

And, pray, who is Chomsky reminding about the milestones of the Left Front government’s achievements in West Bengal? People like Mrinal Sen, the celebrated filmmaker and a friend of Buddhadeb over half a century, who despite his ripe old age, took to the streets to register his protest. Sankha Ghosh, the poet, who till the other day was an integral part of the Left Establishment in Bengal (he was the vice president of the Bangla Academy), Medha Patkar who has been championing the cause of the marginalized for years, Sumit Chakravarty, the Editor of ‘Mainstream’
which remains an uncompromised platform for leftist ideas, Praful Bidwai whose passionate critique of the Indo-US nuclear deal in his writings earned him the derisory remarks of being a ‘Leftist hack’. The list is long, as many who had for long earned the epithets of ‘Left intellectuals’ were found crossing the swords with the Left government over Nandigram issue.

By asking them not to ‘allow their differences on some issues to tear apart the important experiments undertaken in the state’, Chomsky and his fellow writers have virtually thrown their weight on the side of the Left government.

For, in the entire letter, there is not a single indictment of the government, but there are a whole lot of endorsements. There is one vague statement: ‘We send our fullest solidarity to the peasants who have been forcibly dispossessed’. Dispossessed by whom? By implication, the Bhumi Ucched Pratirodh Committee, which is accused by the CPI (M) of evicting its cadre during the seven months it laid siege to the area.

But Chomsky is very definitive about who deserves the praise. ‘We understand that the government has promised not to build a chemical hub in the area around Nandigram. We understand that those who had been dispossessed by the violence are now being allowed back to their homes, without recrimination. We understand that there is now talk of reconciliation. This is what we favour.’

Clearly, in Chomsky’s assessment, the Left government in West Bengal is doing all the right things. It is the Left critics who need to be chastised. Chomsky sets out the reasons in the next paragraph: ‘the balance of forces in the world is such that it would be impetuous to split the Left. We are faced with a world power that has demolished one state (Iraq) and is now threatening another (Iran). This is not the time for division when the basis of division no longer appears to exist.’

So Chomsky, as his wont, uses the American bogeyman to silence the Left critics. Yes, the US is an Evil Empire. It is the duty of every Left intellectual to stand up to thwart its evil designs. But does that mean that the Leftists blink at all the misdeeds of what calls itself a Left government? Shouldn’t the intellectuals speak the truth and expose the lies of even a Left government? Or, their ire should only be targeted against the governments that don’t call themselves leftist?

Chomsky would opt for the first and third option and dump the second, as he has done in the past. He wrote and spoke eloquently and rightly about the Indonesian terror in East Timor, but downplayed and rationalized,
hypocritically, the brutalities committed by Pol Pot in Cambodia just because he rode to power on a Left platform.

The Left is morally superior because it is humane; but when monsters are masquerading as Leftists, it is the job of the Left intellectuals to expose them. But Chomsky would rather defend them. He perhaps has a rationalization for the CPI (M)’s Nandigram terror, as he had about the terror unleashed by the National Liberation Front (NFL, the communist outfit of North Vietnam) while trying to take control of South  Vietnam.

He had said: “I can’t accept the view that we can just condemn the NFL terror, because it was so horrible… If it were true that the consequences of not using terror would be that the peasantry in Vietnam would continue to live in the state of the peasantry of the Philippines [this was the rationale put out by the NFL] I think the use of terror would be justified.” Had there not been the Left intellectuals in the forefront against the government in West Bengal, Chomsky would have promptly issued an NFL-like justification of official terror by the Buddhadeb government.

This double standard is the bane of Chomskian legacy. The Leftist intellectuals in India will have to carry on their struggle fully aware that Chomsky’s sympathies lie on the Establishment side of the Left divide.

How is Buddhadeb different from Modi?

Nandigram has created a wedge between the Left Establishment and the Left intellectuals. A large section of academics, artists, filmmakers who have been rallying to the defence of the Left parties for decades have now taken to the streets to deplore the Left government’s shenanigans in Nandigram.

When the CPI(M) looked around for support among intellectuals to defend its action, it found none, except people like the JNU professor couple, Prabhat and Utsa Patnaik, who are academically great economists no doubt, but ideologically, are no better than the bonded labour hitched to the services of the Party. That is why their statement released to the media contained exactly the same arguments which Prakash Karat made in the party organ, the People’s Democracy, and which Nilotpal Basu makes in his column here on this site.

Mr.Basu begins his column with an attack on the media. He goes on to say, “When the mainstream media takes such an interest on a subject that involves something so intensely political as compared to, say, the Aishwarya-Abhishek marriage, one needs to raise one’s eyebrows”.

Admitted, there is a lot to criticize about the obsession of the mainstream media with the rich, the glamorous and the powerful. But to accuse them of not taking interest in subjects that are ‘intensely political’ is a travesty of truth. After all, the mainstream media had taken a huge interest in Narendra Modi’s Gujarat during and after the riots in (in 2002) which were an intensely political issue.

Narendra Modi made a hue and cry about the media then, just as Nilotpal Basu is doing now. Mr. Basu and his party hailed the mainstream media when the BJP was at the receiving end. But as the media’s exposes focus on the Left’s acts of omission and commission, Mr. Basu and his fellow travellers find fault with them for being selective and obtrusive.

Mr. Basu makes fun of the headlines in the mainstream media; “‘Murder of democracy’ by ‘armed thugs’ of the CPI (M) ‘in connivance with the state government’; ‘Buddhadeb Bhattacharya has become a ‘Narendra Modi'”. But Mr. Basu never explains in his write-up how Buddhadeb Bhattacharya is different from Narendra Modi; it is because he is bereft of any logical explanation.
Both have been at the helm of a democratically elected legitimate government. But both grossly abused their position to sub serve partisan interests. In both the cases, when their respective party hoodlums took law into their hands and indulged in arson, loot and rape, the chief ministers asked the state machinery to look the other way.

Narendra Modi justified the bloodshed on the specious plea that it was the spontaneous reaction of the Hindus to the Godhra incident. Buddhadeb Bhattacharya justifies the ‘violent re-capture’ of Nandigram as the spontaneous reaction of the CPI (M) cadre to the aftermath of the March 4 incident when activists opposed to the CPI (M) had laid siege to the area.

What is the difference between a Narendra Modi and a Buddhadeb? Both took oath under the Constitution to represent and look after the welfare of the entire state. But both breached the pledge for narrow political considerations.

Narendra Modi reaped the political dividends and won a landslide victory in the subsequent election. When Buddhadeb’s political fortunes are dwindling, he must have found a Modi-like strategy a potent tool for political survival.

Look at the cheek of a chief minister who justified the violent re-capture of Nandigram on the basis that “our men”, (the CPI (M) thugs), had the right to pay back the Trinamul thugs in the same coin. This is reminiscent of what Rajiv Gandhi said after the anti-Sikh pogrom following Indira Gandhi’s assassination: When a big tree falls, the ground beneath has to take the toll.

From Rajiv Gandhi to Narendra Modi to Buddhadeb Bhattacharya – it is the same story. It is the language of the power that speaks. That is why it is so similar, so familiar. In each case, the Media becomes the fall guy.

When Manoj Mitta, a conscientious journalist, recounted the horrendous incidents of anti-Sikh riots in a book released recently, the mindless Congress spokesman, Abhishek Singhvi, dismissed much of it as speculative writing.

When Rajdeep Sardesai asked Narendra Modi at the HT Leadership Summit if he ever regretted the Gujarat events of 2002, the chief minister, whose complicity in the murder of over 2000 innocent people is an open secret, exhorted the media to come out of the negative mindset.

In the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 and anti-Muslim riots of 2002, at least, the media, despite threats and provocations, were able to report the criminal connivance of the ruling party in the mayhem. But the CPI (M), which is now talking a lot about the democratic mandate and the popular support, did not allow the media persons for days to enter Nandigram and see the depredations that its hooligans caused to ‘re-capture’ the territory.

The Indian Express report (New Delhi edition, November 16) that gives a first hand account of a woman who was gang raped, along with her two teen-aged daughters by the CPI(M) men on the night of November 6 is just not an anti-Left propaganda. Medical reports established rape and the police officers have admitted that the named accuseds are activists of the CPI (M).

Pose this to Nilotpal Basu and his knee-jerk reaction will be to ask back, as he has done in his column: why did the media not report about the events in the long interregnum of seven months when Nandigram was occupied? Again, that is not true. When Nandigram was ‘liberated’ by a motley group of desirable and undesirable political elements, the media went to town with it. But when the novelty factor was gone and the occupation became a routine affair, there was nothing much to report about.

But even if the media were at fault and the illegal occupiers were to be evicted and the legal settlers were to be restored their property, should not it have been done legally, by the legitimate institutions of the government?

By allowing the party cadre to take law into their hands and then gloating over it, as Buddhadeb Bhattacharya has done and as Nilotpal Basu seeks to do, the CPM has shown that power has corrupted the innards of even a communist party that makes it indistinguishable from its bourgeois counterparts.

Why does the mob take the law in its hands in Bihar?

The state of Bihar made the national headlines (both in print and television) for three times in quick succession in the last one month for all the wrong reasons. The latest reason is the mob violence wreaking havoc. First was in Bhagalpur where two policemen were shown on video joining the mob in thrashing a thief. The second case was in Nawada where three bicycle thieves were brutally assaulted; one of them lost his eye in the mob fury. Last week, in a third incident, 10 thieves were lynched by an irate mob in a village in Vaishali, barely 50 kilometres from the state capital.

Commentators all over the country have variously described these incidents as symptomatic of the breakdown of the civil society and rightly so. But you ask the people involved in the crime: They would say that they are forced to take the law into their hands because the law enforcing agencies do not come to their help. Should we be at the receiving end of the criminal depredations always, they ask.

Having lived in Bihar for over a decade and being a witness to several incidents of mob violence, every time it left one’s innards churning for days after they happened.

 

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One particular incident happened early on a Sunday morning. I heard a huge commotion in the backyard of the apartment in which I lived. I rushed down to see what had happened. It was an unbearable sight. There was a man lying dead in the middle of the road and his head had been smashed by a huge stone lying beside him. What was most disturbing most was to see the all those familiar people in the neighbourhood — state government officials, bank employees and businessmen — endorsing the action on the hope that it would serve as a deterrent for the potential criminals in the area.

You tell them that they ought to have handed over the thief to the police and they would retort that that is the surest way to ensure that criminals thrive – after all, the thugs know very well how easy it is to bribe your way out of the police station. It is only those who do not belong to a gang and who do not have the means to grease the palms of the police are forwarded to the jail, they would say. They would even argue that the police have a vested interest in letting the criminal activities flourish, as that would add to their bourgeoning kitty.

If this is the perception of the so-called middle class in a capital town, it is hardly surprising that similar cynicism percolates down the line. That explains why you seethe recent happenings in Bhagalpur, Nawada and Vaishali, which is a common occurrence, but these happened to get greater coverage in the media while others are consigned to the sidelines.

Bhagalpur incident got saturation coverage because a local TV journalist managed to capture the scene on his camera. What added to the grist is the supposed abetment of the mob violence by two policemen. Many were disturbed that the policemen, instead of restraining the law-breakers, became their accomplice.

The policemen were dismissed in no time.

Anil Sinha, the Inspector General (Administration) of Bihar government came on television to announce that the Bihar government had dispensed with their services and salvaged the sanctity of the state institution. This incident has a striking similarity with that of Uma Khurana, the school teacher in Delhi, who was dismissed from services soon after a sting operation by a TV channel (Live India) claimed that she was using school girls for prostitution. It led to mob violence. Arvind Singh Lovely, the Delhi state’s education minister, lost no time to announce on television her dismissal from service.

In both the cases, the television footage led to the instant justice because the authorities believed that the camera could not lie. But, fortunately for Uma Khurana, leading newspapers and television channels raised the issue of credibility of the camera expose and ultimately, the truth came out – that she was a victim of circumstances.

Unfortunately for the two policemen, the mainstream media believed what they saw and did not ask probing questions: was it true that both of them actually acted in a brutal manner as they were shown on the video? If yes, why did they do so? That would have thrown some light on the way the system works.

During my years in Bihar as a journalist, I visited different parts of the state whenever major crimes happened. I invariably asked the local police officials: why did they fail in anticipating and preventing the crime? Their usual response was that they were always far outnumbered to retaliate when a criminal gang struck; by the time the reinforcement came in, the criminals were through with their job and gone.

The same was the case when the mob violence occurred. What could the two policemen have done to control a marauding mob? Couldn’t they have resorted to firing, or atleast a lathi-charged or tear-gas? But it is quite possible that had they tried to physically rescue the thief from the mob, both of them would have been probably lynched. So the usual reaction of the two policemen would have been to watch the scene from the sidelines, like bystanders. Then, the inevitable would have happened – the thief would have been lynched.

Many policemen have told me that the only way to pacify an unruly crowd is to fake sympathy with their cause and seize initiatives from their hands. The two policemen probably tried to do the same and succeeded in saving the life of the thief but in the process, lost their job.

This must have sent the message down to all policemen: you will be better off if you allow the mob to take the law into its hands, when you are not equipped to take it on.

And since the police force in Bihar is woefully ill equipped, that is a clear invitation to a mob to let loose its orgy.

It will not be surprising, therefore, if many more Nawadas and Vaishalis are waiting to happen in Bihar in the days to come.

Shahabuddin:The Epitome of Criminal-Politician Nexus

The RJD MP Mohammed Shahabuddin was last week sentenced by a Sessions’ court in Bihar to 10-year rigorous imprisonment for attacking the then Siwan SP in 1996. Given the number of criminal charges pending against him, it is reasonable to surmise that Shahabuddin may have to spend his whole lifetime in jail, unless, of course, the political circumstances undergoes a dramatic change.

Shahabuddin probably best symbolizes the much-derided nexus of politicization of crime and the criminalization of politics. He began his career as a criminal very early in his life, entered politics on his own steam, won the assembly election as an independent in 1990, when he was just 23, two years short of the statutory minimum age for becoming an MLA. The matter went to the court; by the time the court invalidated his election, he had almost completed the term.

By then, he had become so popular in his Ziradei constituency (Ziradei was the birthplace of India’s first President Rajendra Prasad) that different political parties started wooing him. Laloo Prasad Yadav, who had a hugely successful term as chief minister from 1990 to 1995, had worked hard to cement the Muslim-Yadav (M-Y) alliance in Bihar. He desperately wanted Shahabuddin in his party fold to strengthen his political base. Shahabuddin was also eager to join hands with the Laloo regime as it allowed him to treat the entire district of Siwan (of which Ziradei was a part) as his fiefdom.

Thus the alliance was mutually beneficial. Shahabuddin contested the 1995 assembly election as an RJD candidate and, expectedly, won a landslide victory. When the Lok Sabha election came in 1996, Shahabuddin demanded and got the RJD ticket for Siwan seat and won handsomely.

He had by then become a political star. In the district of Siwan, the long hand of law never reached him. His writ was law. Top officials in the district (the district magistrate, the superintendent of police and even the judicial officials) had no other option but to do his bidding.

 

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Otherwise, they knew he would paralyse their functioning and if need arose, could hound them out. One young SP, S K Singhal, dared to take him on. But Shahabuddin retaliated with such ferocity that the police officer found himself helpless. The SP lodged an FIR against Shahabuddin and asked for reinforcements to challenge the well-armed gangster. But the state government carried out the fiat of Shahabuddin and issued marching orders to the SP.

The message was loud and clear. The state machinery was at his beck and call. Nobody dared touch him. It was not surprising that though several cases of murder, kidnapping and intimidation had been lodged against him, he was never arrested, let alone convicted. The prosecution never found sufficient evidence, witnesses never saw him committing any offence and the judges never found any basis to indict him.

The criminal-politician got a jolt for the first time when the CPI-ML (Liberation), the only party to pose any semblance of political fight against Shahabuddin, filed a petition before Justice D P Wadhwa, the then chief justice of Patna High Court, praying for the arrest of Shahabuddin, who was the prime accused in the murder of a CPI-ML leader, Chandrashekar. Justice Wadhwa was aghast at the police officers’ contention that Shahabuddin, then a Member of Parliament, was absconding and he was beyond their reach! Justice Wadhwa warned the police officials that he would place them behind the bars if Shahabuddin was not presented before the appropriate court within 10 days. The order led to panic in the state machinery. They rushed to Laloo Yadav to broker a solution.

After a lot of deliberations and legal consultations, Laloo Yadav advised Shahabuddin to surrender himself before the court, instead of the police arresting him. Taking on a Chief Justice of the high court was not wise, he was told. That apart, there was a buzz in the legal circles that Justice Wadhwa was in the line to be elevated to the Supreme Court soon. Shahabuddin was told that it was only a matter of time; with Justice Wadhwa’s elevation, there would be no problem in getting him released. Shahabuddin realized that the surrender before the court was the best possible course in the given circumstances; that way, he would tell the world that he had the highest respect for the judiciary.

The mammoth rally that he led spanned over a stretch of three kilometres before he surrendered in a local court. He possibly wanted to tell everyone concerned – politicians, bureaucrats and judicial officials – how popular he was and they would mess around with him only at their peril.

I had my first encounter with him while he was in the jail. I was covering the bye-election to the Ziradei constituency, which he had vacated after getting elected to the Lok Sabha. The RJD had fielded S S Yadav, a veteran of many a political battle, to represent a constituency, which was known as Shahabuddin’s pocket borough. The opposition candidates had launched a campaign that Shahabuddin wanted a Muslim candidate whereas Laloo Yadav foisted a Yadav one; so the RJD would lose the seat without Shahabuddin’s blessings.

I wanted to hear it from the horse’s mouth. So I went to the Siwan jail to meet him. It was five in the afternoon. The jail superintendent met me outside the gate and told me that the MP was kept in solitary confinement after 3 pm and no one could meet him thereafter without the special permission of the district magistrate or district judge. I sought out both of them as I had to leave for Patna the next morning but both refused saying that they couldn’t permit me to see him at that hour without the permission of the high court which had ordered his incarceration.

Frustrated, I went to see Mr. Yadav. He rubbished the opposition for desperately trying to mislead the people. “I am Shahabuddin’s candidate, not Laloo Yadav’s”. Laloo Yadav wanted a Muslim candidate, but Shahabu (as Shahabuddin is fondly called by elders fawning over him) insisted on my candidature, he said.

As if to corroborate his point, he asked me to speak to Shahabuddin himself. He dialed a number and told the person on the other side, “A journalist from Patna says that you are not supporting me. Tell him the truth”, and handed over the phone to me. The man I was talking to on phone told me exactly the same what Yadav had said.

But I was not sure if it was Shahabuddin (I had never spoken to him before and I was wondering how could he have a telephone in his cell as there was no mobile phone then). I asked if I could see him. His response was instant: “Why don’t you come along now”? It was almost 9 PM and I rushed in disbelief.. Just as I reached the jail gate again, there were two persons waiting to escort me inside. A small door opened, and after a few steps, another door opened and I was ushered into a big room (later I came to know that it was jail superintendent’s chamber). I found Shahabuddin sitting in a revolving chair and more than 100 people squatting on the floor. Apparently, they were discussing the nitty-gritty of the elections!

Shahabuddin warmly received me and directed me to the other vacant chair. He repeated what he had told me earlier about Yadav’s candidature. He expressed his innocence, how he has been dedicatedly working for the welfare of the constituents; how his political rivals were jealous of him and trying to implicate him in false cases; how he had great faith in the judiciary and that he would come out clean eventually. Throughout the conversation that lasted for over an hour, he was at his civil best and he said everything politically correct.

When I asked him the conditions in jail and he started responding, someone stood up from among the crowd with folded hands and told him in colloquial Hindi, which translated in English meant; “It is my prayer to the Lord not to discuss the condition of the jail”. To my utter dismay, I found it was none other than the jail superintendent himself who had fobbed me off in the afternoon. Shahabuddin conceded his plea and requested me to strike off his comments on jail conditions.

When the time came to bid goodbye, to my surprise, Shahabuddin came out of the jail gate, up to my car and shook hands: “I am meeting you for the first time. If I were not in the jail, I would have welcomed you with a dawat (grand feast). That is due for your next visit”, was his parting shot.

The chain of events overwhelmed me: how the rich and powerful cock a snook at the law and be nonchalant about it, that too in front of a journalist. A prime accused in a murder case invites me to give an interview in the jail at 9 pm; he is perched on the superintendent’s chair, while a hundred people including the superintendent seated on the floor. Did he expect me to write only what he spoke, and not what I saw? In Patna, some of my colleagues advised me to opt for the safe course. But I felt I would be failing in my journalistic duty if I remained silent about the shenanigans that I was witness to in the jail.

The next morning when the story appeared in the front page of the Times of India, Patna, a chill went down the spine of all concerned. Justice Wadhwa took suo motu cognizance of the report and served notices to every big gun in the administration – from the chief secretary down to the jail superintendent and Shahabuddin himself. Two RJD MPs, supposed to be close friends of Siwan strongman, met me saying that they had come as my well-wishers and tried to persuade me to change my stance – to issue a clarification to the effect that the interview took place in the visiting hours and in the designated place. Clearly, they wanted the interview to stand (as the message was conciliatory) but not the circumstances of the interview (which would show the flagrant violation of rules).

I stood my ground and said that it would be journalistic hara-kiri if I went by their advice. They subtly told me that life was more important than these small adventures and left me to my fate.

A week later, after intense legal confabulations, all those who had been served notices – the chief secretary, home secretary, the DGP the DM, the SP, Jail Superintendent and Shahabuddin—gave an identical one-sentence explanation that the interview never took place and the journalist had indulged in yellow journalism to blackmail the imprisoned leader at the behest of the vested interests.

The chief justice then summoned me to the court. I gave the court my entire itinerary and other circumstantial evidence and asked it to judge for itself if a journalist, that too from outside the state, could afford to blackmail a leader like Shahabuddin with whom even the chief minister of the state is scared to meddle. Justice Wadhwa grilled the government counsel about the kind of vested interest that I represented and the kind of blackmail I could resort to. Having found no satisfactory answer, he issued contempt notices against all of them for making a false submission under oath.

There was a pall of gloom in the state administration. It was an extraordinary situation when the entire top brass of the administration faced the real possibility of imprisonment. While they were dreading the spectre that would unfold, there came good news for them: Justice Wadhwa’s elevation to the Supreme Court. Justice Wadhwa had anticipated it; he was ready to leave and by evening he was gone. He joined the Supreme Court the next day.

With his exit, the contempt notice went to the backburner. Shahabuddin was out of the jail in a few days time. Everyone forgot about the cases against him, till the RJD remained in power in the state.

Now that the JD (U)-BJP combine is in power, and the special court is doing a day-to-day hearing in the Siwan jail premises that Shahabuddin is being made accountable to the law. For all you know, if the RJD bounces back to power, Shahabuddin will walk free again.

Shahabuddin: The Robin Hood

A friend of mine, after reading my write-up on Shahabuddin in these columns last week, asked me a very pertinent question: Shahabuddin is a criminal, fine. But what explains his success in politics – his strong-arm methods or his genuine popularity?

I told him, it is both.

Well, Shahabuddin’s criminal prowess becomes starkly evident in the electoral battle field. Walk into the town of Siwan during the run-up to any election and you will not find posters, pamphlets, banners of any rival party or candidate in the electoral fray. You will only see big cut-outs of Shahabuddin dotting the landscape of Siwan, posters with his smiling face plastered all over the walls. The overwhelming impression one gets there is that election in Siwan is a one-horse race.

For the first time when I went to cover elections in Siwan in the late 1990s, I could not believe that it was a part of India where free and fair elections are supposed to be the hallmark of its democracy. We all, of course, know very well about the imperfections of our democracy — that it is skewed in favour of those who have money and muscle power and that is evident in every election everywhere But I had never been witness to such blatant intimidation to browbeat all political opponents as was the case in Siwan.

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I spoke to the local leaders of the BJP, then the main opposition party in Bihar assembly, and asked them about the absence of any campaign material on display. Were they so afraid of Shahabuddin that they dared not put up posters and banners anywhere in the town?

What they told me was indeed startling – that Shahabuddin had made it amply clear that any one who displayed posters or banners other than his would pay through his life. They cited the instance in a previous election when one of their local office-bearers showed the ‘audacity’ to display the party’s election symbol atop his own house and the next day he was shot dead in broad daylight in the busy market area. Nobody came forward to give witness and nobody was convicted. “We got the lesson. In Siwan, you have no other option but to play by the rules set by Shahabuddin’.

If the BJP, with all its national (rather international) resources, could be intimidated to fall in line, other parties could not be expected to behave differently. But what intrigued me was that a party like CPI-ML(Liberation), which boasted of its liberation army and which posed the biggest challenge to Shahabuddin’s political domination in the district, was also coerced to be invisible. I visited the party’s district office in which I met and spoke to office-bearers of the state unit. They told me quite candidly that they did not want to lose their party activists to Shahabuddin’s guns by flouting his rules. They would rather do their campaign in the villages, word-of-mouth.

If this was the state of the leading political parties, one could imagine the condition of the lay people of the town. You accost anyone to elicit his view on Shahabuddin and you could be assured of one of the two responses: either he would be vocal in expressing his support for the ‘great leader’, or he would run away, refusing to make any comment about him. I came across only a handful of instances when a man on the street was ready to speak, in muted voices (while looking around to see if any Shahabuddin-loyalist was watching him); their common refrain was that Shahabuddin had made Siwan his private turf and even the government officials could not stir there without his nod.

 

What did the state machinery think of him? I went to the district magistrate to ask him why he did not take steps to counter Shahabuddin’s intimidatory tactics and allow all candidates a level-playing field. The DM, who was accompanied by ADMs and other senior officials, countered the charge that Shahabuddin intimidated anyone. ‘I have not got any complaint from anyone. If so many people faced threats from him, at least someone should have complained”, he said. When I drew his attention to what the leaders of other parties had told me, he dismissed the allegations as frivolous. “Rival candidates are jealous of his popularity and are trying to malign him”, he insisted.

When I was about to take leave, came the DM’s parting shot: “Shahabuddin is Siwan’s Gandhi. He has won over the people by his love, affection and selfless work”.

I was aghast that the district magistrate, who was the returning officer for the election and who was supposed to be a neutral umpire, was so overtly partisan. My report in the Times of India, Patna, after that visit, landed him in trouble with the Election Commission. He was removed forthwith from that position, but he was einstated as the DM of Siwan as soon as the elections were over.

It was clear that the support of the government machinery had made Shahabuddin invincible in the electoral battles. But that does not totally explain his electoral success. One may like it or not, the fact remains that he is extremely popular among a large swathe of his constituency. They know about his criminal record, but they are not bothered as that does not affect them in their day-to-day life.

There are many ‘negative’ reasons. One, Shahabuddin has never indulged in extortion from the common man, as is commonly practised by run-of-the-mill rogues in every other town. Two, Shahabuddin’s personal life is impeccable. No woman has ever charged him of rape or molestation. His supporters say that he would not condone even a staunch loyalist for any crime against a woman.

On the positive side, he is very popular because of the instant justice he gives to people who appear in his durbar with grievances. He is swift in taking decisions and ensures that his decisions are carried out without let or hindrance. He, on the face of it, always sides with what is just, without considerations of caste, community or the social status of the parties in conflict.

Unlike the general impression that he is a Muslim leader, he is very popular among Hindus as well, irrespective of the castes. We had an office assistant in the Times of India, Patna who belonged to a backward caste (OBC) and his native place was a village in Siwan. He used to tell me, “You may write that Shahabuddin is a criminal, but you must also write how popular a leader he is. I have no doubt in my mind that I would support him till the end of my life”.

He narrated to me an instance of his magnanimity: how the property of a close relative of his had been grabbed by a Muslim goonda, how they spent a lot of money and time in court cases but to no avail. Somebody advised them to go to Shahabuddin. They did and their land was restored to them within a week.

Shahabuddin’s supporters will come up with hundreds of such stories, if you are willing to listen. This is the other side of Shahabuddin – that of a Robin Hood – that has not found much mention in the media. That is why even as the media go to town painting him as the villain, he is happy to be the hero to those who matter to him the most – the voters in his constituency.

Nitish Kumar: Prisoner of a Coterie

Nitish Kumar will complete two years at the helm of post-Laloo Bihar in two months time. He rode the wave of anti-Laloo sentiment and won an impressive victory in November 2005. He had then held out the hope that Bihar would change, for the better.

Has he been able to meet the aspirations of people of Bihar?

Let us recount, briefly, what the people’s aspirations were.

It is no exaggeration to say that Laloo Yadav’s 15-year-rule (direct or proxy) had placed Biharis in a Hobbesian State of Nature where the rule of law was non-existent. Laloo and his cronies had ensured that the entire political system was criminalized; extortion was the order of the day and law-abiding citizens could survive only by complying with the dictates of politician-criminals. Police officials took their orders from Laloo Yadav’s kin, not from their organizational superiors.

In an environment like this, it was not surprising, that Bihar did not figure in the development radar.

 

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The potholed roads in the entire state, including the state capital, bore testimony to the state apparatus’s incompetence and\or malfeasance. The state of power supply was pathetic. Patnaites were lucky to suffer from power-cuts for only 12 hours a day; the district headquarters, barely 100 kms from the state capital, managed to get power for eight hours in the night, that too with such low voltage that bulbs flickered and fans barely rotated. Large parts of Bihar went without electricity for most of the time. Call it coincidence or cause and effect, electric poles and wires that supplied electricity to the remote parts of the state in 1960s were found missing in 1990s.

Overall, Biharisation became a pejorative catchword to denote decadence in the Laloo era. People of Bihar wanted Bihar to be rescued from this cesspool and poised on the path for development.

Has Nitish Kumar been able to bring about the desired change? Nitish-loyalists would say that Bihar’s wounds, festering for decades, needed a much longer time to heal, even with a committed and deft physician attending to it. They would argue that Nitish Kumar is earnestly making effort to put Bihar on the roadmap of progress and it would take another couple of years for the results to show on the ground.

Then the question is: are Biharis feeling, if not seeing, that they are on the cusp of a positive change?

The answer is mostly yes. Biharis in general, who have no political axe to grind, do believe that Nitish kumar is doing his best, against all odds, to make a difference in the state. Roads are being built; efforts are afoot to increase power generation; educational institutions are being streamlined.

What is most important, a conducive investment climate is being created by improving the law and order situation.

In the Nitish era, politician-criminals are virtually on the run. Organised extortion has largely disappeared. The command structure of the police force has been re-established. Ordinary people feel that they are no more at the receiving end of the politician-criminal-police nexus.

Not surprising that corporate houses, which had fled the state or which dared not enter its territory, are now making a bee-line to start business in Bihar.

Thus there is a feel in the air that Bihar is changing, for the better.

But there is a flip side to the Nitish regime as well. Some of the very well known citizens of the state, whose life history would vouch for their integrity and commitment, feel that Nitish Kumar, despite his best intentions, is hamstrung because of his over-dependence on a small coterie of bureaucrats for policy formulation as well as execution. The chief minister has a forum called Janata Durbar to interact with the hoi polloi, but that is mostly used by the CM to listen to and redress specific grievances. That is not a forum to discuss acts of omission and commission of his government. Many activists, who have great faith in Nitish Kumar’s ability to turn the tide, rue the fact that he is increasingly becoming a prisoner of bureaucracy, having no window to the feedback from outside the charmed circle.

What is striking is that this accusation against the chief minister is not confined to the activists alone; politicians of the ruling party, including some of the ministers vigorously endorse it. Some senior bureaucrats too, who have had exemplary record of performance in the Bihar government, have failed to get the ears of the chief minister as they are not on good terms with the coterie.

Nitish loyalists would argue that it is impossible for a chief minister to listen to the unsolicited advice or feedback of everyone who claims to work in the interest of the state; he has to depend on his trusted lieutenants to carry on the affairs of the state.

Well, that kind of logic is valid for most of the chief ministers who claim and feel that they are working in the best interests of the state; but when they go out of power they realize what a misconception they suffered from. After all, trusted lieutenants are wont to present a rosy picture, but very often that is misleading.

Gandhiji therefore always made it a point to touch base with scores of people drawn from different parts of the country to listen to their critiques of his ideas and actions. Nitish Kumar, a Gandhian in spirit, must also find space and time for his well-meaning critics if he has to succeed in the gigantic struggle to change the face of Bihar.

Will Manmohan Singh deserve any more than a footnote in history?

Prem Shankar Jha, a celebrated columnist, is a readers’ delight for his cogent arguments as well as incisive style. But I am amazed, rather disappointed, at his fawning words for our Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

In the November 5 issue of the weekly magazine, Outlook, he writes: Dr (Manmohan) Singh would do well to use the three weeks that remain till November 16 to explain over and over again to the Indian public what the consequences will be of our reneging on our own treaty. And he should make it clear that he is bound by the decision of the Indian cabinet in both letter and spirit, and will proceed with the IAEA negotiations from the next day, regardless of what the joint committee decides. If the Congress hacks and its president demur, then he should resign”

That was the operative part, what Manmohan Singh must do. Then follows the descriptive part, what Manmohan Singh is: “Dr Singh has been the most liked prime minister we have had since Rajiv Gandhi and the most respected since Nehru. It is time he thought of his place in history”.

What I am amazed is that a writer of the stature of Prem Shankar Jha can be so fulsome in his praise for a leader who has survived in politics because of his sheer gutlessness.

And, again, it is not a one-time tribute to a man who is at the helm of power at the moment. In his column in the same magazine last week (October 29 issue), he wrote: “Dr Singh can still save the country from Permanent second class status, and his own place in history, by submitting his resignation and allowing the Congress to decide whether it will let him go and face the public’s wrath, or fall in line with his wishes and call the Left’s bluff.” That was again the operative part. The descriptive part that followed was like this:” If Dr Singh had any idea of the power of his office, and of how well-loved and respected he is in the country, he would not think twice”.

Mr. Jha’s operative advice to the prime minister is that he must resign, rather threaten to resign, to blackmail the Congress and its president and other allies into accepting the nuclear deal as a fait accompli. But Mr Jha forgets that Dr Singh, in his long years in public life, has only contemplated resignation but never carried it out because the lure of power has been too irresistible for him.

He had contemplated resignation when he was the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission and Rajiv Gandhi, then Prime Minister, called the commission a “bunch of jokers’. He had threatened to resign when the securities scam broke out and his ministry was held responsible for the large-scale swindling, but he held on to the office. And now as prime minister, when he dared the Left to withdraw support to the government over the Indo-US nuclear deal and the Left called his bluff, again his threat of resignation turned out to be hollow.

Mr. Jha can very well see that Dr Singh has his priorities clearly laid down. He is ready to make any compromises to survive in power. The resignation drama that he indulged in is just to prop up an image that he is a reluctant politician. His spin-doctors are busy trying to put a gloss on his failures. And I am surprised that a venerable journalist like Mr. Jha has fallen for this make-believe.

To repeat Mr. Jha’s words: “Dr Singh has been the most liked prime minister we have had since Rajiv Gandhi and the most respected since Nehru.” Mr. Jha ought to have added the adjective ‘most vulnerable’ as well. No  Prime Minister in India’s history, Chandra Shekhar and Charan Singh included, had his authority clipped as much as Manmohan Singh’s.

He is certainly the most educated of our Prime Ministers – Jawaharlal Nehru was later to become a great scholar, but he was just an ordinary graduate in natural sciences from Trinity college, Cambridge.

Even his training at Inner Temple, London was without any distinction. Most other prime ministers that India has had were virtually semi-literates. Manmohan Singh has earned a doctorate from a prestigious university like Cambridge and would have made a first-rate academic had he not strayed into the corridors of power. He chose to become a successful Indian as well as international civil servant.

Then came the political tryst. The financial crisis that India found itself in 1990 had led the then Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar to pledging our gold reserve to tide over the balance of payment crisis. The Narasimha Rao government in 1991 was forced to make a paradigm shift in India’s economic policies to keep itself afloat. It was an imperative need that a professional economist, well versed in the arcane ways of the government, must become the new finance minister.

Narasimha Rao’s first choice was supposed to be I G Patel, a distinguished economist and civil servant, who had handled the top economic administration in India and abroad over many years and who had the distinction to become the director of the London School of Economics. But Patel apparently declined the offer as he was not cut out for the rough and tumble of politics. Manmohan Singh was the second choice and he lapped it up.

No doubt, his achievement as a finance minister was creditworthy. From a mere 1.3 per cent GDP growth rate in 1991-92, Singh powered a growth trajectory that was incredible; it reached 8.6 per cent in 1995-96. Again, what added lustre to his name was his formidable reputation of personal honesty and integrity.

But when Sonia Gandhi picked him up for the job of prime minister, she had no love lost for his honest credentials; after all, she had chosen many corrupt men to head key ministries so that they could line their pockets and contribute to the party coffers. The Congress president wanted someone of stature who would remain loyal to her and would not develop an independent base of power.

She must have learnt a lesson from her mother-in-law’s past. Indira Gandhi was propped up as PM by the Congress Syndicate hoping that she would be at their beck and call, but once in power she grew wings and cut them to size.
What went in Manmohan Singh’s favour was that he had no political standing. He had never won a popular election. In the 1999 general election, he, the architect of India’s globalization policies, even failed to win the Lok Sabha seat in South Delhi, a constituency– home to the votaries of globalization. That showed how politically effete he was.

Pranab Mukherjee was also in the reckoning for the job. He had also not won a popular election till 2004. But Pranab Mukherjee — with all his abilities to make deals with the Left and the Right, with capitalists as well as social activists — carried the threat of growing in the office of the prime minister to take on Sonia Gandhi herself.

Manmohan got the job, but did not grow on it. He, to a large extent, lived up to the expectations of Sonia Gandhi – to remain a low-key, hands-off head of government who scrupulously kept away from building a power centre of his own. He has no hesitation in acknowledging that his first loyalty is to the First Family of the party. In doing this, he besmirched the reputation of the high office he holds.

Yes, as Mr. Jha says, it is time Dr Singh thought of his place in history – it couldn’t be anything more than a footnote as he has let down the people and the country.