What happened to class, grace in Indian politics?
Back in 1988 when Vinod Mehta was heading The Indian Post, he wrote an edit on former president of India, Giani Zail Singh, and passed it to me for next day’s edition. A few moments later, he passed another slip with a headline written on it.
“This man is a disgrace,” it read. The piece was about Giani’s exposé on his infamous spat with former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. “Are you sure?” I looked up at him.
“Go ahead,” he said. Vinod was a man of unwavering convictions who never hesitated to call a spade a spade. When Khushwant Singh returned his Padma Bhushan award in protest against Operation Bluestar in the Golden Temple, in which terrorist Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and 5,000 others were killed, Vinod commented that when it came to choosing between being an Indian and a Sikh, Khushwant had chosen to be a Sikh.
Unbiased journos acquire such strong convictions after being fed up with the political goings-on that border on the absurd. A time comes when they feel like being inside a pressure cooker and want to explode. Such times are here again. For an observer of Indian politics, it’s sacrilegious to miss the sub-plot in every development unfolding on the political scene prior to the general election due before May. The sub plot — the race for prime minister — is more evident in the opposition camp than in the ruling front.
During a mega rally at Kolkata’s Brigade Parade Ground last month, in which 23 Opposition leaders joined hands for a family photo, there’s something that Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee made unequivocally clear: The PM post is not a given to the Congress party. It’s something which Mamata herself, a seven-time member of parliament, three-time union cabinet minister, and now in her second term as chief minister of West Bengal, has been gunning for quite some time.
I get a million butterflies in my stomach when I visualise Mamata as prime minister of India. The images of the former student leader of the Congress party jumping up and dancing on the hood of a political opponent’s car, and her threat to hang herself with her shawl in a Kolkata street in protest against incompetent party candidates in the 1996 elections are still fresh in my memories.
Her elevation to elected offices hasn’t changed her a bit. She remains the same old classless politician, a queen of political melodrama who used her theatrical skills to find her way up. With her emotional outbursts, she would make her supporters believe that an IndiGo flight’s delayed landing at Kolkata airport was an attempt on her life; the deployment of some army personnel at a highway toll to collect traffic data was a coup attempt; and a move by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to question Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar in the Saradha’s ponzi scam was a move to impose governor’s rule.
The CBI had sent a number of letters to the Kolkata Police with regards to its probe and sought the state department’s cooperation to carry out a ‘secret operation’ at the police commissioner’s house. One of the letters even asked Kolkata Police SP Arnab Ghosh to join the probe. For political reasons, Mamata feigned ignorance of any official communication and ordered the arrest of the CBI officers who turned up to question the city police chief.
Letting the CBI do its job would have been suicidal for Mamata as some of her close aides and the police chief himself have been in the crosshairs of the CBI. A manipulative Mamata turned the adversity into an opportunity to launch a new stage in her political career. She wasted no time and started a sit-in protest against the central government, accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi of destroying the federal structure of the country.
But India’s Supreme Court would not allow Mamata to create a state within state. In a huge setback to one of the most astute leaders of the nation, the court ordered her police chief to make himself available for CBI questioning. But the nation is at a loss to realise how the order is, as Mamata the spin doctor claims, a moral victory for her government.
The diminutive politician, always clad in white saris with rubber slippers, sounds like a Hindu militant as she believes rapes are on the rise because men and women interact freely. She hides fascist streaks under her democratic skin as she gets people arrested for Facebook posts against her. Jadavpur University professor Ambikesh Mahapatra was arrested over a cartoon lampooning the chief minister, while a small farmer was put behind bars for questioning her about spiralling fertiliser prices.
Behind the secular curtain, Mamata is known to play minority politics. She is a political chameleon who changes colours to suit her agenda and ambition. On August 4, 2005, the Trinamool leader submitted her resignation to the then Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee after throwing a bunch of papers at the speaker’s podium. The reason: Illegal Bangladeshis have become a menace in Bengal. “The infiltration in Bengal has become a disaster now. I have both the Bangladeshi and the Indian voters list. This is a very serious matter. I would like to know when it would be discussed in the House,” she shouted before breaking into sobs in the house.
She has now taken a U-turn over the issue because the immigrants are one of her biggest vote banks. She has warned of civil war and bloodbath in the country over the National Register of Citizens, which aims to identify illegal immigrants. Such hypocritical actions make her an untrustworthy leader.
Today, the Left, centre and the Right, except the Congress, are raising a banner of protest against India’s decades old dynasty politics. But behind the veil of democracy and the cacophony of a grand alliance, Mamata has been systematically building a political dynasty, grooming her 31-year-old nephew Abhishek Banerjee as her heir apparent.
I’m at a loss for words to describe this lady who has set her eyes on India’s chief executive post. Vinod, shall I borrow, just for once, your headline for Zail Singh?
Behind the secular curtain, Mamata is known to play minority politics. She is a political chameleon who changes colours to suit her agenda and ambition.