Remembering 1975

This is an absolutely fantastic piece that appeared on the edit page of Business Standard on 25 June 2005, the thirtieth anniversary of the Emergency.

The Family and the Emergency
T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan / New Delhi June 25, 2005
If Nehru can be assessed, why not his daughter and grandson?


D D Kosambi is perhaps India’s finest historian. He wrote in 1964 that ancient Indian history was like a fine mist. “In India, there is only vague popular tradition, with very little documentation above the level of myth and legend.”
But for once he got one detail wrong. It is not just ancient Indian history that is as described by Kosambi. Even modern Indian history—very modern Indian history, indeed—is like that as well.
We have seen an example of this recently over the Jinnah debate, which, oddly, has had the effect of getting people to scrutinise Nehru’s responsibility for the partition! Perhaps that was what L K Advani intended all along, which, if true, is really quite cunning of him.
But even closer to us lies another event, now mostly forgotten even by those who suffered hugely because of it. Without prodding by one or two newspaper columnists, how many people would have remembered that, 30 years ago at midnight this day, the Congress party imposed the Emergency, which took away all our basic freedoms?
Indira Gandhi proclaimed a national Emergency merely because she had been unseated from her parliamentary seat by a court verdict that held her guilty of electoral malpractice? How many recall that she did so merely in order to maintain herself and the Gandhi family in power?
How many people realise that it was her Congress party which introduced the notion of “a mere technicality” even for major infringements of the law by politicians? How many remember that she amended the Constitution in such a way that the Prime Minister could not be accused even of murder?
Indeed, how many Indians have any idea at all of what the Emergency meant for India, and under what circumstances it had been imposed?
My sons, who are 21 and 17, know exactly what happened on January 30, 1948, when, and how. But they have no clue at all of what happened on June 26, 1975, and why. Nor, indeed, do their cousins who were born during the previous five or so years. That whole generation has been kept in the dark.
The Emergency, infamous as it was, is a black hole in the collective memory of the country. Even the RSS and the BJP have forgotten it, so much so that, in the true Hindu tradition described by Kosambi above—in which history is reduced to mythology—even the head of the RSS thinks that Indira Gandhi was great.
But should he not actually be asking: If the RSS is being held guilty of the murder of Gandhiji, why do we not hold the Congress guilty of the murder of democracy? If it is not enough for the RSS to express regret over what Nathuram Godse did, why is it enough for Indira Gandhi (and last year, Sonia Gandhi) to express similar “regret”?
I am not writing this article to “rake up the past”, which is how reminding people of the uncomfortable things done by the Congress is described by the Congress. (What others did, of course, is proper history.)
I am writing this merely to remind ourselves of the narrow escape India had in 1975-77. If Sanjay Gandhi had had his way India may have become mightily prosperous. But, have no doubts, it would at the same time have become like a Latin American dictatorship.
The ironies are also worth recording. The very same Communists, who are now in bed with the Congress, had been jailed in large numbers by Indira Gandhi (barring some major exceptions like Jyoti Basu. I explored this point in an article last year).
How have these fellows, with their long memories of “historical forces”, forgotten the tortures suffered by their party colleagues? Clearly, like Henry Ford, Indian communists also think that “history is bunk”.
And you know what the supreme irony is? Kosambi was of the Marxist intellectual persuasion and a mathematician, a lone brilliant star in a sea of mediocrity.
Historians can be very influential, even more so than economists because they alter the way we view the past and therefore the present. For instance, properly speaking, we should remember Indira Gandhi for imposing the Emergency.
Instead, what do we remember her for? For lifting it, because reams have been written by official family historians, mostly of the Marxist persuasion again, about how democratic she was. Why, a couple of years ago one of them even published a whole book saying that the blame for the Emergency should be shared at least half by JP because he challenged Mrs Gandhi.
The truth about what actually happened between November 1974 and June 1975 was brought out two years ago when the diary of B N Tandon, who was a joint secretary then in the Prime Minister’s secretariat (as it was then called) looking after political affairs, was published. I translated it from the original Hindi. The diary makes for extraordinary reading because it was maintained on a day-to-day basis.
But when it was published, 28 years after it was written, the reactions were typical. Far from trying to cross-check what Mr Tandon was saying, most reviewers attributed motives to him. The pack was led by no less a person than R K Dhawan, who said Mr Tandon was peeved because he had been denied promotion.
Dhawan can be forgiven, but what about the others? What excuse did they have for ignoring the facts and attacking the author? One reviewer even had nasty things to say about me!
The second volume of the diary, covering the period from July 15, 1975, to July 24, 1976, when Mr Tandon left the Prime Minister’s secretariat, will soon be published. I should add that I have not translated it. It throws even further light on what went on.
But to what extent will it alter the way we view the Gandhi family? Even if we concede that the sins of the grandmother should not be visited on her relics, surely the time has come to re-assess the role of this family in the country’s fortunes? If Nehru can be re-assessed, why not his daughter and grandson, if not yet his grandson’s wife?
Not to put too fine a point on it, it is time the family went out of politics. Many young Congressmen think so too (and the mother of one of them has already been punished because the son said so openly.)

Appeasement politics and the obsession with BJP

For once, I find myself wholeheartedly agreeing with the left. Every right-thinking person (for once, the left is thinking right) has to be outraged by the absolutely inane move by the human resource development ministry, headed by the ageing Congress warhorse, Arjun Singh, to reserve 50 per cent seats in the Aligarh Muslim University for Muslims. This from a government that came to power on an anti-communal plank and is surviving only because of a negativist anti-BJP glue holding the UPA coalition together. Apparently, Arjun Singh was also the one who advised Rajiv Gandhi to enact the retrogade Muslim Women's Bill. And he is supposed to be one of the upholders of true secularism in the Congress!

Well-known left intellectuals like Irfan Habib and his AMU colleagues were the first to raise their voices in protest. The left parties have opposed the move as strongly as they do any economic reform measure. They have all said it is minority appeasement politics in its worst form and demanded its withdrawal. But while the government caves in to their protests about economic reform, it refuses to retract on this. Speaks volumes for the Prime Minister's oft-stated assertion that his government is committed to an open economy, doesn't it?

That apart, there are several interesting aspects to this issue.

One of them is the almost complete silence by those I term the `proper' liberals over this. All the disapprovals and displeasure have been expressed only by the left lobby. Come to think of it, even some of the other prominent leftists are silent on this. Why haven't we heard a word from Shabana Azmi, Javed Akhtar, Mushirul Hasan or Romila Thapar?

Second, is the left concerned about the communal overtones of the move or something else? If you read all their statements carefully, one sentence comes through in each case - that this move will result in the government playing into the hands of the BJP. So they seem more bothered about the mileage that the BJP will get out of this, rather than the inherent immorality of the action itself. It gives the impression that they would have kept quiet if the BJP is not likely to make political capital out of the issue.

I would love to be proved wrong but I have a feeling I won't. Because in the first week of April, there was another instance of blatant minority appeasement. The Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, assured a delegation of Parsis of all government help to help the Parsi community check the alarming decline in its population. Is that the job of any government, let alone a secular government?

Why did no one react to this bit of news? Because, unfortunately when all manner of liberals berate communalism, they are only talking about the BJP- sangh parivar-Shiv Sena. We are supposed to believe that these groups - and the odd fanatic fringe of the Muslims - needs to be decimated if the scourge of communalism is to be eliminated.

It would be foolish to think that the battle against religious fanaticism will be won with the obliteration of the BJP and sangh parivar just as it would be foolish to think that the battle against statism will be won with the defeat of the communists. The communists were in no position to influence policy through the 1990s (except for one and a half years of the United Front government) but statist economic policies continue to prevail. If true economic liberalism has not been achieved in India, it is not because of the communists alone. It is as much, if not more, because of opposition from rent seeking politicians, bureaucrats and other incumbents of the present system, none of who will be card carrying members of any of the communist parties.

Similarly there is ample evidence of communalism being alive and well in various other political and social formations. The banning of Satanic Verses, the Muslim Women's Bill, the opening of the locks on the Babri Masjid were all done by the secular Congress. In an earlier post, Hum to anything karega, I had cited various instances of blatant pandering to the Muslim votebank by Mulayam Singh Yadav, Laloo Prasad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan. All of them are supposed to be the torch bearers of secularism! Or look at the disgustingly casteist Mandal card played by V P Singh in 1990.

Forget politics and politicians. Look at one demand that the Parsi community has made. They want the government to step in to support health clinics for Parsis, which are few and badly maintained. It is both a communal and statist demand. And that too from a community from which many of India's liberal stalwarts are drawn and one that has prospered through private enterprise.

Or look at the reaction to an extremely forgettable film called Jo Bole So Nihal. A handful of Sikh groups - political and religious - have ensured that it is pulled out of all theatres of Punjab. What were the grounds for protests? The film had some semi-nude scenes and this was offensive because the title o f the film was a Sikh religious chant or war cry. There was organised violence at the theatres in Punjab and the distributors finally had to withdraw the film from the state. But the Sikh groups are not satisfied and are now crying for a worldwide ban on the film. And even as I write this comes news of bomb blasts in two cinema halls in Delhi that were screening the film.

Concentrating the guns all the time on the BJP-sangh parivar-Shiv Sena while keeping silent on other forms of communalism on the grounds that the former is more dangerous is not going to weaken them, let alone eliminate them. On the contrary it is only giving them a readymade plank of hypocrisy, one which they are using constantly to their advantage. Communalism has to be opposed because it is a detestable phenomenon, not just because a particular political formation is indulging in it.

Is a liberal political party feasible?

Since January 2004, a group of liberals (proper liberals, not the left liberals) have been mulling the idea of setting up a liberal political party in India. It even experimented with supporting Sharad Joshi's Swatantra Bharat Party (SBP) in the 2004 elections, but that experiment didn't quite work out the way it was meant to, to everybody's disappointment. But efforts are continuing because people still feel that there is the need for a liberal political party in India to step into the vacant space created by the exit of the Swatantra Party.

There were two drivers behind these initiatives - the need for a party which believes in a free society and economy and the need to restore values in public life which, it was argued, only a new political formation could do. The existing parties had all thoroughly discredited themselves and had contributed to the decline in values as well as generated contempt for politics among the public at large.

But are the assumptions correct? Is India ready for a political party that believes in liberalism?

I am not sure how ideologically inclined the average Indian voter is, barring the committed communist or sangh parivar followers. There is a vague preference among the other voters for either the Congress or the BJP or various regional parties in states, but I doubt whether anyone really understands the ideological issues involved. The growing anti-Congress sentiment stemmed less from discomfort with its ideology and more from what it came to stand for - dynasty, dictatorship, corruption and arrogance of power. That's why from time to time after 1977, people voted in non-Congress governments, only to have them betray their trust. It was the NDA which really proved that a non-Congress political formation could provide a stable and equally good - or bad - government. I am not sure that ideology played a part in bringing the NDA to power. If it had, the BJP would have come to power on its own steam and would have not got thrown out in the elections. Its defeat and the victory of the UPA had little to do with ideology. The NDA was punished for not living up to its promise of providing a better government and the BJP for not being different from the Congress.

Therefore, I don't think the vast majority of the Indians are going to be wowed by a new party that is talking about free markets, primacy of the individual, open society etc. Or indeed any political formation talking about any ideology. Right now, from what one hears and reads, all they want is good governance and clean public life. They are tired of political parties that, when in opposition, block the very policies that they initiated when they were in power and vice versa, even as they come together to unanimously pass legislation giving politicians higher salaries and perks. They are sick of politicians nitpicking about the circumstances under which ministers should resign - chargesheet or arrest warrant or case filed. Newspaper columns and television chat shows are full of fulminations against politicians and despair that such politicians get elected repeatedly because there is no choice. The fact that many people exercised the negative vote in Mumbai during the 2004 general elections shows that people are willing to do what is within their power to do in order to bring about a change.

Does this necessarily lead to the conclusion that India is ready for a new party or political formation which is committed to value-based politics? One that does not believe in using money or muscle power in elections, which will not indulge in double standards. Those working towards a liberal political party believe that India is ready. But I beg to differ.

The problem is that all of us are looking at the crisis in Indian politics purely as a supply side issue - that there are not enough good people in public life whom those desiring a better India and a cleaner politics can vote for. But there is a demand side issue as well - is there sufficient demand for such people?

It would be tempting to answer this question with a resounding yes. I myself in two earlier posts had taken a similar stand. In Why doesn't the urban middle class vote, I had said: 'I think the reason why the urban middle class does not vote or engage with politics more actively is because it faces a crisis of choice. There is no party that represents their voice.' I had argued much the same in another post, Is negative voting a negative idea.

But public dissatisfaction and anger has not reached a critical mass. The demand for a cleaner politics, though it exists, is not sufficient as to make any new political initiative successful. Something I heard on a television debate reinforced this impression. In the Bihar assembly elections, a majority of the sitting legislators who contested lost their seats. All those with a criminal background who contested won. While the BJP and the Congress did not field criminals, their allies all did. In some cases, when the criminal-politicians were denied a party ticket, they quit the party and contested as independent candidates. They won, defeating candidates of various political parties.

Don't just dismiss this as yet another horror story from the badlands. Remember Jayalalthia came back to power through an election. And there are no allegations of booth capturing or rigging. In Goa a politician who keeps switching parties gets elected each time. In Kerala, a minister accused of rape got elected some years back. In Delhi, politicians who every Delhi-ite knows as having led the anti-Sikh rioters in 1984 get party tickets and are elected.

But when an upright Manmohan Singh contests for the Lok Sabha from the South Delhi constituency, peopled by the elite who often bemoan the sorry state of Indian politics, he loses. Both the BJP and the Congress have a large number of people who will bring a certain amount of decency to public life. But they will never be fielded because they are not seen as `winnable' candidates. The party cadres will never work for them. But why should they not win, despite party cadres, if there is sufficient demand for such people?

So why doesn't the constant lament about lack of good people in politics translate into votes for them even when they are fielded by well established parties? Contesting as independents is not an option at all; it is simply pointless. It perhaps has to do with the fact that the majority of the grumblers are actually quite at ease with the existing system and have managed little ways to tweak it to suit their ends - whether it is unauthorised constructions, illegal pumping of ground water, getting false certificates or some other misdemeanour. Voting a person with integrity into politics will mean putting this comfortable little world that we have built for ourselves at risk. Remember that the very people whose drawing room conversations are all about the sorry state of governance were the ones who lobbied against NDA's urban development minister Jagmohan when he set about demolishing unauthorised constructions, not in the slum clusters, but in the areas where the middle class resides.

It is this issue that will have to be addressed and demand generated before going ahead with a liberal political party.

Why this blog and why this name?

This was my first post and I am posting this again for people who are visiting this blog for the first time.

Well, I've been observing public discourse in general as well as participating in a minor way in the liberal discourse on various issues. I was getting increasingly uneasy with the kind of stridency in public debates/discussions. People have stopped talking to each other, whether in the print or electronic media or, even in private conversations. Instead they are constantly talking at each other. There is no give and take of ideas or thoughts. `I am right and you are wrong and I am not going to agree with you, so don't try to persuade me,' is the unspoken refrain in all conversations. Sometimes it's not unspoken.

What's even more disturbing is the extreme polarisation of views on practically anything. It's my white versus your black. I am always white and the other person is always black. There is no space for greys. The BJP is always wrong and the non-BJP is always right or vice versa depending on your ideological leaning. If you are pro-reforms, Montek Singh Ahluwalia and P Chidambaram are always right and a complete free market is the only solution to all ills (even your domestic squabbles). If you are against reforms, Ahluwalia and Chidambaram are always wrong (and that vermin Surjit Bhalla should be exterminated!); Sitaram Yechury and Jean Dreze are always right and the State must continue to manufacture sliced white bread.

And then there are the labels. If you speak in favour of economic reforms, you've sold your soul to the IMF-World Bank-MNC combine and don't care for the poor. If you speak in favour sectoral regulators and social security, you're a statist or, worse, communist. If you say the NDA government did some good or criticise the Haj subsidy, you're a Hindu fundamentalist or a good Hindu (depending on who you are speaking to). If you criticise Narendra Modi and Murli Manohar Joshi, you're a leftist pseudo-secularist or a genuine secularist (again, depending on whom you are addressing). And if you are constantly seeing merits in either point of view, well, tough luck, you're a IMF wallah one day and a jhola wallah the next; you're a Hindu fundamentalist one day and secularist the next. More likely, at the end of it all, you'll just be one confused soul and will find yourself paying the price of not aligning with one or the other ideological camp.

Whatever happened to nuanced stands? Why does questioning why Sonia Gandhi did not take Indian citizenship for 20 years mean that you are a jingoistic nationalist who is against people of foreign origin ruling the country? Why does asking what business the State has to manufacture bread mean that you want poor people to starve to death? Why does crediting Arun Jaitley for his his pro-reforms stand mean that you are also endorsing his staunch support for Narendra Modi? Why does saying that public investment in certain kinds of infrastructure is necessary mean that you are advocating state intervention in the economy?

It's all to do with the tyranny of political correctness. And with ideological groups appropriating various terms. The left has hijacked the pro-poor platform; and the sangh parivar has set itself up as the only group speaking for the Hindus. Nobody is trying to wrest these platforms back from them.

I am personally against any kind of fundamentalism, religious, ideological, fiscal, economic or whatever. That is why this blog and the name.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines a freethinker as `a person who rejects accepted opinion, especially those concerning religious belief'. In a world where liberalism, the free market, communism and socialism have become as rigid religions as Hinduism or Islam or Christianity, I find myself constantly at loggerheads with one or the other school of thought as I refuse to subject myself to any form of ideological fundamentalism. Why unrepentant? Because I find I am often forced to be defensive about the views I hold because labels are being thrown at me.

My basic ideological leaning is towards liberalism and an open society and, to that extent, I have a revulsion towards socialism and communism. I not only find them irrelevant and outdated but they also carry within them the seeds of tyranny and dictatorship. But my liberalism is not one which demands an unquestioning obedience and blind genuflection to liberal shibboleths. Nor can I ignore the merits of an argument that those opposed to my beliefs have.

I have one set of liberal comrades who believe that if the communists say something, the opposite must be true. And another set says that if the BJP-sangh parivar combine says something, we must say the opposite. I realise both the loony left and the rabid right can evoke such extreme reactions among the most mild-mannered people but if even liberals abandon the path of sanity, how are we better than either of those fanatical groups?

I have been labelled a Hindutva type as well as a pseudo-secularist. My left leaning acquaintances think I am a economic liberatarian while some of my liberal comrades in arms think I am just a shade lighter than socialist pink.

But I am nothing more than an unapologetic free thinker, who refuses to be tied down to or get straitjacketed within any one dogma. Or accept any label.

What this blog will do

This blog will be my own personal soapbox, if you will, on which I will from time to time sound off on various issues, trying to separate unrelated issues and steer clear of ideological inflexibility. Above all, I will try and explain what liberalism means to me at a personal level. I will not be politically correct and I will not pull any punches.

I will also put up writings that i feel deserve to be read more widely.

The ant and the grasshopper

This was a wonderful email going around. Just had to put it up.

CLASSIC VERSION

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies in the cold.


MODERN VERSION

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

BBC, CNN, NDTV show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.
The world is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be that this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Arundhati Roy stages a demonstration outside the ant's house. Amnesty International and Kofi Annan criticise the government for not upholding the fundamental rigths of the grasshopper.
The Internet is flooded with online petitions seeking support for the grasshopper. Opposition MPs stage a walkout from Parliament.
Left parties call for a Bharat Bandh in West Bengal and Kerala demanding a judicial enquiry.
Finally, the Judicial Committee drafts the Prevention of Terrorism Against Grasshoppers Act (POTAGA) with effect from the beginning of winter.
The ant is fined for failing to comply with POTAGA, and having nothing to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government and handed over to the grasshopper in a ceremony covered by BBC, CNN and NDTV.
Arundhati Roy calls it "a triumph of justice".


POSTSCRIPT

The ant dies of starvation, and the grasshopper dances away the winter and summer. Come next winter the grasshopper knows nothing about building or maintaining a home. He searches for the ant, but there are not ants anymore. So the grassshopper dies too.
Arundhati Roy comes back to claim an award for predicting the environmental collapse that contributed to the extinction of the ant, and then the grasshopper. She donates the money to build a centre for environmental justice.

Hum to anything karega

This is an ad line of a car, which is a take off on a Kishore Kumar number – hum to mohabbat karega. It could well apply all those acting in the name of secularism. Nothing demonstrates this more than when, on Day One of the Jharkhand imbroglio, a young Congress leader RPN Singh blithely told NDTV, `arithmetic can be bought, secularism can’t.’ So now we are to believe that secularism is justification enough for the rape of democracy! Strong words but no words can be strong enough to describe what Syed Sibte Razi did.

But let’s not blame the young man. He probably doesn’t know any better. After all time and again he has (like all of us have) seen very senior politicians justify all manner of unprincipled alliances, rationalise supporting or taking the support of the likes of Lalu Yadav, Ram Vilas Paswan, Mulayam Singh Yadav or worse (believe me, there are worse) in the name of secularism. So he was probably under the impression that paying obeisance to the word secularism is the best way to earn some brownie points.

The problem is that secularism has come to be identified with, not anti-communalism, but pure and simple anti-BJP-ism. So, opposing the BJP combine is reason enough to strike deals with other communal and caste-ist leaders. I recall a conversation I had with a Communist Party of India (CPI) leader in the mid-1990s about this whole thing about communal politics. There was some elections going on and this person was lamenting that the candidate from Mulayam Singh Yadav’s party – the Samajwadi Party – in his constituency was distributing calendars with the picture of Ram to the Hindus and with some Muslim symbol to the Muslims. `Look at how they are using religion during the elections. It is very sad,' he said. I asked why the CPI was allying with the Samajwadi Party. `Because we have to stop the BJP. It is communal,’ was his reply. He was dead serious. I remember Kishore Kumar warbling `joota polish karega’ in this song. Anything to win my lady love, he was singing. The CPI leader could well have been singing the same line in the context of keeping the BJP out.

So Mulayam Singh Yadav can distribute religious calendars and openly pander to the Muslim votebank with ridiculous sops (like making schools in UP declare half day on Friday to enable students to attend Friday prayers, a step that was withdrawn within two days), which even the community itself may be embarrassed about, but he is the upholder of secularism. Laloo Yadav can use a hastily put together report on the Godhra carnage in the elections, but he is a bulwark against communalism. Ram Vilas Paswan can openly proclaim that he is wooing the Muslim vote and yet can say with an absolutely straight face that he is the only truly secular politician in the country. All three may have chargesheeters with the most heinous crimes to their credit but that’s alright because they are the poster boys of secularism. (Come to think of it, is that surprising? When Indira Gandhi can emasculate the institutions of democracy and her favourite bahu can go one step further, what are a few murders and kidnappings?)

The upright Manmohan Singh is forced to take a criminal like Taslimuddin into his cabinet because otherwise the Rashtriya Janata Dal will pull out and that would be a blow to secular forces! The Left tried to persuade Paswan to support the RJD in Bihar – after the elections threw up a hung assembly – in the interests of secularism. Despite the RJD’s dismal record of governance, and the caste killings in Bihar, the Congress and the Left will always support the RJD because otherwise secularism in Bihar is under threat. Who cares about the people of Bihar? Words like secularism are more important. Caste killings are okay but killings in religious riots are not. (It’s another matter that they are never religious riots but riots engineered by goondas of all political hues – red, green, saffron, pink.)

Secularism means that religion should be left in the private domain. No political party in the country can take credit for that. Secularism is also the opposite of communalism. But can any of the parties claiming to work in the name of secularism be termed as not communal? No. That’s why I say secularism in India has just become a synonym for anti-BJP-ism. It’s a negativist, not positive, principle. It’s an affliction of not just the politicians but also of the liberals (both the left leaning ones and the economic right ones).

The BJP is also to blame for stoking this kind of sentiment by taking up dubious causes just because they are perceived as hurting Hindu sentiments. Just like the actions of the Yadav duo and Paswan probably embarrass the Muslims, the actions of the BJP often embarrass the Hindus.

What this negativist attitude results in is the kind of actions we saw in Jharkhand. And what may perhaps happen in Bihar.

In the interests of true secularism, we need an informed and cool-headed public debate about the meaning of secularism and how it should play out in public life. But is there scope for such public discourse in the country today?

The foundation of civic and responsible society

I am part of a mailing list discussing the possibilities and scope for liberal politics in India. Since the recent state assembly elections, and especially in the context of the formation of the Gurgaon Residents’ Party and its participation in the Haryana elections, the group has discussed the poor turnout of Gurgaon’s upper middle class voters, which was especially glaring since many of them supported the formation of the party.

An observation by one member of the group, Dev Chopra, was particularly insightful and posed an extremely relevant question about the responsibility of citizens. Is it something that will – or should – surface once in five years or however frequently elections may be held?

Here’s what Mr Chopra had to say:

`Would any of the leading lights of the GRP consider assessing, what percentage of the public owning their newly constructed homes, in the last 18-20 years show their Completion or Occupation Certificates BEFORE living in or renting out their property? One will not be surprised to find that 50-60 percent just ignore that statutory requirement. In Phase II of DLF . . . alone, one may discover at least 300 properties being used for commercial ventures, so as to make a quick buck, thereby contravening the residential "ambience" of the area. The typical Delhi city problem of: a) over construction, b) commercialising the residential areas, c) ignoring local laws and installing booster pumps for water--hurting the neighbours, d)installing big transformers and pollute the neighborhood/s, and so on. Self interest and not civic sense rules the roost here.’

`Their focus is more on "encroaching on public land, outside their boundary walls to make green patches, with flowerpots, iron railings on both sides of the road, thus further narrowing the road for vehicles to cross by" unconcerned with community needs.’

Indeed, can one be a responsible voter if one is not a responsible neighbour or citizen?

There are many I know who will argue that completion/occupancy certificates, zoning laws, encroachments etc are all appurtenances and consequences of a statist economy and that they actually lead to the kind of politics we have. That’s something that could be the subject of a passionate debate but the larger point is the complete lack of a civic sense that gets extrapolated on to political participation, even if it is just going and voting in an election. If I don’t care enough about my neighbourhood, will I care about the country?

I had touched upon the issue of low voter turnout in a previous post – Why the urban middle class doesn’t vote – and while that’s one part of the story, the other part is what Mr Chopra has pointed out.

If we see nothing wrong in installing booster pumps to draw out water, thus depriving someone else, we won’t find anything wrong in what politicians are doing all the time, hijacking public money/resources/facilities for their own use. It’s so much easier to fulminate over the quality of people in public life in our drawing rooms, but voting for a party or candidate that stands for clean, value-based, principled politics is difficult. Because we are afraid that if we do get a more principled politics, we will stand to lose our cosy little worlds which we have created through bribes, use of influence, blatant misuse of the law etc. And I, for one, don’t think a liberal politics can be built on a foundation of complete lack of civic sense.

What does the liberal credo say about civic duties and responsibilities? I think this issue needs to be studied and debated by all those who want a more liberal, value-based politics. It’ll be a long haul, but who said building something, especially something absolutely new, was easy?