The Age Of Lumpen Politics

It is no longer possible to hide from others and even ourselves the fact that our domestic politics has descended to seemingly unredeemable levels of lumpen coarseness. This is clear from the assault a few days ago mounted by Mr Kanshiram and his supporters on his incitement on journalists gathered at his residence by way of duty and, even more importantly, the way the leaders of political parties reacted to it in public.

Television is a cruel medium that magnifies a thousand fold the actions and gestures of those it captures in the camera. Those who saw the infamous attack on their screens could hardly have missed the raw fury that was let loose indiscriminately on men and women. It is therefore all the more surprising that the spokesmen of various political parties interviewed should have hummed and hawed about what happened. Again, the camera captured the shiftiness in the eyes, the squirming and stuttering of these worthies in fielding questions. They qualified their remarks with such inanities as: If it is true,, or if it really happened, as though they did not see the television news in all the channels including Doordarshans. These are men who are ready enough to believe the worst of their opponents and are never at a loss for words for condemning them on insufficient evidence. On this occasion, however, all that they could summon up was: It is unfortunate, it is sad if true.

 

It was all so pathetic, their anxiety did not to seem to criticise Mr Kanshiram. And considering how some of them hate the guts of newspaper persons, it may even be that they secretly applauded the BSP strongman for doing what they themselves would have dearly loved to do.

If this is the attitude of the politicians, particularly those in the government who have some responsibility for punishing criminal conduct, why blame the police who were reluctant to register the case without clearance from above? The law being allowed to take its course is the famous cliche of our times and yet in this instance the readiness to let this happen is not very evident.

On the other hand, Inderjit Gupta asks the Press Council of India to inquire into it rather than activise the police who are directly under him.

The Council, after some uncharacteristic initial fumbling, realised that there were more appropriate agencies than itself, the police, for example, that could and should investigate such matters. Making the affair solely an issue of assault on press freedom (which it is and which alone concerns the Press Council) obscures the fact that there is a more mundane cause for action, namely, plain assault and battery defined in the penal code and which is more apropos of the occasion. If that line of action is not being pursued and a leisurely inquiry on a narrow question by the Press Council is preferred, it can only be due to an overwhelming compulsion to deal circumspectly with anything connected with Mr Kanshiram, particularly at a time when he holds the key for some semblance of a solution for the UP muddle.

Thus it is that only Mulayam Singh Yadav, who has axes of his own to grind and scores to settle with Mr Kanshiram, has come out with a blistering attack on Mr Kanshiram for manhandling newspersons. But this is in some ways an embarrassing support for newspersons. In his time, Mulayam Singh has also been notoriously hostile to the press. Of course, he is a great benefactor of select friendly journalists loading them with largesse from public funds when he was in power. (By the way, whatever happened to the Press Council inquiry into this affair?)

Except for this dubious support from Mulayam Singh, no politician in the game has had the public spirit to view the incident in the broader context of a civilised public life irrespective of party interests. The reason for this is obvious: everyone of the mainstream parties, not excluding the BJP with an immediate stake in UP politics, is unwilling to offend the BSP. Granted that this is the compulsion of the bizarre arithmetic of the UP results in which no government can be formed by a single party (or front). And if the BJP is to be kept away from power, the alternatives are a BSP government supported by the UF or vice versa, with the Congress a pathetic poor cousin. This would have become possible but for the fact that Mr Kanshiram is adamant that he will not allow any government to be formed other than BSPs. This would be acceptable to the others, particularly the UF and even the BJP would have played along. But Mr Kanshiram insists that this government will be headed by none other than Mayawati and this is the rock on which all negotiations have been wrecked.

And even this would not have proved an unsurmountable difficulty, but for Mulayam Singh saying that this can happen only over his dead body. All manner of deals and quid pro quo concessions have been floated to break the deadlock but to no avail so far.

What does all this add up to? Quite simply, the politics of the biggest and most important state is nothing but an unseemly wrangle over whether or not a single individual should be the chief minister. It is not even about the empowerment of the Dalits so dear to V P Singhs heart. This would have been as easily served if another leader from BSP were to be the chief minister. But no, only Mayawati would do. And, with the exception of Mulayam Singh, every one, including the BJP, is willing to concede this. So, what stands in the way of a democratic government being installed in the state is the clash of two egoes.

Is this a sign of democratic health? What are the political or constitutional principles involved in this single obstacle to the formation of a government after an election as enjoined by the Constitution? A dubious extension of Presidents Rule was resorted to for enabling this to happen. And, as of writing, nothing has happened. A raucous constitutional debate about the conduct of the governor, about the extension of Presidents Rule has been going on but it is all so unreal in terms of the calculations of the people involved.

What is the political ideology at stake in this farce? On what known principles of political negotiation can it be required that not a particular party but a particular individual in it should be accepted in advance by other coalition partners as the prospective chief minister? And what is the political principle involved in Mulayam Singhs refusal to countenance Mayawati as chief minister? Is the politics of a state to be solely determined by personal hatreds?

Is the United Front and by extension, India then to be condemned to a lumpen politics of violence, opportunistic alliances and clash of king-sized egoes?