Judging by what has happened in this country during recent days, it would seem that we Indians are living in what the Chinese would call “interesting times”. The second fortnight of November is not yet over. Yet, during it, there has been such a rapid succession of disgraceful events as to make us all hang our heads in shame. To say that the worst of the disgusting goings-on was the face-off between self-styled “godman” Rampal and the law-enforcement agencies of the government in Haryana would be to stress the obvious.
All the horrifying and sordid details of what exactly happened are well-known. But it is necessary to underscore that from his fortress — protected by a private army of well-armed goons that never hesitated to fire upon and hurl bombs on the Haryana police and the Centre’s Border Security Force — this charlatan made a mockery of the Indian state. Two days before the horrendous confrontation ended somehow, a retired director-general of the Haryana police told a court of law that the crisis arose because India was a “soft state”.
After Rampal’s effrontery — thank God treason has been added to the charges against him — national attention has focused on the deathless curse of “godmanship” in this country. At any given time there are a fairly large number of them, with huge followings, clout and riches. As someone put it nicely, almost every “godman is also a conman and a godfather”. No fewer than seven of them have been in jail or are under trial on various charges.
What enables them to do what they like with impunity is a combination of blind faith in them among the gullible millions and the mutually beneficial nexus with politicians. Politicians see to it that the “godmen” remain above the law; in return politicians get huge numbers of votes. Between 2008, when he got bail, and the formation of the Bharatiya Janata Party government in Haryana, Rampal could avoid or evade 42 summons to appear before the court because he enjoyed the support of the Congress government, headed by Bhupinder Singh Hooda. Mrs Hooda is known to be on the trust formed by Rampal.
No wonder the BJP is patting itself on the back for having arrested Rampal in 10 days while Mr Hooda couldn’t do it in 10 years. What it conceals is that the affidavit the BJP government filed in the high court in a “sealed cover” was a plea to let Rampal have the 43rd opportunity to stay away because otherwise there could be “heavy casualties” while arresting him. The court flatly refused. Clearly support and sympathy for “godmen” sways all parties.
No less shocking, indeed chilling, is the unprecedented indictment by the Supreme Court of the director of the Central Bureau of Investigation, Ranjit Sinha, for privately meeting suspects and those accused in the 2G mega scam. The apex court ordered him not to interfere with the investigations into this case. Earlier he had let the then law minister vet a report meant exclusively for the top court and no one else. It was then that the apex court had called him a “caged parrot”. In short, like the fish, the country’s premier investigating agency has started rotting from the top. On the day of the apex court’s judgment, Mr Sinha had only a few days left before his retirement. Four of the former CBI chiefs, two of them outstanding, have deeply regretted publicly that he has failed to do his moral duty to resign.
Remarkably, Mr Sinha’s deplorable wrongdoing and deserved fate has encouraged West Bengal’s mercurial chief minister and the supreme leader of the Trinamul Congress, Mamata Banerjee, to demand immediate dissolution of the CBI and its replacement by a new agency. She is furious with the CBI because it has conducted a thorough inquiry into the notorious Saradha chit fund scam and arrested two Trinamul Congress MPs and summoned a minister in this connection.
Few are prepared to buy her argument that the CBI’s investigations are an act of vengeance by the BJP government in New Delhi against her party. Equally specious is Ms Banerjee’s claim that the Burdwan-based terrorist activity by the infiltrating Bangladeshi Mujahideen and their local collaborators is “stage-managed”. She is right, however, in declaring that the conflict between her party and the BJP is developing into an “all-out war”. This volcano can explode any time.
While Ms Banerjee was busy pronouncing anathema on the ruling party at the Centre, the Samajwadi Party governing Uttar Pradesh was engaged in a pleasanter venture: to celebrate the 75th birthday of “Netaji” Mulayam Singh Yadav, whose son Akhilesh, is chief minister. If the organisers decided to make the celebrations so lavish and expensive as to rival the big, fat weddings of the offspring of dollar billionaire Indians, it was a matter of their taste. But arrangements for the series of functions were so bad that a woman was crushed to death in a stampede.
The most recent murder in Delhi of a highly educated young man from Manipur was accompanied by the thrashing in Bengaluru on the same day of another innocent north-eastern youth because he did not know the local language. After decades of insurgencies in the Northeast the younger generation of that region is voluntarily integrating itself with the rest of country by spreading out in large numbers in search of education and employment. What a shame it is that many of them are made targets of racial violence! Similarly, the brutal murder only the other day of a young girl in the nation’s capital by her own parents because she had married out of her caste shows that instead of contracting the doctrine of “honour killing” is spreading shamefully.
Will the Modi government, please, pay to the evils enumerated above at least as much attention as it is devoting to promote Sanskrit and push out German and other foreign languages?
