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Wednesday, Mar 23, 2005

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Righting a wrong

By Vidya Subrahmaniam

It is ironic that the India Government should have sought justice for Narendra Modi on grounds of courtesy and fair play.

WHAT IS common between the inglorious exit of the Shibu Soren Government in Jharkhand and New Delhi's emphatic advocacy of a visa to Narendra Modi to travel to the United States? The two developments bear the unmistakable stamp of Manmohan Singh. From a conventional perspective both would qualify as instances where a Prime Minister did what he must to set right a wrong; indeed they would stand out as examples of bipartisanship seen in other democracies but felt to be sorely missing from our own partisan parliamentary and political conduct.

Yet the wrong done in Jharkhand and the wrong done to Mr. Modi are far from being in the same class. The first case involved the removal of a usurper regime that compounded its blunder by seeming to defy the Supreme Court. The second was about defending a Chief Minister whose Government was censured in the strongest terms by the Supreme Court and the National Human Rights Commission for its complicity in the massacre of thousands of innocent Muslims. The Jharkhand Mukti Morcha Government at best committed a Constitutional impropriety. The murder and mayhem that devastated Gujarat in 2002 was a Constitutional outrage. If the denial of a visa to Mr. Modi by the U.S. was an affront to the office of the Chief Minister, official India's defence of Mr. Modi is an affront to the Supreme Court, the NHRC and the very notion of civility on which the rule of law rests. Indeed it is ironic that the Indian Government should have sought justice for Mr. Modi on grounds of courtesy and fair play.

That the Prime Minister is a stickler for propriety hardly needs stating. Dr. Singh's reputation for playing straight is the reason why Sonia Gandhi instinctively zeroed in on him as the one person who could be Prime Minister. It goes without saying then that Dr. Singh felt compromised by recent political developments, in Goa and Jharkhand. The Prime Minister won plaudits for his intervention in Jharkhand because there he acted to reverse an obvious wrong: the Congress-JMM used a pliant Governor to grab power ahead of its rivals and then failed to establish its majority. Not that the Bharatiya Janata Party covered itself in glory. In all the fuss about the injury caused to democracy by the Congress, the dubious nature of the BJP-JD (U)'s majority got obscured. The coalition's much-touted figure of 41 MLAs included a defector (Ennos Ekka) whose party pledged its written support to Mr. Soren. What backroom deal caused three of the 40 MLAs who ostensibly supported Mr. Soren suddenly to disappear? What is the sanctity of a majority that emerges from disrespect shown to the constitutionally mandated anti-defection law? These questions notwithstanding, Dr. Singh did the right thing in Jharkhand because the Soren Government did not even have the fig leaf of a commandeered majority.

It is hard to find a similar justification in the Modi case, although many commentators have held the response of the Prime Minister and the Ministry of External Affairs to be diplomatically correct.

The Indian Government's protest, it has been argued, must be seen as a necessary formality, a sort of going-though-the-motions exercise. Yet consider the rather forceful nature of the Prime Minister's protest. He told the Rajya Sabha: "Our Government has clearly pointed out our very deep concern and regret over the U.S. decision to deny a visa to a constitutionally elected Chief Minister of a State of our Union ... this uncalled for decision betrays a lack of sensitivity and due courtesy to an elected authority."

Further, "Mr. Chairman, Sir, the American Government has also been clearly informed that while we respect their sovereign right to grant or refuse visas to any person, we do not believe that it is appropriate to use allegations or anything less than due process to make a subjective judgment to question a constitutional authority in India..."

The first part of the statement doubtless fulfils the criterion of diplomatic correctness. The problem is with the second part. The Prime Minister charges the U.S. Government with reaching a "subjective judgment" based on "allegations." Are the numerous crimes Mr. Modi stands accused of, all of which have been painstakingly documented by the NHRC, mere allegations?

Is it the U.S.' subjective assessment that around 2000 Muslims perished and many more were rendered homeless in the post-Godhra violence? No less than President K.R. Narayanan has affirmed the truth of what Dr. Singh said were allegations: "It [the Gujarat violence] was a conspiracy between the [BJP-led] State and Central Governments."

Yes, Mr. Modi did not stand trial in a court of law. So the plea of "due process" is technically correct. Yet the Supreme Court was merciless in its indictment of the Modi administration. To quote: "The modern day `Neros' were looking elsewhere when Best Bakery and innocent children and helpless women were burning, and were probably deliberating how the perpetrators of the crime can be protected." Best Bakery was that unique case where the court passed an order for reinvestigation and retrial despite the acquittal of all the accused by a lower court and the High court.

Thanks to the stamp of approval he has secured from the United Progressive Alliance Government, Mr. Modi has metamorphosed from being "Gujarat's pride" to "India's pride." Even better, Mr. Advani has compared the denial of U.S. visa to Mr. Modi to Gandhi's Dandi yatra.

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