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print versionLokpal Countdown: Beware of the Fascists
Editorial: August 2011
Hardnews Bureau Delhi
Last many months now, the UPA government has been trapped in a compulsive state of paralysis. Displaying guilt by inference, it has not been able to effectively answer damaging questions about large-scale corruption. Financial scandals that look as massive as state budgets have blighted the lily white image of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress chief Sonia Gandhi. Although there are no personal charges of corruption against them, but the media and a large mass of people find it difficult to reconcile to the idea that a good man/woman can lead one of the most corrupt governments in recent times. This perception has devalued the stirring endorsement Congress and UPA got in the general elections merely two years ago in 2009.
The rash of corruption charges has breathed new life into the tired lungs of discredited opposition parties. Civil society groups, too, emboldened by the environment of mistrust and skepticism towards the political class, have stepped out to queer their pitch. The Supreme Court’s monitoring of corruption cases and imprisonment of high profile politicians and businessmen has given this noisy campaign an edgy feel. The adamant ‘Anna team’, compulsively addicted to aggressive television grandstanding, has unilaterally demanded the creation of a Jan Lokpal with sweeping powers to investigate and punish the guilty. Multi-millionaire yoga gurus, Gandhians, fascists and rank communalists, retired bureaucrats, sinister coup plotters and unhappy dreamers have all jumped this populist bandwagon.
There is a ring of déjà vu about this campaign. In 1974, socialist leader Jayaprakash Narayan (JP), led a mass struggle against corruption, with direct support of the RSS and rump socialists. Indira Gandhi saw this as an attempt to destabilise her government. She quickly imposed Emergency, and rest, as they say, is history.
Nearly 14 years later, in 1987, her son, Rajiv Gandhi’s resounding electoral mandate was challenged by another anti-corruption movement, this time led by his former finance minister VP Singh. The charge of kickbacks in defense deals against Rajiv and his friends knocked out the legitimacy of the Congress regime. Subsequent elections confirmed the haemorrhage corruption inflicted on the Congress party.
If history holds any lessons, than this one-dimensional, shrill campaign might also mutate into a political agitation. The government knows the implications. Despite being in denial, they can instinctively feel the hot gusts of rebellion all over the world; this could seriously damage UPA II. In democracies like ours, power theoretically resides with people; but the nature of our system is such that the mandate gets hijacked by the super-rich corporate lobbies with its entrenched political nexus. However, empowered by collective zones of grassroot resistance and awareness through social networking sites, people have begun to challenge authority, as the multiple struggles against land acquisition proves — from Posco to Bhatta Parsaul. This irreverence is posing difficult questions for the ruling establishment.
Uncannily, camouflaged fronts and forces of Hindutva, under pressure from investigators for their links with extremists/terrorists who bomb trains, markets and mosques, killing innocents, communalising and viciously polarising society, are trying to infiltrate these movements. They want to control them, destabilise the social order and capture power though the back door. The 1974 and 1987 agitations are an ample testimony of the success the forces of religious extremism gained riding piggyback on anti-corruption movements. Therefore, it is crucial that the Left, secular and progressive forces, including people’s movements and intelligentsia, gets out of its defeats and stagnations, and decisively redefines the political agenda. Or else, subterranean, dangerous fascist tendencies, entrenched inside the intestines of our institutions, might acquire a sinister populism, and strike at the very root of our secular, pluralist and democratic Constitution.
