by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group
It is a rebellion without a clarity of cause. And that makes it even more curious, as it is not a rebellion of the aam aadmi. On the contrary, it is revolt by the "Rich Like Us", and by "us" I mean "they", as it is indeed the title of Nayantara Sahgal's novel that won her the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1986. The 88-year-old niece of Jawaharlal Nehru attracted her cousin Indira Gandhi's ire for being critical of the 1975 Emergency. And now, after returning the Akademi award, she has done a time walk, saying that the Modi government is waiting for the numbers in the Rajya Sabha to "alter the Constitution", as Indira did after her "massive mandate".
The problem is, Sahgal's comparison is fallacious as Indira Gandhi did the 42nd amendment in 1976 when her Emergency had robbed Parliament of all its relevance. The writer is raking up the issue purely for effect. But the trend began even before her, in September, when Hindi writer Uday Prakash returned the Sahitya Akademi Award he had won in 2010 to protest against the Akademi's "indifference" to the murder of intellectuals such as M. M. Kulburgi. However, Kulburgi's murder took place in the Congress-ruled state of Kanataka where the state investigative authorities have so far failed to bring the culprit to book. But Prakash had made up his mind.
It opened the flood gate of return of awards. Malayalam writer Sarah Joseph to Punjabi writer Baldev Singh Sadaknama, Gujarati litterateur Anil Joshi to yet another Punjabi writer Waryam Singh Sandhu—all have thrown back their awards to protest against rising "intolerance" in the country for which they held the Modi government responsible. The Sahitya Akademi 'award-wapsi' number include men like Sandhu, who was detained during Emergency, as well as Ashok Bajpeyi, writer and former chief of the Lalit Kala Akademi considered close to the Congress.
Parallel to writers' protest, there have been other streams, like filmmakers, and most notably, scientists, to join the pickets. On the day the FTII students returned to class rooms after 139 days' strike, 12 filmmakers returned their national awards. Meanwhile, 300 artists signed on a memorandum condemning recent communal incidents and the government for rising intolerance. Earlier 73 sociologists issued a statement condemning lynching of Muhammad Akhlaq in Dadri. The protests took a new dimension with around 100 foremost scientists of the country issuing a joint statement protesting the increasingly "polarised" environment in the country but holding the government and its policy primarily responsible. Its signatories included quite a few internationally renowned scientists like celebrated string theorist Ashok Sen (who was recommended as Fellow of the Royal Society for physicist Stephen Hawking), Pushpa Bharghava, founder of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad, former director of the Indian Institute of Science P. Balaram and former president of the Indian Academy of Science D. Balasubramanian.
Public intellectuals were not alone in pointing finger at the government for a multiplicity of charges, most of which are focused on intolerance of dissent. Even Raghuram Rajan, an internationally lauded economist and Governor of RBI, a constitutional body, in addressing students at IIT Delhi, his alma mater, said "India's tradition of debate and an open spirit of enquiry" is critical for the country's economic progress. It's a jibe uncharacteristic of RBI chief. Even Moody's, one of the world's most authoritative rating agencies, advised Prime Minister Modi to rein in his party members or "risk losing global credulity". Interestingly, a few days back, none other than President Pranab Mukherjee deviated from the norms when he spoke twice in a fortnight about growing "intolerance" in the country and wondered if "tolerance and acceptance of dissent are on the wane" in the country.
Why have the scholars, the intellectuals, foreign agencies through whose eyes the world assesses India and even the country's own constitutional heads have been pointing a finger? BJP suspects Congress hand. It seems convinced that what it is up against is what Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has described as "politics by other means". The party is organising a counter-procession of "nationalist minded" artists and writers on November 7, the day before announcement of Bihar assembly poll results. Significantly, the procession will head to Rashtrapati Bhavan to hand over a memorandum to the President. Jaitley is calling the intellectuals' anti-intolerance campaign as a "manufactured protest" and the BJP wants to turn the November 7 procession into a mega-event. The march has been named Jawab Do (Give an explanation). The anti-Modi protesters have no doubt got a lead but it is doubtful if they have convincing explanation for their actions.
BJP also must keep its nose clean and explain why its fringe elements are being pampered and humoured with coveted ministerial portfolios and lavish accommodation.
First, they must explain why they are holding Modi solely responsible for anti-Muslim clashes in Dadri and Faridabad whereas communal clashes are an integral part of the Indian narrative and the clashes down the ages are well-documented. Besides, there have been many instances in recent times of Muslims giving it back to aggressive Hindus, like an anti-cow slaughter activist who was killed by unnamed assailants near Bengaluru. In the past, such social stress got absorbed spontaneously without much brouhaha. But now, the unwavering social media, and the untiring zeal of Modi’s political adversaries, have brought a highly selective list of such incidents firmly into the radar of attention. It has either distorted the perspective of the outraged intellectuals, or have just provided fodder to their antipathy to Modi since 2002 and BJP, which was endemic all along. Many of them enjoyed Central government funding in the past that seldom came under strict audit. Many others were just floating on past glory. This is particularly true of many of the scientific organisations which are Soviet era institutions with little contemporary achievements to shoot a line about. The thriving business of NGOs is already under a close scanner making hundreds of thousands penniless.
It will surely be an uphill task for Modi’s intellectual critics to give jawab as to what exactly has enraged them. But BJP also must keep its nose clean and explain why its fringe elements are being pampered and humoured with coveted ministerial portfolios and lavish accommodation.
