[Reader-list] Shourie's inhumanity

Wed Aug 26 23:18:58 IST 2009

    Arun Shourie has provided us with some insights into the BJP leadership
in the days after the Gujarat riots of 2002. Those honourable men emerge as
men of straw, at best unable to control their party organisation and the
arms of the state, at worst, conniving with the pogrom.

    Most of all, his hero, Atal Behari Vajpayee, whom gushing commentators
apotheosised as the great elder statesman in the wrong party. The then prime
minister, we are told, "has a code -- there are certain things, whatever the
costs you show him, he will do them."

    But Shourie's own testimony on those days shows that code never did
extend to righting one of the most brutal assaults on Indian democracy and
society.

    Vajpayee, with his poet's sensitivities, was in anguish after a visit to
the refugee camps, Shourie claims, and quotes him as saying the riots were a
stain on him personally. The prime minister contemplating pushing for the
resignation of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, Shourie tells us.

    That call never went through, and Shourie had to later prod Vajpayee
into raising the issue with then party president Lal Krishna Advani. Not
that Shourie was prompted by his disgust at the riots, but because he was
"more affected by Atalji's pain han by what happened in Gujarat."

    Advani and Vajpayee decided to ask Modi to offer his resignation during
the national executive meeting. But when Modi told the meeting he was going
to resign, the audience erupted in protest. They backtracked immediately:
the people have spoken !

    One is not quite surprised at Vajpayee's lack of action against Modi,
who was, in the words of the Supreme Court, "a modern day Nero who watched
when Gujarat burned."

    Offering a reason why Vajpayee never made that forceful push, Shourie
has little to offer beyond, "it is not Atalji's nature to press beyond a
point."

    Clearly true. Especially about a point, where after all, Vajpayee had
his famous rhetorical question: but then, who was it who first set alit the
fire?

    ACTION, REACTION, CONTRADICTION

    Shourie too has his doubts, ruminating about how police are part of
society and "when society is enrages, then the policeman is also the same
fellow."

    "Such things happen as a reaction," he says, echoing Modi -- whom
Shourie has earlier and continues to anoint as the future. It happened in
Delhi in 1984 too. "You can't prevent these things. No one can prevent these
things."

    You can't ask the police to do its duty, because, you don't have "moral
authority," he says. Modi, it seems, doesn't have it.

    So the state, it seems, must let bloodbaths go on, let its instruments
go berserk, because, well, the mob wishes it.

    Curiously, in an essay that appears in the the Indian Express, Shourie
quotes with approval a Supreme Court's judgement censuring Tamil Nadu for
banning a film on grounds it could spark violence.

    The court rules that the freedom of expression cannot be suppressed on
the threat of a mob, and asks, what good is that fundamental right if the
state does not protect it.

    "That is the law. That is the mandate of the Constitution," Shourie
pontificates.

    But it seems that the right to life, also guaranteed by the
Constitution, can be neglected by the state, if society wills it.

     What is licit for Zeus is not for the ox, surely!


-- 
Birla House, 10th Floor - East Tower,
25 Barakhamba Road, New Delhi 110 001  India

(t) +91-11-4178 1020 | (m) +91-99990 78674 | (f) +91-11-4178-1010

sher mere hai sab khvaas pasand
par mujhe guftgu aavaam se hai
                                     -- Mir
(with my poetry all patricians are pleased
but my conversations are with the people)


-- 
Birla House, 10th Floor - East Tower,
25 Barakhamba Road, New Delhi 110 001  India

(t) +91-11-4178 1020 | (m) +91-99990 78674 | (f) +91-11-4178-1010

sher mere hai sab khvaas pasand
par mujhe guftgu aavaam se hai
                                     -- Mir
(with my poetry all patricians are pleased
but my conversations are with the people)


2009/8/26 shreyas sardesai <shreyassardesai at yahoo.com>

> Arun Shourie in his interview to NDTV's Walk the Talk
>
> "And frankly, I must say, I was more affected by Atalji’s pain than by what
> had happened in Gujarat. Maybe this is my inhumanity or something. I can’t
> claim that I was that great liberal."
>
>
> http://www.indianexpress.com/news/atalji-sat-in-the-flight-head-down.-main-kaise-utroonga...-is-kalank-gujarat-riots-ko-mere-munh-par-laga-diya...-but-he-was-thwarted/507118/12
>
> "but I must say that I was not all the time for this, that Modi has to go
> because of the killings, because in my view such things happen as a
> reaction, as happened in Delhi as a reaction to (Indira) Gandhi’s brutal
> killing. You can’t then prevent those things. Nobody can prevent those
> things."
>
>
> http://www.indianexpress.com/news/atalji-sat-in-the-flight-head-down.-main-kaise-utroonga...-is-kalank-gujarat-riots-ko-mere-munh-par-laga-diya...-but-he-was-thwarted/507118/14
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Birla House, 10th Floor - East Tower,
25 Barakhamba Road, New Delhi 110 001  India

(t) +91-11-4178 1020 | (m) +91-99990 78674 | (f) +91-11-4178-1010

sher mere hai sab khvaas pasand
par mujhe guftgu aavaam se hai
                                     -- Mir
(with my poetry all patricians are pleased
but my conversations are with the people)