:: Antara Dev Sen

Disrespect for truth is the real insult

Antara Dev Sen

April.2 : "Can’t come. Lie follows". That was Marcel Proust, telegraphically turning down an invitation. It would do very well in our SMS age, since brazen lies are perfectly acceptable today. No, don’t doubt yourself. There’s nothing wrong with your mind. The trouble is with reality.

It’s a reality crafted more out of convenience than correctness. A flexible, shifty reality that dislikes and disrespects truth. This is a carefree world of Say Now, Deny Later. The latest, updated version of the "baad me sorry bol dengey (we’ll say sorry later)" attitude that has ruled politics and street life for ages. But saying sorry has gone out of fashion. Now, like street goons, they just turn around and deny wrongdoing. If you disagree, they would be happy to rearrange your brain for you.

From denying Ajmal Amir Kasab access to proper legal procedure to rewarding criminals with a ticket to Parliament, we have been flaunting our insolent disregard for the law. For we live in a culture of disrespect.

And our noisy protests about disrespecting India and its sentiments just make it worse, mixing intolerance with insult, stirring dull roots with quick rage. Because we cling to symbols, we see imaginary insults and are blind to real disrespect for India and all that it stands for.

We dragged Sachin Tendulkar to court for "intentionally insulting" the Indian flag. Why? In Jamaica during the 2007 World Cup, he had cut a cake that looked like the Indian flag. We created a ruckus over M.S. Dhoni and his team not only insulting but desecrating the flag in South Africa. Why? Because after their exciting win against Pakistan, the ecstatic boys wrapped the Indian flag around themselves and pranced about in joy. They popped a bottle of champagne and apparently the flag caught the spray. And then there was that infamous shot of Sania Mirza watching a game with her feet up and an Indian flag in the foreground. Feet and flag? Insult!

We took A.R. Rahman to court for insulting the national anthem. He had done an abridged version for Airtel. And Shashi Tharoor, freshly home from years in the United Nations, got charged with disrespecting the anthem and attacking our "national honour". When it was played at an event in Kochi, he had requested the audience to listen with their hand on their heart. Too American. And we drove out M.F. Husain because we didn’t like the way he painted Bharat Mata.

Yet, we can’t look beyond the symbols at the real disrespect of real India. At the insults to India’s Constitution and values. Instead, we are building our nation on a robust disrespect for the law, authority, human rights, moral values, cultural norms and the environment. Look at some political developments this week.

A key accused in the Kandhamal riots in Orissa, Manoj Pradhan, has been rewarded by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) with a party ticket. He is in jail for leading a violent attack against Christians. The party would rather have him in Parliament. In Maharashtra, Kasab’s defence lawyer has been attacked by Shiv Sena goons and is being forced to withdraw. Kasab must be hanged without trial, they demand. The party has of course not owned up to the attack; as always, they blame it on the convenient aam janata, the faceless mob.

In Uttar Pradesh, former chief secretary Neera Yadav joined the BJP for election campaigning and "social work". She is distinguished enough — she was the country’s first IAS officer to be thrown out of the chief secretary’s post by the Supreme Court for alleged corruption.

Meanwhile Varun Gandhi — whose alarmingly bratty behaviour has made him a BJP hottie — morphed into a heroic victim because Mayawati clapped him in jail under the National Security Act (NSA). A desperate step, certainly, but desperate measures are the hallmark of UP politics. And such terror laws are always used by the administration to clamp down on people they want to teach a lesson. The BJP is no stranger to these — it has been gleefully using them against innocent Muslims for years.

Besides, if it were not for the charge under the NSA, Mr Gandhi would be out on bail almost immediately, and would be back to inciting Hindus against Muslims, protected by his calm denials and the convenient story of doctored evidence. Since his distressingly juvenile bragging about amputating Muslims wholesale, he has been in great demand as a BJP campaigner. By the way, as one opposed to repressive terror laws like the NSA, I am curious to know how — in the interest of peace and pluralism — one can stop such rabblerousers who routinely switch between hate speech and its denial. Is there a law we have missed? The alternative to the NSA in the cowbelt’s political culture would be, of course, to break his legs. But such routine measures are for ordinary party workers, not stars. Ms Mayawati took the legal route.

Insulting the "other" amongst us — other religions, other cultures, other languages, other people — seems to be the shortcut to political success. Think Raj Thackeray and his hate-mongering against non-Maharashtrians. Think Narendra Modi, whose government’s complicity in a massacre of Muslims has made him not just the poster boy of the BJP but also a future candidate for Prime Minister. Think L.K. Advani, who burst into the limelight, rath and all, on a demolition drive.

It is embarrassing to see such powerful leaders — even if with weak morals — behave like children when pulled up. "No", they mumble, "No I didn’t. He did it!" No, he didn’t want the Babri Masjid destroyed, said Mr Advani. In fact, the day it was demolished was the saddest day of his life. No, he didn’t differentiate between Hindus and Muslims, says Mr Modi, he wanted good governance for all. No, Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar were not complicit in the massacre of Sikhs in Delhi in 1984, insists the Congress as it fields them yet again for the elections.

Say Now, Deny Later. This profound disrespect for the law and the spirit of the Constitution is eating away at our democracy. We have so lost the plot about truth that Mr Gandhi makes unnecessary, irrelevant and patently false claims about having degrees from London colleges. Crafting a convenient reality has become such a habit that we forget that India does not exist in a vacuum, that there is a world beyond it where truths may still exist.

Forget flags and anthems. Disrespect for the truth is the real insult. It insults the idea of India. It insults the intelligence of Indians.

Antara Dev Sen is editor of The Little Magazine. She can be contacted at sen@littlemag.com