:: Balbir Punj

Who is insulting the PM?

Balbir K. Punj

April.10 : I am reminded of Deb Kant Barooah and his only memorable contribution to Indian polity. In the 1970s, the Assam Congressman claimed to an applauding audience: "Indira is India, India is Indira". And that was the magical key the Congress used to open the door for Emergency with which the perpetual fiefdom of one family over the entire country was to be established.

Such resurrections in this Easter season should be familiar to Congress president Sonia Gandhi. And that’s why, perhaps, she recalled the other day at an election rally in Varanasi, which reminded the country of the dark days of the ’70s: "Some people have forgotten that the Prime Minister is the leader of the country. Such politicians should be told that insulting the Prime Minister means insulting the country".

The reference is to the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) leader Lal Krishna Advani’s description of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as "the weakest Prime Minister we ever had". The Congress president needs to convince the world that criticising the Prime Minister as weak is an "insult". There are no holy cows in democracy. In fact, the very essence of democracy rests on the entire political class being evaluated for its performance, or non-performance, and for its follies and foibles. To describe the current incumbent of the high office as "weak" cannot be considered an "insult". It is a viewpoint with which the voter may or may not agree.

Mrs Sonia Gandhi (or her speechwriters) should realise that the entire country knows that Dr Singh is the Prime Minister only because of her convenience and by her courtesy. But as the leader of the country, the occupant of 7, Race Course Road ought to be the one who has the power to lead his followers. But that is not the case in the present arrangement. Dr Singh’s Cabinet ministers run to 10, Janpath, and not to 7, Race Course Road, with their grievances. The "weakness" that Mr Advani has been stressing for some years now is built into the arrangement in which the Prime Minister is a nominee and the real power rests with the Congress president.

Actually, when the Opposition describes the Prime Minister as "weak", the Congress president feels hurt because she knows that the critics are right and that real power is exercised by her. Such criticism, though vicarious, obviously cannot be tolerated by a family which considers itself born to exercise power, as the Nehru-Gandhi family believes. When that "right" was challenged in 1974-75, after many years of subservience to the Nehru myth, the lead member of the family felt the ground slipping from under her feet, and Emergency was imposed to save the family’s "inheritance". The lead tune to the music that accompanied imposition of Emergency was aptly composed when Barooah sang: "Indira is India, India is Indira".

To recall history further, not only was the incumbent Prime Minister in those days identified with the country as a whole, all those critics — the list included almost everybody in the Opposition besides Mr Advani — were dubbed as "anti-national" and thrown behind bars. Till today the Congress has not apologised for this rape of the Constitution and democracy. All that the party has said is that it was a mistake, especially the press censorship. This means that deep down the mindset that guided the family to impose Emergency still prevails in the subconscious of the members of that family. Mrs Sonia Gandhi was only being led by that in comparing criticism of the Prime Minister as an insult to the country.

However, the Congress chief’s identification of the person who is Prime Minister with the country also reminds us that it was the Congress which had put forward a Constitutional amendment in 1975 that was meant to insulate the Prime Minister from any criticism. The subsequent government nullified this amendment but the Congress would not give in so easily. In the mid-’80s, it sought to resurrect the spirit of it through an Anti-Defamation Bill that again wanted to insulate the Prime Minister from critics. Only a powerful country-wide criticism forced the party to finally give up. Mrs Sonia Gandhi has reminded us that this mindset is not dead.

Dr Singh’s refusal to respond to Mr Advani’s challenge to him for a televised debate between the two on the issues facing the country in this election should also be understood in this environment. Dr Singh is intelligent enough to understand that such a debate would be irrelevant as he does not lay down the policies. His party is not even asking him to contest for a Lok Sabha seat even though the party claims he is the prospective Prime Minister in case the party comes to power again. Instead, the Congress is once again confining him to the indirect election of Rajya Sabha — this itself reveals that the party does not want him to grow roots among the people. He is not even the party’s star campaigner, something that has not happened in the history of the Congress.

The Congress’ prime ministerial candidates have always been its star campaigners, whether it was Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi or P.V. Narasimha Rao — and all of them were elected to the Lok Sabha.

Even when parties other than the Congress were in power, the prime ministerial candidate was always the star campaigner of that party — for instance, the BJP’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Janata Dal’s V.P. Singh who led their parties to power at the Centre. (The two Janata Party Prime Ministers, H.D. Deve Gowda and I.K. Gujral were nominees and each lasted for just a year).

Mrs Sonia Gandhi should be asking herself whether by keeping the leader of the government weak is she not insulting the country herself?

Balbir K. Punj can be contacted at punjbk@gmail.com