Kerala Assembly Shames Democracy

“Parliament is simply a costly toy of the nation,” Mahatma Gandhi had said. The same is true for an Assembly in a state. One wonders if he would have reiterated his stand on looking at what happened at the Kerala Assembly yesterday. The scenes that one witnessed there will make none contest that claim of the Mahatma.

What happened in the Assembly was a result of nothing but an unquenchable ego of the United Democratic Front (UDF), the ruling coalition led by the Congress Party, and the Left Democratic Front (LDF), the opposition led by the CPI(M).

Having been satisfied prima facie that Finance Minister KM Mani had taken a bribe of Rs 1 crore from a bar hotel owner, the Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau of the state had early last December registered a case against him. With this, the opposition’s demand for his resignation gained momentum. Since then, they have been vehemently pressing for his resignation, and asking Chief Minister Oomen Chandy to sack him from the Cabinet. The government maintained that registration of an FIR did not make him guilty or culpable.

As the day of the presentation of the state Budget drew close, the LDF made it clear that they would not allow Mani to present the document in the House. We cannot let a corrupt man present a state Budget in the House; the chief minister can ask anyone else to present it — was the stand to which the LDF stuck.

On Thursday when it became known that the LDF were resolute in not even letting the finance minister enter inside the House, the government took an unprecedented decision. It decided that all its members would spend the night inside the Assembly! The opposition not only aped the treasury benches, but it also decided to block all doors to the House so that Mani could be physically prevented from entering the House. They even instructed their women MLAs to round off the finance minister. The government, taking this for a challenge, asked its MLAs to foil the opposition’s bid. The chief minister wrote to Speaker N Sakthan that the finance minister’s place be moved from the usual first row to the third row so that he could be prevented from any assault planned by the opposition.

Thursday night, the television debates moved from their studios to ‘ground zero’ — the Legislative Assembly complex in Thiruvananthapuram. Representatives from the opposition parties were proudly sharing their modus operandi as to how they would prevent the tabling of the Budget. And the ruling coalition MLAs, with equal pride, saying that the literal “tabling” of the Budget by Mani would be their victory, the speech did not matter. The debates gave an insight into what was in store for the next day.

But the Budget day turned out to be worse, a blot on parliamentary politics of the state. The MLAs of the ruling coalition stood as bouncers of night clubs to make way for the safe passage of the finance minister from the door to his chair, and the opposition counterparts tried to take positions so as not to let him enter the House. At each door of the House, the ‘bouncers’ and ‘pouncers’ stood menacingly. And when the alarm bell rang, alerting for the beginning of the session, the finance minister was seen entering the House surrounded by a dozen of watch-and-ward officials from the back door. The opposition MLAs rushed there and forced the minister to retreat.

Soon a group of MLAs ran to the podium of the Speaker and blockaded his entry, too. A few of them pushed down his chair. Later, with the help of the watch and ward staff, the Speaker entered the hall and, using hand gesture, signalled to the finance minister to table the Budget. Mani then did what would quench his and the government’s ego: he tabled the Budget and read some lines from it for about 11 minutes.

Those 11 minutes showcased the worst kind of scenes that the House has ever witnessed. The MLAs were shouting at the podium of the Speaker; one of them climbed on his table, others damaged things lying or installed on his table including a computer. Another group threw bits of paper at the finance minister. One tried to jump from the top of a table over the barricade formed by the watch and ward staff and, in the process, showed his underwear. A group of women MLAs ran to the chief minister as if to attack him, but were blocked and manhandled by some ruling party MLAs. One of them accused a woman MLA of biting his hand, refuting which she questioned why she was manhandled by him when there were lady guards for that purpose.

Another lady MLA accused a ruling party legislator of abusing her with a reference to her caste. As soon as Mani ended his speech, the ruling party MLAs shouted to say they were “victorious” and distributed sweets!

What was happening outside the House was no less dramatic. Members of the communist parties along with Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha members were hurling stones at the policemen. The police retaliated by using water cannons, tear gas shells and later lathis. A member of the communist party died of a heart attack while many were injured. Two government vehicles were burnt, too.

Still, after all these unprecedented and repugnant events inside the Assembly and outside on a Budget Day, the ‘leaders’ of all parties involved continued the fight, claiming “victory” was theirs! The ruling party MLAs were heard saying that the finance minister did table the Budget and even read parts of it, the opposition maintaining that the Speaker did not say, “Order, order!” which is usually said before the start of a session, and that he did not sit in the chair and ask the finance minister to present the Budget and, therefore, technically the Budget was not presented, and thus they had ‘won’. And all this was shamelessly said live on Malayalam news channels.

Meanwhile, the finance minister unabashedly read out his Budget speech in more detail in a press conference inside the media room of the Assembly. He said that the BJP and the communists wanted to produce a few martyrs on this day, but were unsuccessful in their attempt. He added that he was disappointed for not being able to visit the church before coming to the House to table the Budget.

Blaming the opposition, the chief minister said it was a “black day in the history of Kerala Assembly”. What he forgot was the fact that it was his power lust that led to this “black day”. The FIR lodged against Mani was serious enough to remove the ally in the coalition from the chief minister’s Cabinet; he feared that the removal would lead to the withdrawal of support from Mani and his eight MLAs which, in turn, would lead to the fall of the government that stands on a slender majority.

The opposition had diluted its initial stand; it had only demanded that Mani not be allowed to present the Budget. But there is no denying the fact that the Communists’ conduct was despicable. They were egos of the government and the opposition alike that marked the shameless scenes in the political history of Kerala yesterday.

The act has shocked and shamed the people Kerala who voted them to power. That these MLAs should be called ‘leaders’ brings utter disgrace to Indian democracy. And, as if all this drama were not enough, the LDF has called for a state-wide hartal, a complete shutdown from 6 AM to 6 PM, on Saturday. This highlights their brazen attitude: the voters in the state have no option but to be governed either by a Congress-led or a Communist-led government. When people are fed up with one, the other is voted to power in the next election; and, for quite some time now, these two parties have been ruling the state one after the other.

The BJP has never been able to secure even one seat in the state Assembly. No other party has the organisation or resources to successfully contest an election. The Congress and the communists are aware of this political reality, and this political helplessness of the people breeds the two players’ brazenness. Until this political vacuum is filled, people in “God’s own country” will live as political slaves under the tyranny of a bipolar polity.

The article first appeared in Swarajya on 14 March 2015.

Why journalist Mr Kanchan Gupta and the like are wrong on Nagaland mob fury

On March 5 people in Nagaland witnessed a terrific mob fury. Thousands of men and women barged into the central prison in Dimapur district of the state. As the helpless police watched on, the mob, which was clearly at an advantage in terms of number, pulled Syed Farid Khan out of his cell. They made him naked and dragged him though the city's road, stoning and abusing him all through the way, and eventually killed him.

Syed Farid Khan was arrested on February 24 following a complaint of rape lodged by a college girl. Khan, a scrap trader, was sent to judicial custody. The Assam Chief Minister has said that he has received reports that rape wasn't even committed. Much is being said about the incident and truth is yet to surface. What, however, led to the outrage on March 5 was that there were rumours that Khan was an illegal Bangladeshi immigrant. For long the state has been lurching under the ethnic and social problems between the aboriginals and the immigrants.

Such acts where a group of people take law into their own hands and act with vendetta should be unequivocally condemned. We are already witnessing instances of groups under the label of khap panchayats, moral police, etc. taking upon themselves few duties and functions of the State in matters of law and public order. What happened in Nagaland is comparable to the khaps to the extent that they feel that they are entitled to decide what is right and wrong and that they are entitled to award punishments and execute it.  

While a vast majority of us condemn instances of khaps or moral policing, the responses to the Nagaland mob fury has, unfortunately, not been the same. We hear a lot of voices justifying the actions of the mob. The most glaring one has been a piece written by senior journalist Mr Kanchan Gupta for the Mid Day.

Titled "When law fails, mobs take over," Mr Gupta has written that the action of the mob "was at once an act of defiance by the masses, taunting the law of the land, and a meek acceptance by the Indian state that it has failed." He then wrote that "the state has allowed the criminal justice system to crumble and wither away, eroding people’s faith in the courts." 

While he was not wrong on these, after finding fault with the judiciary by citing few examples, he surprisingly went on to endorse what the mob did. "Perfectly law-abiding citizens turn into vigilantes and endorse kangaroo courts and cheer the meting out of mob punishment, as they did in Dimapur, when the belief that courts will not deliver justice strikes root," he wrote.

All through the piece not once has he condemned the act. The maximum he was willing to accept was that the incident showed "how dangerously close we as a nation are to the precipice of frightening lawlessness." Even this "lawlessness" he did not condemn!

But Mr Gupta is not the only one. There are many out there who publicly and in private endorse what the mob in Dimapur did. All such people must understand that they are doing a disservice to the public institutions of law and justice and also to the existence of the Indian State. For, by not condemning such acts and at times even justifying them citing delay in legal justice, they are encouraging those people who are sitting on the fence, undecided whether mobocracy can take precedence over democracy, and to jump to the wrong side which may make India not different from our neighbour Pakistan.

Many public institutions have lost credibility, many of them work poorly. But they are ours, it is we who have to rectify it. We should trust democracy to render justice, and do nothing that makes the process difficult. Equally important is our character. "National character," said Rajaji "is the key stone on which rests the fate and future of our public affairs, not this or that ism." Let us not inject the virus of violence into people's character by not unequivocally condemning such acts.        

"India's Daughter" knowingly broke an Indian law, many of us supported it; are we ready to face the ramifications?

Social media is replete with messages saying "I watched India's Daughter!" and praises for it are outpouring. A considerable part of the praise is because it was BBC, a non-Indian channel, that made the documentary. Had it been any Indian organization, the praise would have had limits, certainly less than what it is now. When it comes to rape, it is fashionable these days to show anything that has to do with India in poor light - Indian men, Indian police, Indian law and the courts, Indian government, Indian media, etc.    

Despite the innumerable messages sharing the You Tube link of the documentary and the provocation, I decided not to watch it. The simple reason being it is against the law of the land. The final judgment in the infamous 2012 Delhi Gang Rape case is yet to be pronounced; the appeal by the accused is pending before the Honourable Supreme Court of India. Publication of any material that may influence a pending case is prohibited by the Contempt of Court Act.

What BBC has done by publication of the statements of the accused Mr Mukesh Singh in the documentary is, therefore, illegal. The courts can, if they wish, take action against the media house. It is not that the BBC would not have known about this, but it simply did not care!

Meanwhile, there are now reports that the accused Mr Mukesh Singh had demanded Rs. 2 lakh from the documentary team for the interview. Later the team negotiated with him and made him agree to it for Rs. 40,000. I leave it to you, the diligent reader, to judge the correctness of this act.

The government's banning of the documentary, especially the reason that it gave that India's image would take a blow if it was published, made it the target of fierce criticism. It asked the BBC to not publish the documentary on women's day as the channel had planned to. But BBC acted smart and telecast it before, and it was also shared on You Tube.

The BBC broke the Indian law and disregarded the Union government's directive. Saying that their act of publication made us understand the mindset of the accused and that he had no remorse, many of us supported the channel's illegal act. People in responsible positions are reviewing how good or bad the documentary was, again in disregard of the fact that it is against the law. When asked they say that the Contempt Act is a stupid one and hence breaking it is fine.

Now that there are such people who are of the opinion that breaking the law which they find stupid is fine, and given that "stupidity" of law is a subjective matter which can vary from person to person, the definition of Rule of Law will itself need a major revamp, would it not? For instance, one may record movies from theatres and circulate it, and later justify his actions saying that anti-piracy law is a stupid one.

We are now aware that an infuriated mob in Nagaland on Thursday broke into the prison, dragged out a person convicted by a trial court for rape, paraded him naked and later lynched him to death. Why did this group do this? Simply because they felt that laws that prevent rape in our country are not that effective. Let's not wait for the courts to decide, let's decide the punishment and execute it ourselves, they thought.

Should this also be taken to be "fine"? Will those who saw and reviewed the BBC documentary despite knowing that it was in violation of a law find this act of the mob wrong? If so, how can they? You broke one law thinking it to be stupid, the mob broke another for the same reason.

There is also a large group which justifies the mob fury, some terming it as "mob justice," saying that the courts take a lot of time to adjudicate matters. Is this even a justification? If you and me can decide what is wrong and right, and what punishment is to be awarded for a wrong, why do we need the law, the police and the courts? Are we trying to emulate Taliban or the ISIS?

Condemn the #Nagaland incident in same force as Khap Panchayat or Honour Killing. If this is permitted, why do we need law, police & courts?
— Siddharth Mohan Nair (@SiddharthMNair) March 6, 2015

In my view, every individual who was present in the act which led to the killing of the rape accused should be booked for murder. The State needs to show them that the arm of the law is long enough.  

Our laws may be inadequate on many subjects, our justice system may have innumerable flaws and loopholes. In the words of the legendary lawyer Mr Nani Palkhiwala, "To expect a perfect system of justice based on rules of law is no more rational than to hope to balance soap bubbles on hat-pins." But the deficiencies does not empower us to break the law. Breaking of unjust laws, satyagraha, as Mahatma Gandhi put it, can be resorted but only when a really justifiable case is present. Moreover, he professed ahimsa, non-violence as means to do it. Let us not forget the means.

Also, let us not love democracy and hate democratic institutions. This sort of subjective application of law and a love for democracy based on convenience of circumstances can do no good.

The Rule of Law is paramount. Jai Hind!