Apex court’s concern for democratic decency and Rahul’s ‘idea of India’

 Bimal Prasad Mohapatra

(bimal.mohapatra2012@gmail.com)

On August 4, 2023, the Supreme Court of India stayed grand old party first family scion Rahul Gandhi’s conviction by a Surat-based trial court, which the Gujarat High Court refused to stay, in a criminal defamation case over his Modi surname remark made in a political rally in Karnataka in 2019. As an effect of the SC stay, Rahul also got the restoration of his membership in Parliament. The contentious remark was, “Achchha ek chhota sa sawal, inn sab choron ka naam, Modi, Modi, Modi kaise hain. Lalit Modi, Nirav Modi... Aur thoda dhundoge toh aur saare Modi nikal aayega” or in short translation in Q-language, “why all thieves have Modi surnames”. Certainly, the target was Rahul’s political rival, PM Narendra Modi.

The above-quoted controversial remark was made after opposition parties and anti-ruling party establishments in India failed to stall India and France’s signing of a €7.87 billion Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) for 36 Rafale multi-role fighter jets in fly-away condition and when Lolit Modi’s IPL scam and Nirov Modi’s bank fraud cases were hotly debated in the country. To the dismay of the opposition, even the Supreme Court, which was approached by prominent civil society members and disgruntled politicians, did not find any wrongdoing in the deal. Here, it is required to inform the readers that the Lalit Modi IPL scam (telling selective bidders how much to bid during the first IPL team auction in 2008) and the Nirov Modi Bank scam (obtained his first LoU from PNB’s Brady House branch on March 2011) took place when the Gandhi-Congress-led UPA government was ruling the country.

Narendra Modi, as Chief Minister of Gujarat, ruled the state from October 2001 to May 2014, and during his tenure, the present Gandhi family-owned Congress was in power at the Centre from 2004 to 2014. But later, they could not find any scam to taint Narendra Modi’s name despite having the prowess of several investigation agencies, which are now accused of being used by the Modi government to silence opposition, including Congress party leaders. During this period, Congress governments at the Centre and several non-Congress governments in the state, many despite being members of UPA, were tainted for financial scams and bank frauds, which UPA’s Chief Economic Advisor and former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan admitted before a Parliamentary Panel in 2018 as he said maximum bank loans, which later turned NPA, were allowed without due diligence under pressure from higher up.

Apart from the above, independent India has witnessed the Jeep Scam (1948) and Mundhra Scam (1957), the Bofor Scam and Submarine Scam in the 1980s, the National Herald property appropriation, the Agusta Westland VVIP chopper deal (2013), etc.

Whose surname is associated with all these scams? But, so far, none has made a particular surname accused of all the scams a la Modi surname slurred recently. Maybe it is due to a higher level of political propriety and democratic decency on the part of the then-opposition parties.

While staying the conviction of Rahul Gandhi, the apex court’s three-judge bench comprising two future Chief Justices, going by the conventional seniority-based practice of appointment of CJI, though it was violated by Rahul’s grandma in the 1970s, Justice B. R. Gavai and Justice P. S. Narasimha, also observed that ‘the utterances of Rahul Gandhi were not in good taste’ and said that ‘a person in public life ought to have been more careful while making public speeches.’ But, to this author’s utter dismay, no leading newspaper on August 5, 2023, that I have so far checked, had any mention of the SC bench’s advice related to decency either in their headline or in their intro. All of them covered the story on their front pages as the lead story of the day with more or less identical titles, such as “Supreme Court stays Rahul’s conviction” in The New Indian Express-Bhubaneswar, “Rahul set to return as LS MP after SC stays his conviction” in The Times of India-Mumbai, “SC stays Rahul’s conviction for Modi surname remark” in The Hindu-Chinnei, “Rahul to return as MP as SC stays conviction” in The Hindustan Times-New Delhi, and “SC stays conviction. Rahul Gandhi is now mission-prepared,” according to The Telegraph-Kolkata. Going further, The Telegraph, quoting Rahul Gandhi, writes just below the headline, “Come WHAT may, MY DUTY REMAINS THE SAME: PROTECT THE IDEA OF India.”

Let us discuss The Telegraph quote of Rahul Gandhi’s vow to protect the ‘idea of India’ and its long-term impact on the unity and integrity of India.

What is Rahul Gandhi’s ‘idea of India’?

As reported in The Times of India on May 25, 2022, while addressing Cambridge University, Rahul Gandhi said, “The word ‘nation’ is a western concept; India is a union of states, like Europe.” He compared India with the European Union, later a political and economic alliance of 27 countries, which have not lost their sovereignty in view of their membership in the EU, continue to have their elected legislatures and parliaments, make their laws as and when required to meet their administrative exigencies, retain their sovereign territories, law-and-order machinery, and independent national security establishments, apart from retaining their right to secede like the UK did in 2020. They were never a country in the entire history of Europe apart from the fact that they did not have a national ethos and culture a la India has since ancient times, though attempts had been made to distort this essential feature of India as a country during British rule, followed by secular historians of Independent India.

If the European Union is Rahul’s ‘idea of India, and that is why he and his party oppose complete integration of Kashmir into India with the withdrawal of Article 370, then there is certainly a threat to national integrity from his ‘idea of India’. Since his ‘idea of India’ talk at Cambridge University, a lot of discussions and debates have taken place opposing his idea. But Rahul Gandhi has not changed. If The Telegraph, for the sake of information circulation among the masses, printed Rahul’s statement “Come What May, My Duty Remains THE Same: Protect THE Idea OF India,”, it is not bad. But when one reads the headline ‘Mission-Prepped’ along with “COME WHAT WAY, MY DUTY REMAINS THE SAME: PROTECT THE IDEA OF INDIA”, it looks like the newspaper is a party to the divisive agenda.

Going back to this column’s title, it is noticed that most of the newspapers have buried the apex court observation on Rahul Gandhi’s slur on Modi’s surname and the court suggestion to ‘a person in public life’ in their insignificance interior of the story, limiting it to few words as if political decency has no role in 21st Century democracy. And as if The Press, the Fourth Column of Democracy, is in league with political indecency. It is certainly not a good sign.