Saakhi is a Sunday column from Mrinal Pande, in which she writes of what she sees and also participates in. That has been her burden to bear ever since she embarked on a life as a journalist, writer, editor, author and as chairperson of Prasar Bharti. Her journey of being a witness-participant continues.
Most of us would recall the incident in parliament when Rahul Gandhi suddenly walked around the oval table dividing the opposition from the treasury benches and hugged one of his harshest critics, a visibly startled Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In his earlier speech in parliament, Rahul had touched upon wide-ranging topics like the GST and women’s safety before highlighting allegations of a massive and brazen corruption concealed in the papers of India’s famous Rafael aircraft deal with France. He accused the finance minister of helping to hide the facts from the people, the media and the opposition, with her stout refusal to divulge details of the agreement with France.
On our TV screens, the hug for the prime minister, from a smiling opposition leader who could be his son, was as comic as it was bizarre. Till then the prime minister had been sitting unsmiling and silent, within a stiff, rigorous corset of absolute power, and here was a young man he and his party had treated with disdain verging on horror, what could he do except submit stiffly to the hug ? The two very different faces of two important leaders, though, revealed a lot to those of us who have not yet been overawed by Delhi’s power, about the kind of leadership and polarised politics we Indians have. Love in Indian politics today is almost a four-letter word. True, ours is a nation wherein people follow different faiths. And each faith from Vedic, non-Vedic Hinduism to Islam, Sikhi, Christianity to Zoroastrian underscores the transformative power of love. And yet there is so much hate and malice, and so little love visible on those rare occasions when leaders from different ideological backgrounds meet.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
Why blame politics, is it any different in corporate boardrooms? Campuses? Market places? Families? Frankly, most Indians, especially married couples, do not have a clue about how to love. They find it infinitely easier to talk about loss than love. Articulating the absence and meaning of love from their lives is easier. India has a large population of the elderly. Most of them face benign neglect at best and harsh abuse at worst. Yet the expensive ads put in major dailies with Sanskrit verses or English couplets, with a border of flowers and religious symbols, when a family elder passes on, their lavish Chautha Uthalas replete with food and sentimental bhajans, are salient proof that simple love is rare, publicised grief is wah wah!
And these families remain the motherlode of our party politics.
In the theatre of Indian politics among parties, especially those that constantly mouth phrases like ‘Bharat Mata Zindabad’, ‘Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam (The entire world is a family)’ or ‘Atithi Devo Bhav (A guest is a god)’, the state has time and again failed to prepare and comfort the common citizen bombarded by rising prices, environmental degradation, multiple demonetisations, new taxes and tweaking and restricting of laws on free speech. Considerations other than love inform vital decisions on humans about inclusion and the state’s definition of how to love thy neighbour.
Recently, a hapless member of the BJP from Uttarakhand posted the visual of a wedding card for his daughter on Twitter. The simple pink card announced that the woman was to marry a Muslim man. The father added something to the effect that as a liberal father, his daughter’s happiness mattered to him greatly, and so would we all please bless this match between two communities? Many sent the blessing but several in his party and their supporters saw red over what the party has been calling “love jihad”. The marriage, we have been informed, has now been called off.
The ugly incident further reveals how the lack of ongoing and honest public discussions and public policy regarding even mixed heterosexual marriages between two consenting adults, has created islands of ignorance and prejudice about marriages based not on kul and gotra but love. WhatsApp groups with agendas of their own constantly feed upon the fear and ignorance divisive politics have bred within the nation. Within homes and families also, frank and freewheeling inter-generational discussions on the much feared phenomena of “love marriage”is common. Few realise a marriage not based on love is a travesty in itself. And in small towns and villages, most communities are still convinced a marriage made without consenting oldies in the family but based on mutual love between two young people is an insult to age-old laws against marrying outside the caste, class, community or the same gender.
A culture such as this not only encourages lying and deceit in politics and also in corporate circles, but also sports. Look at the case of the nation’s finest female wrestlers who have made serious allegations of multiple acts of sexual misconduct against the Wrestling Federation of India chief, a man much feared and said to be close to the top leadership of the ruling party that has been shouting from every podium about its deep love for the mothers and daughters of Ma Bharati. For over a month, the Olympic medalists have been sitting under the open sky on a dharna. Their demands are simple: the report by a probe committee headed by the great female boxer Mary Kom be made public, and members of the Oversight Committee do not go on asking for audio and visual evidence which is always rare in such cases, and deliver them justice. They also need the BJP, a party which many of them support, to reach out, censure the alleged culprit and distance itself formally from him so their alleged molester does not strut around saying he will submit to a narco test only if the women making allegations against him do so too!
A confused democracy where the below 40 voters are the largest group is a good place to learn about the power of community love and politics of mutual cooperation and trust. We can become an honest and functional democracy in the true sense only if there is open and honest communication between individuals, groups of individuals, their chosen representatives and through them between communities and the State. The growing number of gated communities from metros to our now overcrowded hill stations and beaches is just one example of perceived threats from ‘the other’ among the educated moneyed classes.
For ordinary people, bots have been inducted into social media by vested interest groups. They pour a flood of fake narratives about Hindus being endangered by the minorities into homes, offices, campuses and markets. They urge people of all classes that at all costs, personal property and the traditional family structure must be protected. Who will be the future guards of the maryada of Indian democracy? Aggressive Hindu masculinity, comes the answer. Men out on a rampage chanting some religious slogans are increasingly taking to the streets with silly twirling of moustaches, baring hirsute chests and sacred threads. It began by transforming Ram, the sea of love and compassion and happy conjugality, into a loner without Sita, holding a bow, hair flying in the wind. Hanuman followed, and the benign and otherworldly Shiva is also being increasingly portrayed in a rage-filled destroyer mode.
At the risk of being labeled an infantilised Pappu, Rahul Gandhi at least showed the nation a glimpse of how not chest-thumping demagoguery but simple love could be used to heal those who are wounded by past betrayals and humiliations. They would know love only if they accepted their vulnerability and were open to trusting and saw politics not as an ersatz version of male power but as an intoxicating embrace of the real world.
Delivering his final speech in parliament before the national elections a year later after Rahul’s hug, on March 13, 2019, the prime minister chose to dismiss the gesture and drew loud laughter from his party men when he said, “I came here for the first time and learnt many things. For the first time I realised the difference between gale lagna (hugging) and gale padna (getting caught in an unwanted hug).”
Rahul told the media later, “The PM was so angry and was speaking about me, the Congress party and how we had done nothing, how filthy we were… Inside me I was feeling affection for him…that this man is so angry he is not able to see the beauty of the world. So I thought I should show him affection.”
Mrinal Pande is a writer and veteran journalist.