Careless Consciences

Hai-hai mirchi…uff-uff mirchi. I can lay a bet that the venerable, honourable former prime minister of India must be smiling despite feeling the heat of his statements. After all, he is vacationing in Manali up north and, as the papers said, relishing “spicy Italian” cuisine.

Atal Behari Vajpayee has given me no reason to change my opinion about him. He is one fine smart aleck. By now acknowledging that Narendra Modi and the Gujarat riots could well have contributed to the fall of the BJP government, he is cleverly sending out some signals. 1. He had nothing to do with the malfunctioning of the government. 2. He is the architect of the peace moves with Pakistan and no one can take that shine away from him. 3. He wishes to distance himself from any actions that might be taken against the horrendous acts committed by his party.

One is tempted to ask: what kind of a leader was he who had to be a puppet and who changed his tune several times to suit the ideas and words of others?

He is invoking the most important aspect of the Indian psyche: The inner Voice. He may not say it, but that is the message. His inner voice is now prompting him to speak up. His inner voice will not let him rest in peace until he has salvaged his soul. His inner voice demands that he give the citizens of the country an account of his true feelings. His inner voice is finally awake. In truth, Vajpayee wants to be the sleeping giant.

The inner voice is a handy device. If the Mahatma could use it liberally, and often deviously, then it ought not to surprise anyone that Sonia Gandhi resorted to it. It was her inner voice that made her sacrifice her prime ministerial aspirations (the same inner voice has not prevented her from taking up a position of cabinet rank). Sonia Gandhi’s inner voice made her fight for the wrongs done unto her family. Her inner voice came to her rescue when she realised she would not be able to handle any portfolio, forget the PM’s post. Her inner voice also made her choose a Sikh to condone the acts of 1984. Of course, her inner voice in this instance is not loud, but we should get the drift. Her inner voice has not made her arrest some of the despicable characters involved in those riots, just as Vajpayee’s inner voice has nothing to say about the criminals that need to be arrested.

Resignations and dismissals make martyrs of people; they do not bring justice to the fore. Is it any surprise that a group of terrorists were caught when they tried to ‘target’ Modi soon after Vajpayee’s utterances?

Now let us see: Does Manmohan Singh have an inner voice? Or is it the sword on his head or the pulls and pressures that will work on him and against him? What is the PM of the country doing looking at resumes to select secretaries to the government? This may look like a hands-on approach, but to anyone reading such news it appears like this man has no other work. But obviously it is his inner voice that asks him to scrutinise potential employees while barely saying anything to our external affairs minister on the issue of sending our armed forces to Iraq. His inner voice will bleed for the poor, but the finance minister can bring out a budget that bleeds them even further.

Talking of which, what is the difference between builders evicting slum-dwellers to construct high-rises by using goonda strategies and a deputy municipal commissioner razing their dwellings with a bulldozer? Righteousness. The builder is out to make money for himself. The government servant is a humble man, selling his humility. His inner voice will however not think twice about the consequences of his actions on hundreds of displaced people.

And I have just heard the news that the CBI has discovered that the motive behind the murder of Satyendra Dubey, who until recently was being touted and flaunted as a “whistle-blower”, was robbery. After months, the top investigating agency of the country finds that it took five people to rob this man of Rs.500 in his wallet and crack the lock code of his briefcase to take away Rs.4000! The problem is that the real inner voices just do not get heard. They are snuffed out. The ones that can speak their fake cases are kept alive, flickering away happily in the winds of changing priorities, where there is always someone to light the fire and the pyre.

On another note and a different scale, why must we then get so uptight and upright when we are a country of middlemen? Have we, even in our daily lives, got things done without the services of a well-wisher, a balancing force? Few are honest as an advertiser was in one of our respected financial papers, when he stated clearly: “Wanted person experienced in the art of ‘lubricating’ top executives in banks.”
At first, this piece of bluntness threw me of completely. But come to think of it, isn’t this a regular occurrence? Can any of us get any work done without paying for it in cash or kind? Does the middleman not make life somewhat easy, just like the blackmarketeer at a cinema hall, the helpful peon at a government office whose only demand is chai-paani and the high-ranking official, who miraculously provides water in drought-prone areas because the private sector, which he publicly claims to hate, provides him with a brown paper packet?

I realise how people respond to those who “indulge in high moral values”; they find them inconvenient because their fears and insecurities will not permit them to stop sucking up to lobbies and nursing at the breast of their mai-baap. What is even more appalling is when possessing a real conscience is seen with cynicism. Unless you are a somebody.

Celina Jaitley, soon after winning the Miss Universe title, had said at a felicitation ceremony, “Last night I had no idea what the title would bring for me. But when I was at the Mumbai airport, a victim of the (Gujarat) earthquake, with both legs broken, came up to me somehow, and said, ‘You are Miss India. What can you do for me?’ I could barely hold back my tears and it was then that I realised the awesome responsibility that lay ahead of me.”

Who is morally right here? The beauty, who said a little later when asked if she would join films, “What would you do if you were offered a role for Rs. 2 crore? Wouldn’t you accept it?” or the ‘victim’ who was apparently so over-awed by the title holder that she dragged herself and did the most demeaning thing? I really want to know whether only glamourising them can ameliorate tragedies. Is it only money that we want or also awareness? Are the lines so blurred?

How I wish people wouldn’t let sleeping consciences lie through their teeth. Mr. Vajpayee still owes an apology to the nation. Sonia Gandhi needs to understand when to lay off. Manmohan Singh must get it in his head that he is in charge. And Satyendra Dubey’s ghost must continue to haunt us. Our own inner voices must not be meek witnesses.