For the longest time, bringing a politician to heel became synonymous with inviting grievous consequences. The full panoply of what these consequences could look like were often caricatured in Bollywood when a virtuous protagonist, let’s name him Vijay, would brush up against the untrammeled power drunk hubris of a politician.
Very few dared to test the thesis. Until one man did.
On June 12, 1975, Justice Sinha of the Allahabad High Court deigned to bring the metaphorical gavel down on an electoral misdemeanor committed by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
Suitably chastised, Gandhi, who was to haughtily dismiss Justice Sinha as a “petty judge”, knocked on the doors of the Supreme Court.
But there Justice VR Krishna Iyer also dared to remind the brazen Gandhi that “executive discretion cannot run riot”. In a significant victory for judicial independence Justice Iyer slammed the door shut on the Prime Minister’s plaint. Indira Gandhi stood disqualified from contesting an election for six years.
Bollywood didn’t get it wrong. There was hell to pay. Within hours of the apex court’s verdict, the Constitution, the interpretation of which very literally disenfranchised “Mrs G”, was suspended and with that the civil liberty of every single living Indian.
The scale of the retribution was perversely in consonance with the Prime Minister’s status. At the time, Gandhi was deified as an avatar of “Durga”. Her vengeance had, after all, broken arch nemesis Pakistan, and her cult had cast a spell of despondency over her opponents and turned voters into devotees –“Indira was India”.
The body politic stood warned against messing with elected patricians and it would be decades before the criminal justice system again passed strictures against a politician in high office. But even when Bihar’s Chief Minister Lalu Yadav was arrested in the mid-1990s, no one really believed he was going to face the full weight of justice. They weren’t wrong. Lalu’s “proxy CM” (his wife) ensured that his word was still the law.
This state of impunity began unravelling only in the early 2000s and it wasn’t surprising that the first blow came from within the charmed circle. Two heavyweights of Tamil Nadu — J Jayalalithaa and M Karunanidhi — began to settle political scores by filing corruption cases against each other as and when they seized office. Their alternating stabs at vendetta played out in unedifying fashion in full public glare. It may have had more to do with serendipity, but the slugfest between Jayalalithaa and Karunanidhi gave the public a rare insight into the extent of the rot that had set into democratic governance.
The silent public disapproval against corruption in high places erupted in the outpouring of support for the movement against graft led by Anna Hazare. This rustic from Maharashtra and his cohorts, like Arvind Kejriwal, made it difficult for politicians to avoid accountability.
And in the ensuing UPA era, the floodgates opened. Holding high office no longer guaranteed immunity from the law. The Hazare movement brought down the UPA government. The criminal justice system was praised for finally ridding itself of its Janus face. Democracy, it was observed, was now thriving on its most desirable virtue: accountability.
Today, in an incredible demonstration of fate’s fickle ways, Arvind Kejriwal has allegedly fallen short of the standards of rectitude he himself set for those in political life. The Enforcement Directorate has taken him into custody and he faces an inquisition on corruption charges.
But that is the least of the irony. Kejriwal’s arrest, which ought to have been celebrated as the cementing of equity in the eyes of the law, is being described as a matter of “deep disquiet”.
The arrest is being linked to the alleged deepening of tyranny under Modi’s regime. A slow, but inexorable slide into a political culture, where the government of the day “does not allow the Opposition to mobilize, organise and govern” through the “arbitrary” application of the law.
There are many criticisms to be made of the ED’s actions, but linking Kejriwal’s arrest to democratic back-sliding isn’t one of them.
First, Kejriwal’s party has itself championed the ED’s crackdown against graft in states such as Punjab and West Bengal, where it fancies its chances against non-NDA rivals like the Congress and TMC, respectively.
Second, Kejriwal has built a long list of critics who deride him on the integrity parameter. In fact, many of those today attributing his arrest to Modi’s authoritarianism had themselves parted ways with Kejriwal for eschewing probity in political life. We have to ask were the Prashant Bhushans and Yogendra Yadavs playing parlour games then or are they playing them now?
Third, is the vendetta charge being applied selectively to Modi? Why were the incumbent opposition Chief Ministers of Andhra Pradesh and Punjab not accused of tyranny when they prosecute the likes of Chandrababu Naidu and Sukhpal Khaira?
Fourth, hadn’t Kejriwal dodged nine summons from the ED? And didn’t the High Court deny him “interim protection” from ED’s “coercive action”, setting the stage for his arrest? Is the High Court also now presumed to be part of the Prime Minister’s alleged campaign to subvert democracy? Indeed, the judiciary is increasingly becoming the victim of a schizoid iconoclasm. It is hailed by a section of self-styled civil society activists, when the outcomes are in line with their expectations and slandered if the verdict doesn’t suit their interests.
Fifth, truth be told trouble has been brewing for AAP ever since it introduced a new liquor policy in 2021. Its sudden withdrawal in 2022, when its implementation was linked to back-handers, dented AAP’s credibility and underlined the need for CBI and ED investigations. The fact that the courts have not granted any relief to Manish Sisodia, Sanjay Singh and Vijay Nair is being increasingly seen as a sign of AAP’s culpability. Only the most partisan would deny that Kejriwal’s was not an arrest foretold.
Sixth, democracies are best nurtured by clean politicians. Those today siding with Kejriwal are the first to point out that laws need to be strengthened, so they can prevent the corrupt from being elected to office. Surely, then Kejriwal’s arrest is serving the public interest by informing voters about his eligibility or lack thereof.
And it is here, in serving the public interest, that the Modi government must be impeccably impartial.
Unfortunately, it is on this score that the government’s crackdown on corruption doesn’t always pass the smell test. Leaders with blots on their character, but who join the BJP suddenly become “white washed”.
Hypocrisy is an all too common affliction of electoral politics. Populists routinely become prisoners of their own public persona. To link the NDA’s selectivity on graft to the death of democracy is to misread the symptoms of what is afflicting the NDA.
Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.