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<b>Sunanda K Datta-Ray:</b> Private indulgence vs public message

Politicians who wear their religion on their sleeve to identify with the common man are uncomfortably aware of their own exclusiveness

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Sunanda K Datta-Ray
Last Updated : Dec 27 2013 | 11:50 PM IST
One image of 2014 that I see rising out of the ashes of 2013 is the television portrayal of Vasundhara Raje Scindia in pious saffron, with an ostentatious tilak on her forehead, being sworn in as the chief minister of Rajasthan. I happened to call on an IAS officer the next day and found a pleasant young Muslim, whose flowing beard suggested a mullah to my mind. That was the other side of the same worrying icon for the new year.

True, there are precedents from all parties, including West Bengal's Marxists, performing puja at home and making offerings at temples. But private indulgence and public testimony are different things. Despite Markandey Katju's somewhat vehement repetitions, the exhortation of the First and Second Press Commissions to newspapers, asking not to publish astrological forecasts in order to strengthen the scientific temper of Indians, is forgotten.

I have nothing against the Scindia princess whom I have never met. Friends, who know her, assure me that "Vasu" isn't at all "like that", meaning she is no religious bigot. But that only makes it worse. For it means she donned the trappings of Hinduism to play to the gallery. This is common with politicians who feel the need to identify sartorially with hoi-polloi because they are uncomfortably aware of their own exclusiveness. I have mentioned before the cartoon showing Deshapriya J M Sengupta sipping Scotch in full Western evening dress while a bearer held out his khadi dhoti and kurta, over the caption "Bearer, meeting ka kapra lao (get the meeting dress)!" Even Mahatma Gandhi's loin cloth served the same political purpose.

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It's the expectations of the gallery and the readiness of the political leadership to pander to it that causes concern. I suppose one should be glad that the 60-or-so religious leaders sitting on a raised dais at Vasundhara Raje Scindia's swearing-in represented all faiths and not a narrow focus. Even so, this overt religious presence in political life makes one uneasy. I am not thinking of legislative politics so much as political culture, and politics as the harbinger and catalyst of change at the popular level. Whether or not Arvind Kejriwal lives up to expectations, there is no doubt we are poised on the brink of changes. But hysterical TV anchors exulting over the most obvious manifestations of the tremendous churning that resulted in the recent election results miss altogether the drift to doctrinaire obscurantism that is the most ominous challenge of the future.

The media has a special responsibility to hold the balance in such fluid times. Robin Jeffrey recalls in his admirable book, India's Newspaper Revolution, a policeman lamenting that "newspapers have made the police's job more difficult." The policeman explained, "Once, if one policeman went to a village, the people were afraid. Now, six policemen go to a village and people are not afraid. Newspapers have made them know that the police are not supposed to beat them." If, only television also served that learning process!

Ruling parties may not deliberately encourage anti-social violence or crimes against women. But they set the tone. Politicians in power who make a fetish of upholding home-grown values can be the enemies of rational thought and action. We can expect confrontations if modernity is depicted as an alien import and liberalism derided as "pseudo-secularism". Just as hoarders and blackmarketeers debased the Gandhi cap, a ruling party's religion-driven lumpen followers can exploit orthodoxy to butcher missionaries, attack dance halls and discotheques, ransack shops that sell Valentine cards, encourage widow-burning and reinforce brutal khap panchayats.

It's always been the media's duty to advise villagers that policemen are not entitled to beat them. There is the additional task now of ensuring that dark forces simmering just below the fragile surface of a fragmented society in transition are not unleashed. India must remain secular to survive in strength and harmony. The media can try to ensure that the awaited change will contribute to material upliftment and not sectarian discord.

Tailpiece: The joke going round Kolkata as the old year ends and the new is yet to begin is that Mango Lane in the city's business area will be rechristened "Aam Aadmi Gali" to honour the Aam Aadmi Party's success in Delhi. That imaginative definition of aam is not so far-fetched. Rani Singh, author of Sonia Gandhi: An Extraordinary Life, An Indian Destiny, tells us that "the common man, typified by the skinny basket-carrying mango man, aam aadmi, became the mascot of the Congress campaign" in 2004.

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First Published: Dec 27 2013 | 10:46 PM IST

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