What a year for India: Noisy, controversial but not without significance

It was a year notable for a lack of significant achievements

The year 2018 was not particularly significant for us Indians in the global sense. There were no great innovations that we offered the world, no new insights on the threat of artificial intelligence, no bold Nehruvian gambit on nuclear weapons, no inventions of any import and no contribution of any other sort that the world took notice of. We had nothing to offer on the greatest threat the world sees in humanity’s medium term, global warming (unless you count hot air, and we had plenty of that on offer). But it was still in many ways a year significant for us Indians, if not for the rest of the world. Let’s have a look at the reasons why.
 

January began in a particularly nasty way for those Indians, particularly us Gujaratis, who had assumed that the government under Narendra Modi had ended large-scale corruption. We learned in that month that a Gujarati swindler and his uncle had cleaned out India’s public sector banks of Rs 120 billion without lien or security. How could this have happened in the age of good governance? This was not easy to explain. It appeared as if this new and robust and corruption-free structure was exactly as soft and vulnerable as all the governments before it. This was not good news and it was depressing to many who had assumed differently.

Shujaat Bukhari was a journalist, an editor, a peacemaker, and an inclusive man in the best traditions of India, who was murdered for that reason

I mean those of us especially who set great store by the competence and excellence of the regime that was introduced by Narendra Modi and Amit Shah. We had not voted for dynasty, we had not voted for corruption and, above all, we had not voted for incompetence. But that is seemingly what we still had. If there was one thing Bharatiya Janata Party die-hards assured us of before that seminal election in 2014 it was that we were entering a new age when all of India’s old faults (listed above) had been taken care of by the genius and good intent of one man. Alas, the Nirav Modi episode seems to tell us that this is not true. Our problem is systemic and cultural. The introduction of one man will not, and has not, changed that.

The second story of import to those of us who worry about India, and in this instance it includes those who may not be Indian, relates to the events in Jammu & Kashmir. After a few years of one of the most inefficient governments we have seen in that hapless state, we saw Delhi dismissing its legitimately elected chief minister. Also, through an unelected governor, it dismissed the will of other elected legislators and imposed on that state, once again, direct rule from Delhi. Even the most rosy-eyed optimists must at this point accept that the strategy, whatever it may have been, of Hindutva and its party to bring normalcy to Kashmir has failed.

File photo of Mehbooba Mufti and Home Minister Rajnath Singh

I must hasten to add that all parties in India have treated Kashmiris like second-rate Indians, as dispensable entities. But this is 2018. We expected better from the Union government than what had been put on offer in 1988 or 1998. Alas, this was not to be. For all the talk of inclusion, we acted in Kashmir in exactly the same fashion as the Kashmiris accuse us of acting. It will take a wiser government to get us out of the mess in that state, and I am afraid this one is not it. Another thing that one would like to add here, and this is a personal note, is the death of Shujaat Bukhari. He was a journalist, an editor, a peacemaker, and an inclusive man in the best traditions of India, who was murdered for that reason. Shame on all of us that we let such a thing happen without creating the furore that was deserved at the passing of one such as he. But then we must not begin to think of ourselves differently merely because we assume we are superior. We are not. Let us move on to other things.

One of the issues that this period did resolve was that of the problem in the Supreme Court. It must be clarified that the resolution of the affair was not the doing of the government. One of the worst judges to have ever presided over the highest court of any Common Law country was Dipak Misra. He was, going by his judgments, not an intellectual of the highest calibre. I am revealing no secrets here. The language of his judgments was loony at worst and made little sense at best. That he had risen to this office says more about India than him and his capacity. His leaving was in that sense a relief. Alas, it did not come without one judgment that is likely to stay with us for a long time and that is the one related to the Babri Masjid. More need not be added here, because it will be revealed in the days to come, but let it be said that when it came to the most difficult period for India’s constitutional ethos in existential terms, the Supreme Court did not cover itself with glory.

Speaking of institutions, it is not with glee that even a critic of the government can speak of what has been done to two hitherto respected institutions this year. The first institution I refer to is the Reserve Bank of India, where the government managed to relieve itself of the trust of two governors. Oscar Wilde wrote that to lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness. One wonders what he may have made of the loss of two governors, both of whom left after disagreement on policy.

The second institution to suffer was the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), whose top two officers, handpicked by the executive, accused each other of corruption. Little is known about the chief, who is today suspended. However, his deputy left behind a video showcasing his brilliance when he was commissioner in Surat (my city). I have seen that video and cringed. It beggars belief that such a crass individual made it to the elite Indian Police Service, let alone a body like the CBI. But it is a sign of our times that those who indulge in such shameless self-promotion are precisely those who get promoted.

Dipak Misra

What else did we see this year? We saw the passing of some great people. I use the word in the sense of famous. It is disputable whether history will see them as great. Somnath Chatterjee was Speaker of the Lok Sabha. I knew him and had met him and he was an affable character. But he was also the man who insisted that legislators be exempt from the security checks at airports that the rest of us have to go through. Indeed, he had been arrogant about insisting that the state had no right to stop and frisk members of Parliament. This is the sort of thing that is wrong with our country and it is the sort of thing that brings a bad name to all politicians.

The other famous name, a much more famous one, to pass on was Atal Bihari Vajpayee. I must confess that I do not find it in me to become weak-kneed merely because someone has passed on. The fact is that between him and L K Advani, Vajpayee set in motion the one act and one strategy that was as divisive on the subcontinent as the Two Nation Theory. Their cold cynicism about Ayodhya was politically brilliant and I accept that. But it harmed India in a way that the actions of few other Indians have. Almost no action of political parties survives the ages. The various dharnas and morchas of all our political entities will mean nothing in the fullness of time. But that action on Ayodhya, which is today almost three decades behind us, lives on. It remains with us as a sore and sensitive wound that shows no sign of healing. Whatever else he may be praised for, any assessment of Vajpayee must begin with the qualification that he was one of the two primary protagonists of the Ayodhya movement.

File photo of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee at his residence in New Delhi | PTI photo

This brings us to the last aspect of 2018 and that is the unfinished business of the temple, which the Supreme Court is taking up in a few days.

A party that has not delivered on essentials will fall back on relative trivialities. That is what we are left with at the end of 2018. Development and good governance and Achhe Din and all the rest of it is in the past. Mosque, beef, temple entry for females, personal law and so on look like they will dominate the elections in 2019.

We must remember that though the party of Hindutva lost in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, it was a close-run thing. We should expect that the most unappetising aspects of politics in 2018 will repeat themselves, and indeed be amplified, as we go into our most important election in a generation.