Not a day passes, it seems, when those who govern India do not plumb fresh depths. Just when it seems things can't get much worse than what they are, along comes some fresh transgression, a new impropriety from those charged with the noble task of running this bleeding land. The latest instance pertains to no less a personage than the cabinet secretary, Prabhat Kumar, who seems oblivious of the importance and gravitas that attaches to the office he holds as the head of the civil service. Doubtless as a result of this mindset, he has seen it fit to ignore three summons by a judicial commission by refusing to appear before it on all three occasions. The body in question, the Lieberhan Commission, is conducting an enquiry into the Babri Masjid demolition on December 6, 1992. And Mr Kumar's part in it arises from the fact he was the principal secretary in charge of the home department of Uttar Pradesh at the time. That an officer with such a background should have become the cabinet secretary is bad enough; that bailable warrants should have to be issued against him is surely the limit. So in case the thought has not occurred to Mr Kumar yet, here is a little prompter: what sort of an example is he setting to his subordinates?
Mr Kumar's conduct exemplifies what has become commonplace in government, namely, unconcern stretching into extreme ennui. The government and its agents have now put themselves above the law. Which is why policemen who have been indicted by various commissions for acts of impropriety, and even crime, continue in service, drawing full salaries and benefits. Those indicted by the Srikrishna Commission which looked into the 1993 Bombay riots is a sharp case in point. No action is taken or perhaps even contemplated. No one thinks it fit to ask: if no consequences follow for breaking the law, especially by those who are charged with upholding it, how can this country be governed?
The issue is of utmost seriousness because it is increasingly beginning to look as if both society and government are gradually conferring a virtual immunity on those who go after the minorities, especially the Muslims. A crime against them is now beginning to be treated as lightly as crimes against the dalits used to be and indeed are to this day. Instead of a past evil disappearing, a new one is rearing its head. India seems to be degenerating into a state where the enforceability of the legal rights of a citizen derives not so much from the principle of equality before the law but from his community and caste. It is reverting to the jurisprudence of Manu and Hammurabi where in the law's view peoples' legal rights depended on their status -- there was one law for the rich and mighty, another for the rest. And even that was finely nuanced and graded.
If ever there was a formula for fostering alienation, this is it. As the systematic persecution of the Tamils by successive governments in Colombo has shown, a point is eventually reached when the minorities become convinced that they have no stake in the country. India has not yet reached that stage. But if things continue along their present trajectory, it will. Perhaps sooner than anyone imagines.
