Examining three core facets of the Sanatana conception of statecraft, polity and governance is a good place. These are Achara (Conduct), Vyavahara (administration, bureaucracy, governance, etc) and Danda (penal code, punishment, etc). All three are interlinked and do not stand independent of one another. In fact, each determines the health of the others. Thus, the conduct of the ruling class influences governance and administration which in turn impacts or colours the dispensation of justice. A slackening or lapse in any of these areas will crash the whole system. This is why our ancients strictly emphasised on the conduct of the ruling class, above all. In this context, Danda is also imbued with a profounder element: apart from being a deterrent and an enforcer, it guarantees freedom from fear to the proverbial ordinary citizen.
The inescapable conclusion that follows from the foregoing discussion is the fact that the government apparatus that functions through departments and agencies is meant to govern, and not to harass or intimidate.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s candid admission while speaking at the Rising India Summit on Wednesday precisely illustrates the latter point. Speaking from personal experience, he narrated how the Congress-led UPA government unfairly framed him: “I will tell you how agencies are misused, I have been a victim of it… In 90 percent of the questions during my interrogation…they said they would leave me if I name Narendra Modi… An SIT was formed against Modi which the Supreme Court itself dismissed… In my entire interrogation, I was told ‘Modi ka naam de do, de do [Give us Modi’s name]. But why should I frame him? Because of me, several innocent police officers were put in jail.” It is now common knowledge that the Congress ecosystem exiled Amit Shah from Gujarat for months on end. One shudders to imagine what his fate would have been had the BJP lost the 2014 polls.
But recent history informs us that what Amit Shah said at the Rising India Summit was nothing terribly new. He was just one of the latest and high-profile victims of the habitual Congress tyranny, which predates India’s Independence. A period in which the Congress was not even a political party fighting elections. This ugly saga has been narrated in the six-part series on the pre-Independence history of the Congress published on Firstpost.
When India got Independence, it was actually the Nehru dynasty that acquired a government for itself. The seven-decade-long record of this “government” is distinguished by an utter absence of governance. And this absence could only be sustained by a chequered reign of terror carried out primarily through a flagrant abuse of government agencies. In fact, a multi-volume research work documenting all such cases of Congress abuse awaits the Indian public.
At a distance so far in time, it might be surprising to learn that as early as 1948, the widespread public perception was that Indians were better off under British rule than the new Congress “government”. In those days, the Congress routinely used the dreaded colonial Internal Security Act (then in force in provincial British governments) to stifle ordinary citizens who were mildly critical of its functioning. Measures included illegal detentions, police torture, and extrajudicial murders. Indira Gandhi’s notorious MISA was simply a more brutalised version of the aforementioned Act.
This untrammelled abuse of power led Sarat Chandra Bose (Subhas Chandra Bose’s brother) to thunder in Bombay in 1948: “After ten months of existence, India has produced a maimed and crippled baby without much sign of life…We have copied in every detail the example of the British. The repressive ordinances, acts and regulations of the British have all been made into law today…What is most shameful is that these repressive measures are far more stringent than the British ever dared to take… Free speech, association and assemblies are things of the past.” (Emphasis added)
Likewise, Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya’s son, Radhakant Malviya, then a member of the Constituent Assembly, openly declared how the Congressmen and their friends “who evade taxes are the very ones who are feted as patriots and honoured”.
The Tragedy of Pandit Lekhraj Sharma
Just one random instance of the Congress party’s hideous misuse of the official machinery illustrates the rotten mindset and devious nature that informed this abuse.
Ever heard of Pandit Lekhraj Sharma from Ajmer?
Neither had I until I dug out the archives of the freedom struggle and its aftermath in 1947.
In his teens, Lekhraj Sharma had dedicated himself to the Indian freedom struggle and was a lifelong devotee of Mohandas Gandhi. He sincerely believed in the Great Democrat, Nehru’s long-winded and passionate speeches about open debate, democracy and other noble ideas, and toiled as a loyal Congressman.
Tragically, he believed that the Congress government of independent India actually conducted itself on these ideals. He would pay for his naïveté in a gruesome fashion.
In January 1948, he decided to contest the Bombay municipal elections. And his nightmare began on 7 February 1948.
The Bombay police landed at his doorstep and arrested Lekhraj Sharma as part of its persecution spree after Mohandas Gandhi’s assassination. He was taken to the Bombay CID headquarters. In the dingy interrogation room, a sudden, unexpected blow landed on his body even as he was being interviewed by the CID chief. More blows followed as he fell down from his chair. The police inspector, who was mercilessly thrashing him, bound his hands from behind and pushed his knee on his back grinding him frontally on the hard floor. He yanked Lekhraj Sharma’s moustache, knocked off his Gandhi topi and trampled on it. Humiliation. Helplessness. Cornered, like a caged animal.
On 11 February, Lekhraj Sharma received a written police order that said that he was being detained under the selfsame Security Measures Act. The police had displayed great creativity in cooking up the charge: Lekhraj Sharma was henceforth declared “communal-minded”. His letters of appeal to the Home Minister of Maharashtra and to Sardar Patel himself never reached them.
Lekhraj Sharma was held in illegal detention without trial till 7 May 1948.
And then, he was freed, as suddenly as he had been arrested. The reason: the Bombay Municipal elections had been concluded.
The devoted Congressman Pandit Lekhraj Sharma had committed the crime of contesting against the candidate fielded by the “great freedom fighter” and the “uncrowned king of Bombay”, SK Patil.
The entire administrative machinery had cravenly knelt before SK Patil in persecuting a helpless, defenceless Gandhian patriot. It was not even necessary to declare an Emergency in 1948.
Needless, the Emergency gave official sanction to official abuse given that there was no such thing as government. One of the best descriptions of this despotic phenomenon was given by a Congressman himself. The notorious Bansi Lal, then described as the “scourge of Haryana”, haughtily flaunted the real source of his power when he publicly declared: “Bachada mere kabze mein hai. Gau-maata apne aap mere peeche aayegi (I have taken possession of the calf and naturally the cow is always at my beck and call).” The calf was Sanjay Gandhi and the cow, his mother, the Prime Minister of India. It was also not coincidental that the Congress election symbol back then was the cow and the calf. Indira Gandhi learned of this remark but remained silent. Bansi Lal’s stint as Defence Minister was also marked by rampant corruption scandals and brazen misuse of the Haryana official machinery in service of Sanjay Gandhi’s pet “Maruti project”.
Packing India’s prisons with leaders of the entire Opposition was of course the ultimate perversion of governmental authority.
But beyond the specific cases, the intrinsic mindset and the innate goal of this perversion is where we find an answer.
(To be continued)
The author is the founder and chief editor, The Dharma Dispatch. Views expressed are personal.
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