Popular Reaction to Political Arrogance: From Submission to Confrontation
In the recent past, the Indian populace has forced the Indian politics to take a giant leap towards a regime of responsibility and accountability. There is ample evidence backing this assertion be it the Delhi Medical Students’ protest against quota or reservation policy, or the Lokpal Movement or the Delhi gang-rape case etc.
Activists have been disclosing harsh facts, consequently enraging people to hurl abuses and shoes at politicians like Suresh Kalmadi, Chidambram, Sharad Pawar (who was even slapped). Ministers have been jailed, executive policies like first come serve (2G scam), challenged in the courts of law. The whole sentiment can be summarized as a pro-change missive requiring rulers to come out of their comfort zone and behave as responsible leaders.
But amidst all this, there are still a few things happening which should have gone anachronistic by now. In West Bengal, Mamta Banerjee secured the arrest of Professor Ambikesh Mahapatra under section 66A of the IT Act, 2000 for his caricature depicting her and Mukul Roy as conspirators behind Dinesh Trivedi’s ouster from Railway Ministry. In Tamil Nadu, a small time industrialist in Chennai tweeted that P. Chidambram’s son Karti Chidambram had amassed more wealth than Robert Vadra but instead of that comment forming a basis of any enquiry, the man was arrested for making an offensive comment again under Section 66A. Similarly, same provision was invoked to appease Shiv Sainiks by way of arrest of the two girls for expressing their view on the stillness in Mumbai brought out by Bal Thackeray’s death. Then Salman Khurshid publicly issued a life threat to Arvind Kejriwal and his supporters for their propective campaigning in his constituency Farrukhabad. Also, Assem Trivedi the cartoonist was arrested for a cartoon against corrupt politicians posted by him on his blog. The latest addition to the fray being Nitin Gadkari, he lambasted Income Tax Officials for proceeding against him and his Purti Group and said that they would get to see the ramifications of their misdoing during NDA’s tenure. But the uncommon commonality among all these is defiance. None among them bowed down before these mighty politicians but firmly stood their ground.
This arrogance of politicians is not acceptable and they must be brought to book for their reckless attitude. There are provisions in law that can be pressed into service to contain such behavior but it’s never done probably because till now we have been accustomed to this kind of unchallenged submission. Why is the scope of legislative net expanded to nab the common man for raising his voice but contracted when it's target is a politician. Why the scope of reasonable restrictions, imposed on the Constitutional right of Right to freedom of speech and expression of a common man wider than that imposed on the same, of a politician? Why S. 505 of Indian Penal Code is not invoked when Sushil Kumar Shinde blames RSS and BJP for terrorism? I understand that the section can’t be invoked just because a political party has been hurt but then why treat same situation differently. I mean to say that at the time of Bal Thackeray’s death, the Palghar girls’ comment offended only the Shiv Sena, which is again ‘just’ a political party. This ‘why’ deserves an answer because it’s high time now. Being a law student, I have read that law is the king of kings and I believe that that the day is not far when it will act like king and not as an instrumentality of a king. Political arrogance is not acceptable in any society because it means betraying the faith of very people who elected them. If they want to show arrogance and deal with issues in a stern manner, then they should speak and act boldly on real issues like beheading of Indian soldiers at LOC, China’s building of infrastructure across LAC, rising inflation, corruption in politics, their swiss bank accounts etc.
After 65 years of independence it will be very tough for the political class to continue to enslave and hijack this nation’s intellectual faculties and if they want to hold on, then they must perform their duties.
