Author: Swapan Dasgupta
Publication: Free Press Journal
Date: July 24, 2006
URL: http://www.samachar.com/features/240706-features.html
There are some moments in the life of a nation
when people eschew individualism and look for leadership. I don't know whether
history will record the carnage of July 11 as a defining point for our country
-just as the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919 was for our grandfathers, the
fall of France in 1940 was for the British, and September 11, 2001, was for
the majority of Americans.
It is not the scale of a disaster that prompts
a country to break with the past. A decisive shift in a nation's collective
way of thinking is invariably provoked by a corresponding feeling of vulnerability
and helplessness.
History records that it is at these critical
moments a leader often emerges who is able to transform dejection and despondency
into determination and hope. Neville Chamberlain, the rather stiff and gentlemanly
soul who epitomised the policy of appeasement, was not lacking in popular
support between 1937 and 1939.
When he returned from Munich in 1938 with
a piece of paper that promised `peace with honour' he was met by jubilant
crowds grateful that another European war had been averted. Winston Churchill,
who opposed Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler, was then regarded as a crazy
killjoy a British Bal Thackeray.
Yet, by the spring of 1940, when it was painfully
clear that there was no alternative but to go the whole hog against Hitler,
Chamberlain was unceremoniously dumped and Churchill installed.
Something similar happened in India after
1919. The nationalist leadership slipped out of the hands of stalwarts like
Lokmanya Tilak and Surendranath Bannerjee, all of who had rendered yeomen
service to Indian nationalism, and India reposed its faith in a quirky Gujarati
who cloaked politics in ethics. His political idiom was strange and many of
his contemporaries saw the Mahatma as a dotty interloper.
He was unique but there is no doubt that passive
resistance and non-violence crippled the British Raj more effectively than
all the guns and bombs put together.
Leadership involves the ability to capture
the essence of popularfeeling and nudge it in a clear direction. Leadership
becomes inspirational, not because an individual is blessed with godly attributes,
but because to use an illtimed slogan of a failed American presidential aspirant
`our heart you know he is right'.
In 1971, Indira Gandhi captured the national
spirit in the war against Pakistan; in 1974-75, the ageing Jayaprakash Narayan
became the unlikely symbol of a people's exasperation with an arrogant and
imperious Prime Minister; and between 1990 and 1993, L.K. Advani captured
the profound Hindu disquiet with a decrepit secular order.
Last week, India confronted a twin threat.
First, the Islamist jehadis defiantly proclaimed to the world that they have
the determination, organisation and technology to strike at the heart of India.
The attacks on Parliament, Ayodhya and the RSS headquarters in Nagpur were
foiled and the bombings in Delhi and Varanasi were dress rehearsals. Mumbai
was the real thing and it left India distraught, disoriented and exposed.
The media invocation of the `Mumbai spirit'
of gritty resilience was actually a grotesque celebration of national helplessness.
People spontaneously rushed to help and comfort the victims of the tragedy,
took the personal discomfiture caused by the disruption in their stride and
then and this is the harsh, unspoken reality waited for the fire next time.
They played Mumbai meri jaan on TV when they
should have been whistling `Que sera sera whatever will be, will be' the signature
tune of Hindu fatalism.
As if this good-humoured march to the gallows
wasn't bad enough, India is confronted by a leadership vacuum of monumental
proportions. It was absolutely revolting to hear a shamefaced Prime Minister
mouthing inane platitudes about keeping the peace and defeating the nefarious
designs of the terrorists. It was remarkable that even in the face of such
a disaster Manmohan Singh could not rise above the template mundane.
It was equally humiliating to witness our
diplomats suddenly get all shirty about Pakistan and forget the silly commitment
made by the foreign ministers of both countries in July 2004 that `nothing',
not even terrorism, would be allowed to derail the peace process.
We travelled to the G-8 summit hoping that
the world leaders would leave all the global problems and rush to condemn
Pakistan. Nothing of the sort happened and, when we failed to provide conclusive
evidence that it was the generals in Pakistan who had remote-controlled the
explosions, we were sent off with a flea in our ear and instructed to resume
the peace process albeit after a face-saving interval.
Was Sonia Gandhi any better? She certainly
upstaged Manmohan Singh by rushing to Mumbai first and comforting the victims.
But where India needed the steely determination of a Margaret Thatcher, or
even Indira Gandhi, she chose to play Florence Nightingale for an evening.
The leadership is in a state of denial.
Almost all the indications available so far
suggest that it was not a team of terrorists airdropped into India from Pakistan
who were responsible for sneaking into first class compartments in Churchgate
and planting the killer bombs. No, it is shamefacedly recognised by everyone
that the killers were local, home-grown terrorists.
You can call them Al-Qaeda, Lashkar-e- Toiba
or SIMI -the label does not matter. What matters is a formal recognition that
our own citizens have decided to wage war on our own people.
In short, they have disengaged themselves
as citizens of India and committed themselves to a trans-national ideology
based on the domination of one religion. We are squeamish about admitting
that the divisive forces we pretended did not exist have abandoned playing
vote bank politics and taken to the gun.
Yes, the implications are absolutely frightening
and hideous but nothing worthwhile will be served by pretending the problem
does not exist. Nor will we be able to contain and control the problem by
banning blogsites that reveal the ugly truth.
When defeatism parades itself as enlightenment,
you know that something has to give way. We need a leader who can call a spade
a spade, brook no nonsense and do what is right. We need a man the jehadis
dread and loath. Such a man is waiting to take India by storm.
