The Somnath tantrum

Views were divided over Somnath`s Chatterjee`s refusal to be frisked on arrival in Australia. The Hindi papers supported his stand.

                The Hoot`s weekly column on what editorial writers dish out

You don`t say!

Darius Nakhoonwala
 

A lot of things happened during the week that just went by. The truly momentous of these happenings was the Srinagar- Muzaffarabad bus. But there were also sideshows such as  the BJP`s 25th anniversary, the CPM`s 18th Congress and, last but not least, Somnath Chatterjee`s little tantrum over frisking.

On the first three, leader writers in all the major newspapers sang in unison. The gushing about the bus was embarrassing in its fulsomeness. Advice that the BJP needed to forget a few things and learn some new things was freely given by all. Ditto for the CPM. Both it and BJP were told to get themselves a new leadership and stop living in the past. Easy stuff.

What caught my attention, however, was the Tantrum. Somnath Chatterjee, who said recently, "I do not cayere for the Sarkar". He had got offended again, this time with the loutish Australians who insisted on frisking him even though he was going to Canberra as the Speaker of the Indian Parliament to attend a Commonwealth Parliament Association meeting, and not to visit the beaches as a private citizen, perchance to ogle the nudes.

Amongst the English newspapers only the Indian Express thought it fit to comment (The Hindu, as a matter of editorial policy, does not criticise the Left but woe betide a BJP functionary, say, Murli Manohar Joshi, who made a similar fuss). The Express archly asked Mr Chatterjee not to be so silly. "Does the Hon`ble Speaker realise how undemocratic his objections are? By projecting Canberra`s refusal to put in abeyance a law that mandates frisking as an "affront" to India, he undermines the very democratic ideal he invokes." Why? Because if you want total security everyone has to frisked, said the paper, never mind your status. "As a sign of allegiance to the equality that sustains Indian democracy, let there be no differentiation. Speaker Sir, you may just find that equating exceptionalism as respect was just that most dangerous of things, false consciousness."

But the larger Hindi papers took the opposite view. Well done, Sir, said the Navbharat Times and Sock it to them, said the Hindustan. Both made the point that a distinction had to be made between high constitutional functionaries of countries and the hoi polloi. They also said that if Britain and some other countries had not seen the need to frisk the Indian Speaker, why was Australia being so obdurate?

They dismissed the Australian plea that frisking of everyone on arrival was required by law and that unless the law was changed there was nothing the Australian government could do. Both referred to the strip-search that George Fernandes had to endure in the US (neither apparently knows that Murli Manohar Joshi was also stripped and searched) and praised Mr Chatterjee for upholding Indian honour.

Whatever view one holds of the Chatterjee tantrum, the incident does point to an emerging need. This is for countries to enter a multilateral agreement that official visitors holding constitutional office will not be frisked and searched. If there is resistance, the answer must be for others, too, to search everyone else. One wonders hat would happen if President Musharraf was searched, or for that matter, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleeza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld et al.

But does India have the guts to follow the example of Brazil which requires all Americans to be finger-printed on arrival? I think not.

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