Being coy about the latest Wiki leak
Where is the follow-up? Where are the reactions, the questions, the editorial comment?
Is Kamal Nath out of bounds too for our journalists, asks JYOTI PUNWANI Pix: The Indian Express
HERE’S LOOKING AT US
Jyoti Punwani
The last week has seen some really exciting disclosures in our newspapers – the Wikileaks documents.Published by The Hindu April 8 onwards, as part of its collaboration with Wikileaks, the `Kissinger Cables’, diplomatic communications relating to India, have been picked up by other leading newspapers, including The Times of India, Indian Express, Hindustan Times, DNA, and the New Indian Express.
The mud has flown really high his time, leaving no one in the first family untouched. And it’s not only the Gandhis that have been besmirched. Icons such as George Fernandes, current minister Kamal Nath and Congress leader Ambika Soni, the controversial Uma Bharati – have all earned honourable mentions in the latest disclosures.
The leaks cover a vast period – the 70s and early 80s, including the Emergency years, a turbulent time in our history. Many of us entered journalism during this period. Perhaps that’s the reason the disclosures (for me at least) seem so fascinating.
But where is the follow-up? Where are the reactions, the questions, the editorial comment?
Of the main national newspapers, only the Times of India has written an edit on the disclosures. It starts off by saying that the documents``contain no proof of Rajiv Gandhi taking bribes to facilitate aircraft deals.. .The cables don’t lay out any money trail.’’ Did anyone say they did?
When the two sons of a prime minister act as agents for foreign aircraft firms, that’s news. Of them, neither was then in politics. One was employed as a pilot with the national airline. The other was a trained but unemployed pilot.One of the deals in question was being negotiated with the defence ministry. The two sons later became the most powerful men in the country. Isn’t all this hot stuff?
Neither the PM, nor her sons, are alive today. But their wives and children are, and they are in public life. Indeed, the wife of one of them today heads the ruling party at the Centre, and his son is being projected as the next PM. The wife and son of the other are opposition politicians. What’s preventing us from asking them to comment on the revelations?
The Congress Party has reacted to the revelations, dismissing those concerning Rajiv. And our papers have left it at that. Actually, that’s not surprising. When was the last time any journalist asked Madam and Rahul Baba to react to something? Somehow, the Gandhis are beyond questioning for our journalists. But what about Maneka and Varun Gandhi? As disclosure after disclosure reveals how Sanjay Gandhi was a parallel power centre during the Emergency, what does his wife have to say?
And what about his crony Kamal Nath? The minister has not been described very flatteringly in the US cables. But this isn’t the first time Kamal Nath has been embarrassed by the leak of private communication about him. Remember the Niira Radia tapes?
The US documents quote him describing a grand plan to purge the Indira Gandhi regime of its Leftists, driven by the PM’s son. Till that mission was completed, elections wouldn’t be held. Those on the chopping block included Priyaranjan Dasmunshi, Siddharth Shankar Ray, and Nandini Satpathy.
Is Kamal Nath out of bounds too for our journalists? Or is this disclosure not important enough?
That India was part of the Soviet Bloc for many years after Independence, specially after Indira Gandhi came to power, can’t be news to anyone above the age of 40. The Soviets dominated our politics and our economy. But that our government’s shift away to the US began way back in 1975, with Sanjay Gandhi, is certainly news for many of us, who had only then entered journalism. For the post-Emergency generation, all this is new. If a current union minister was privy to those initial moves to take the country away from the Soviet hold, surely he should be interviewed. He should at least be asked why his powerful friend was keen to get rid of the Leftists within the Congress, who had been his mother’s trusted aides.
Interestingly, both Priyaranjan Dasmunshi and Siddharth Shankar Ray rose to great political heights under Sanjay Gandhi’s brother’s prime ministership, a decade after the Emergency. Maybe Kamal Nath can’t talk about all this, having loyally served all the Gandhis. But surely this deserves an analytical piece.
Then there’s the revelation about the Congress plotting to back an Uma Bharati-led breakaway section of the BJP in MP, and help her become CM, just recently, in 2006. Uma Bharati, of Babri Masjid demolition fame, backed by the secular Congress led by Madame Sonia, with her little band of secular advisors. Lip-smacking political gossip. The ``feisty sanyasin’’, as the media calls her, loves to talk. When in the mood, she can expose a whole range of people –both in her own party and the Congress.But no one’s asking her to do so!
Another juicy bit is George Fernandes’ appeal for CIA funds, and former Bihar CM Karpoori Thakur’s for asylum, during the Emergency. The latter is dead, the former too ill to talk. Both belong to the Lohiaite Socialist group that has contributed so much to our politics since the freedom struggle. Forget Fernandes’ later desertion to the BJP; during the Emergency, he was a hero. Would he have asked the CIA for funds? His companion Jaya Jaitly and his wife Leila Kabir have denied it, naturally. But what about his Socialist comrades from that time? Some of them are very much around. A few of them have written letters to The Hindu, rejecting the allegation. No journalist approached them. Similarly, no one has spoken to Karpoori Thakur’s Lohiaite friends in Bihar.
One of the most surprising disclosures has been the extent of friction between Indira Gandhi and the then President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed during the Emergency. So far, it was thought that he simply signed on the dotted line. The fact that he objected a number of times to her proposals, and she reportedly had to apologise for Sanjay Gandhi’s rudeness to him, is news. Again, he’s dead. But there’s an article waiting to be written here, talking to those still around from the Emergency days.
Does the lack of follow-up have to do with the remoteness of the period? Or with the fact that some of the leading personae of the shameful Emergency are still in power? Veteran columnist Rajinder Puri writes in a letter to The Statesman and The Hindu, that Rajiv Gandhi sitting in on aircraft negotiations with the aviation ministry, and Sonia Gandhi being appointed director of the Sanjay Gandhi-owned Maruti Consultancy Services while still a foreigner, was well-known at the time. So why all the excitement now, he asks, quoting Kennedy: `` Those who do not speak when they should, lose the right to speak altogether.’’
But what about those who could not speak then, because they were too young? Shouldn’t the press which is reporting these events, also discuss them, and engage this new generation in this discussion? Shouldn’t we be comparing the political culture of that time and seeing if it’s changed? Kamal Nath suggested to the US embassy officials that they take Left-leaning politicians for junkets the way the Soviets did. When Bangladesh President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was assassinated, the government ordered the press not to comment on it – censorship was in force then. Negotiating for Swedish submarines, the government then asked the Swedish Government if they could buy the subs with the funds the Swedes had given for development! Such were our rulers then. Don’t we need to comment on their conduct?
It’s been said by wise old political observers and journalists that such a takeover of power by any PM as we saw during the Emergency won’t happen again. Why? Will the judiciary stand up? Will the cabinet show some guts? Or will the President refuse to sign the proclamation? Will the people rise in revolt? The Wikileaks tell us that while people like Kamal Nath and Ambika Soni, then new in politics, curried favour with the new centre of power then, others such as A K Antony stood their ground, and even old Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed wasn’t quite a walk-over. Is the Antony of today, a defence minister who has to deal with defence purchase scandals and allegations of wife-swapping in the Navy, the same courageous man he was then?
Why the silence on an important part of our history many of whose players – and those linked with them – are in politics today? Why this reluctance to discuss the legacy of a Prime Minister who ruled for 15 years and changed the political culture of the country?