On Wednesday, actor Kangana Ranaut said at a media event that India’s real freedom came only in 2014, and that the independence won in 1947 was only “bheekh” or alms. Before that, on Monday, Shashi Tharoor, Congress politician, took to social media to wish a happy birthday to LK Advani, BJP veteran, and the man who led the mobilisation that ended with the shameful Babri masjid demolition. We wrote an editorial on the reaction to Kangana and Tharoor — he was brutally trolled and there have been demands by leaders of non-BJP parties, ranging from the Congress to the NCP and AAP, to arrest her, charge her with sedition, take back her Padma Shri.
We said that the reaction from those who call themselves liberal, and define themselves in opposition to the BJP, underlines a terrible shrinking. “If those who accuse the ruling establishment, very often rightly so, of punishing dissent and weaponising laws to curb freedoms, themselves strike war-like postures because they disagree with Tharoor, or bay for the use of a harsh law against Ranaut, the message is dispiriting: They are borrowing from the political vocabulary they love to criticise”, our editorial said.
True, Tharoor and Ranaut are very different, and what they said cannot be put in the same category — his gracious gesture softens the political line, while her crude cheerleading for the powerful sought only to rub in the divide. And yet, if the outrage against him is narrow-minded, it needs to be said that the clamour to punish her is also illiberal. Guarding the space to express ourselves freely, against the transgressing state and also the mob, has never been a more urgent need.
One of the distinctive features of the BJP’s political dominance under Narendra Modi-Amit Shah has been its will to conquer — and to subjugate — all institutions and spaces. It has not hesitated to wield the state agency or invoke the harsh law to subdue those who disagree. It has achieved spectacular success not just in winning elections, but also in setting, and hardening, the terms of debate. Prominent among the stories it tells, are those that speak to an “us” locked in constant and crusading battle with a “them”.
One of the terrible failures of those who oppose the BJP has been that they have not confronted this everyday cramping and coarsening of our public life in a frontal or credible way. Their inability or unwillingness to do so may stem from their own scarred record on questions of individual freedom, their own doublespeak when it comes to upholding liberal values. The backlash against Tharoor and the fury against Kangana is only the latest pointer — the with-us-or-against-us paradigm that shrinks us all implicates both the ruling establishment and its opposition.
As another round of state elections approaches, the heat of electoral campaign, particularly the one in Uttar Pradesh, which will resonate widely, will drive the wedge deeper. In the next few months, public conversation is even more likely to be on a knife-edge, trenches will be dug deeper, walls will go up higher.
As we brace for the sharpening polarisation, it is even more important to remind ourselves that the political combat is one of ideas, that opponents are not enemies, and that in a democracy, during elections and in between them too, the spaciousness of the battleground matters most, while winners and losers come and go.
Before I end, here’s wishing LK Advani a belated happy birthday!
Take care,
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