Dear reader, As the week drew to a close, on Friday, an action thriller spanning Delhi, Kurukshetra, Mohali and the highway in between, was playing in real time on a TV/social media screen near you. The arrest of Delhi BJP spokesperson Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga for comments/tweets against AAP leader and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal seemed to eclipse the far more consequential matter of the finalisation of the Delimitation Commission's order for Jammu and Kashmir. The Bagga potboiler starred police forces of three states having a go at each other — it was two against one, actually, Delhi-Haryana vs Punjab — and Bagga was only the bone of contention, not the hero. In fact, the police were also puppets in the AAP vs BJP show. So far at the receiving end, like many non-BJP parties, of the BJP's weaponisation of laws and misuse of state agencies to settle political scores, here was the AAP pulling the strings of the police in a state it recently won handsomely, to pay back in kind. Meanwhile, Bagga, arrested by Punjab Police from his home in Delhi, then brought back midway after a joint operation by the Haryana and Delhi Police from Kurukshetra in BJP-ruled Haryana, has now been granted relief by a Punjab and Haryana High Court till May 10. But this matter is not over. Its political echoes will resonate well beyond next week. There are questions about the flouting of due process. As a report in this paper pointed out, inter-state arrests are routine but the bitter politics in the Bagga case could make this one a worrying precedent. There are concerns about whether and to what extent the police force that was making the arrest informed and sought cooperation from the local police force, and over the interception of one police convoy by another, registration of an abduction case by one against the other. But those are not the only questions, going ahead. Our editorial "Driving Mr Bagga" pointed out the irony of the BJP, and particularly Bagga, a serial offender on the count of political incivility, playing victim. But there is also a tragedy: "… that, increasingly, the BJP's Opposition is playing by the BJP's book… the response of the AAP government to criticism of its leader is so disproportionate that it draws the spotlight squarely back on the party's own display of intolerance and flouting of federal restraints". The intolerance, the undermining of due process, the me-too politics, that appear to have become the currency on both sides of the political battle have a larger message, and cost. These are times when the BJP, the dominant political force in the country, has convinced itself that as the winner of elections, it can take all. As it uses the brute force of the state to push into spaces that are, or that should be, governed by principles other than the electoral or majoritarian one, and to target the dissenter and subdue the political opponent, the BJP tells a self-serving story. It is authorised by the people's mandate to do so, it says, and its critics are only sore losers of the elections it has won. The parties that oppose the BJP's use of the mandate to disrespect the limits imposed on it by the rules of the game have a choice to make. Their own scarred record in power makes it difficult for them to take a principled stand and fuels the BJP's whataboutery. And yet, can they oppose the BJP by trying to beat it at its own game? For the older players, this is a formidable challenge, one they evidently haven't found a credible or consistent resolution to. But for a party like the AAP, a relative newcomer, with a cleaner slate, which has risen on the back of the hope for change, the answer should surely be simpler, less fraught. It is not that the burden of a more virtuous politics is entirely on the AAP. In fact, the AAP has, so far, not even shown a marked aptitude for the role. For all its protestations of difference, for the most part, like other parties, it wants to win elections and form government, whatever it takes. But the truth is also this: A space has been created by the rise of the BJP and the decline of the Congress. And any attempt to fill it by BJP Lite will mean that it remains unfilled. Till next week, Vandita | 
No comments:
Post a Comment