The Hindu: Thiruvananthapuram: Monday,
January 30, 2017.
 |
| Gopalkrishna Gandhi (centre) releasing a book ‘Tilting the balance of power: Adjudicating the RTI Act,’ at the second V.R. Krishna Iyer memorial lecture in Thiruvananthapuram on Sunday. Also seen are (from left) Aruna Roy, Wajahat Habibullah, Madhava Menon, and Prashant Bhushan. |
India is
currently being ruled by the forces of fear, distrust and money, former West
Bengal Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi has said. He was delivering the second V.R.
Krishna Iyer Memorial lecture as part of a public meeting organised by the
National Campaign for People’s Right to Information (NCPRI).
“Who rules
India? I will not mention the name of a person. I shouldn’t say who. I should
say what. Fear rules India. How does fear manifest itself? Why is the lokpal
still dangling in mid-air? Why is the whistleblower’s protection Act not yet
notified? There is a kind of fear to face reality in our legislatures, not just
Parliament, but in our State legislatures too,” he said.
Result of
compulsion
Criticising
the imposition of the National Anthem on the people, he said that being asked
to sing it under an order is to make that passionate hymn a humdrum chant of
official value.
“Try making
Shakespeare’s Hamlet or Kalidas compulsory reading. You will not want to read
them. Try for that matter, making the reading of Tagore or Gandhi mandatory. I
would much rather go through crossword or sudoku, rather than read any text,
howsoever great it is. I love our National Anthem. It is probably one of the
greatest anthems in the world. I would sing it to myself with full heart,” he
said.
He said that
the climate of fear had taken hold of the judiciary as well as the Union
cabinet.
“Barring the
Primeministerships of Jawaharlal Nehru and Lal Bahadur Shastri, our cabinets
have looked upon the PM as a kind of Alpha and Omega. When Nehru was PM, he had
distinguished members of the cabinet who disagreed with him. Today that is not
so. The randomisation of ministers is matched only by the digitisation of the
bureaucracy and the robotisation of diplomats. The miasma of fear does not stop
at the doors of the judiciary, it sometimes can seep through the doors as well.
It faces the risk from an irritated government and that of succumbing to the
fear of public opinion, voiced by majoritarianism, drummed up with covert and
overt official backing,” said Mr. Gandhi.
“I was asked
recently that if fear is a fact, how am I speaking all this and writing what I
write. In Delhi, the suspended particulate matter which make up the pollutions
is a fact. Imagine if somebody is told, why do you complain of pollution when
you are breathing. The fact that you are breathing does not mean there is no
pollution. Pollution is a fact,” he said. He said that distrust is extremely
active in today’s polity, leading to the supercession of honest persons, be it
officers, diplomats or judges.
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