Arvind Kejriwal has said that Mukesh Ambani harms national interest by funding politicians to get work done in his favour. The matter may be decided by the court and I cannot judge right now whether there is truth in Kejriwal’s charge. But I can discuss certain possibilities.
I can think aloud. The law does not ban any person from thinking. What if corporate houses are actually harming the nation for their gains by buying politiciansIJ What if this has been going on for the last, say, 50 yearsIJ
Incidentally, Reliance was established by Dhirubhai Ambani about 40 years before UPA came to power 10 years ago. And Indira Gandhi first became Prime Minister the year Reliance was founded. Reliance has grown phenomenally right from its beginning. Charges of the same character as Kejriwal’s have been levelled against it off and on. More off than on. Nothing serious was ever proved against Dhirubhai or Reliance. People accepted its spectacular growth as a part of life.
Dhirubhai was officially hailed even by very senior Government officials like a former Union Minister, as a visionary, a great industrialist. His photo made its way to a postal stamp. Charges are charges, private beliefs are, well, private beliefs. The law of the land is shown as a blindfolded lady with a balance in her hand. This lady Justice does not grant legitimacy to charges and beliefs that are not backed by evidence that can be proved true in courts of law.
In this land, our India, this grand lady often takes decades upon decades to settle minor disputes like title suits pertaining to title or ownership of little plots of land. There is a saying about title suits in India — dada bhare, pota paye. Its implication is that if a title suit is thrust upon a bona fide land owner by land grabbers, his grandson gets legal relief, if any. If any, because legal relief is the best case scenario. The law may take longer to take its course, and there may be miscarriage of justice after two or more generations of excruciating emotional and monetary drain for the rightful owner family, resulting in the ownership of land going to bogus claimants. The example of title suits arose in my mind because my family has been roughing them out for the past, again, 50 years.
In this system of justice delivery, Dhirubhai Ambani was never proved guilty. And the law says a man is innocent till proved guilty. Hence, Dhirubhai stands innocent, looking quite a visionary in the postal stamp photo. For a long time, even unproved charges against him and his Reliance empire had stopped materialising. The Ambanis became legends, their empire stood for industry and enterprise. Common people, who could never prove a thing in courts, always had their own versions of these legends. Over decades, the public version of the legends, steeped in honest and resilient hard work, was established even in private drawing rooms and minds as a fact of life, a truth that had to be the truth because it had never been proved to be the untruth.
And then came Kejriwal’s charge. Right there in the public domain, converted into an official charge and made in very certain terms, perhaps for the first time in the life of the Reliance dream ride. lady Justice has a task in her hand — her scale has been tilted, she will have to find balance again, blindfold firmly in place.
A thought refuses to go from my mind — what if the charge against Reliance is trueIJ What if this betrayal of the nation and justice has been going on for several decadesIJ What if corporate houses have been fooling the nation and taking the law for rides by bribing and buying every holy institution — the Government, the Opposition, the judiciary, the bureaucracy, the mediaIJ That means not just the UPA Government of the past 10 years and Narendra Modi and his BJP, as Kejriwal mentions in his charge. That means all the Governments since Indira Gandhi first became Prime Minister. I am not going to the Nehru era, but things might have gone wrong since then.
Proof, where is the proofIJ Well, I have no proof. I am just thinking aloud. I am just thinking, “What if... IJ” taking cue from Kejriwal’s charge. I don’t know about other people, but I have had these thoughts for a long time. I am not levelling any charge. The official verdict still stamps Dhirubhai and company as visionaries. I am not contesting that verdict as yet. It stands on a pedestal and homage is paid to it day in, day out. That pedestal can be ultimately judged only by the law. I am just saying, “What if the pedestal is actually razed to the ground by lawIJ”
Bringing down the pedestal would require the simultaneous bringing down of all the forces spanning the four estates of our democracy that erected it over decades. It will require opening up of innumerable wrapped up files resting in oblivion in all corners of the country. It will require probes upon probes upon probes. If Kejriwal’s charge is true, it may not just be true for the past 10 years. The charge may go back 50 years. It may go back to earlier times, the times when India was still not quite finished with rocking in the cradle of its new birth as a nation, lulled by the idealist poetic oration delivered in very British intonation that said that it had had a tryst with destiny.
Justice is justice. A theft is a theft. A robbery is a robbery. An anti-national act is also just that, an anti-national act. An anti-national criminal is an extremely dangerous criminal. It brackets him with terrorists for terrorists are anti-nation, anti-India. Kejriwal says that Mukesh Ambani and others who helped him rob India are anti-India. It is a serious issue. And this issue should see its logical legal end.
If Kejriwal’s charge is wrong, it should be legally proved to be so. If it is right, then too it should be pursued to its end, when it all began, with all the people involved from the beginning till now getting justice. If Kejriwal is wrong, it should be proved so to make it clear to we, the people of India, that the official pedestal on which Reliance stands as the ultimate symbol of honest hard work and nothing else is really a bona fide pedestal. If Kejriwal is wrong, the courts of India should prove him wrong at the earliest. I, along with crores of other Indians, buy Reliance products. India needs to know at the earliest whether it is paying its honest money to buy from a company headed by an anti-India criminal.
India needs to know if its elected leaders right up to Prime Ministers past and present, its politicians in ruling and opposition parties, its judiciary, its bureaucrats and officials, its media, its very living breath and its soil and soul have been selling themselves to anti-India criminals for years upon years. The country needs to know whether Kejriwal is right or wrong. For as I said at the outset, if he is right...
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