Union Minister VK Singh drew condemnation for the ‘Dalit and dog’ analogy he never made. But there was general silence when Rahul Gandhi atrociously claimed people were dying ‘left, right and centre’
In the last week of October, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi paid a visit to the village in Faridabad where two Dalit children had been burnt alive when their house caught fire. The parents escaped with injuries. It was alleged that some people of an upper caste family had set fire to the house to avenge an old enmity. (The matter is being investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation and the full truth should be out soon.) The media was in full force at the spot. Asked to respond to the accusation that he had arrived for a “photo-op”, Mr Gandhi furiously retorted, “It is insulting that someone says that. People are dying left, right and centre in this country… What do you mean, it’s a photo opIJ I shall keep coming.”
Around the same time, Union Minister VK Singh also commented on the incident. He advised against linking local incidents directly with the Union Government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This is what he said in Hindi to journalists: “Kabhi sthaniya ghatnaon ka sarkar se talluk mat rakhiye. Uske upar inquiry chal rahi hai. Parivaron ke beech matbhed tha, voh matbhed kis roop mein parivartit hua, kahan par intazamiyan ka failure hain, administration kaIJ Uske bad voh sarkar ke upar aata hai…” (Don’t associate local incidents with the Union Government. There is an inquiry going on. Whether there was a dispute between two families; what shape that dispute took; where did the administration fail… After that, the issue of Government comes in). When the questioning persisted, he added, “To har cheez par, ki wahan par pathar maar diya kutte ko to, sarkar jimmewaar hai - aisa nahin hai” (For everything…like if somebody throws a stone at a dog, then the Union Government is responsible…it is not like that).
All hell broke loose, not amidst the millions of people of the country or even in the Faridabad village, but among the high-decibel television news anchors and the guest participants over Gen Singh’s ‘insulting analogy’ of dog and Dalit. It must be said to their credit that they could fill hours of prime time over the next two days with an issue that never was. Read the remarks, listen to it on video: Gen Singh had by no stretch of imagination compared Dalits to dogs, or intended to. Television and print media journalists who went to town with the ‘derogatory’ statement know in their heart of hearts that the Union Minister is right when he protests he made no such comparison. Once upon a time, as Army chief, he had been accused of conspiring to oust the nation’s elected Government through a coup, on material as flimsy as that which has been used today to link him to the ‘dog and Dalit’ remark.
But how could the news-hungry electronic media let go of this TRP-generating issue! As television channels whipped up passion and created frenzy, others began to contribute as well. Seizing the opportunity, political parties jumped into the fray. Somebody filed a complaint with the police against the Minister; another demanded Gen Singh’s immediate arrest; and a third said his remarks reflected the low value that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP attached to the Dalit community. Predictably enough, the supposed analogy found resonance in the Bihar Assembly campaign, much to the delight of Messrs Nitish Kumar and lalu Prasad who were not on strong turf among the Dalit voters. Flabbergasted by the orchestrated attack, Gen Singh apologised if he had caused hurt to anyone. This too was pilloried as a ‘conditional apology’. Such was the outrage in lutyens’ Delhi that Union Minister for Home Affairs Rajnath Singh had to advise his colleagues to choose their words with care while speaking in the public domain.
We live in strange times. On the one hand, a public figure is questioned, put on media trial and pronounced guilty on the basis of a remark that he never made or insinuated. And on the other, there is not a squeak of protest when another public figure a major, albeit failed, politician of the country makes the highly irresponsible comment that “people are dying left, right and centre” from the time the Modi Government assumed power. There was no scrutiny; the Press let Mr Rahul Gandhi’s diatribe pass. Gosh! People are dying left, right and centre... and we didn’t even get to know of it. Even the ever-vigilant electronic news media didn’t alert us.
One does not know of today, but yes, people had died left, right and centre in 1984 and those who died left, right and centre then, did so in a matter of few days, and they were all from one religious community. It was the Congress Government led by Rajiv Gandhi at the Centre then. Mr Rahul Gandhi will remember those ‘left, right and centre’ deaths. He will also recall that the earth shook after a big tree fell, and it shook left, right and centre. The perpetrators of the crime, many among them allegedly Congress leaders, still move about freely.
Here is another instance of ‘people dying left, right and centre’: The Bhopal gas tragedy in early December 1984 claimed anything between 3,800 and 15,000 innocent lives, depending on the source of the statistics. In any case, either of the two figures is monumental and adequately defines Mr Gandhi’s ‘left, right and centre’ slang. The Government in the affected State of Madhya Pradesh was that of the Congress; the Congress regime at the Centre was led by the fresh-faced, youthful Rajiv Gandhi. The State Government was geared to arrest the chairman of the company which owned and operated the pesticide plant, but intervention from the Prime Minister’s Office allowed the accused to get away.
And, here is yet another example of the ‘left, right and centre’ killing of people during the Congress’s rule in Bihar: In 1989, communal riots broke out in Bhagalpur and claimed more than 1,600 lives. Both Hindus and Muslims died and suffered over a period of two months of the deadly clashes. An inquiry report subsequently held the then State Congress regime’s “inaction” responsible for the tragedy. Mr Rahul Gandhi must have been in his late teens then, and he would know how innocent citizens had died ‘left, right and centre’ in extreme agony, while his party’s Government twiddled its thumb.
But neither Mr Gandhi nor his well-wishers want to recollect. People are ‘dying left, right and centre’ at this very moment, thanks to the ‘fascist, intolerant conduct’ of the Modi Government. It is always fun to imagine a catastrophe and then pretend to act like a knight in shining armour. It boosts one’s sagging confidence.