A Party of Liars

Many nameless party men, like big-name BJP supporter and former National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra, have voiced their view that political defence of Varun by top leaders was among the primary factors behind the Lok Sabha debacle. “The party should not have to tell lies on behalf of Varun (Gandhi).” So said an unnamed leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party to a reporter.

The statement brings some mirth to a country on which the absence of sparse monsoon clouds has cast a shadow, and to the media, left high and dry after the end of a long spell of elections and a longer one of cricket.

The statement should also lead to many interpretations as well, besides merriment. The leader was provoked by moves to involve the party, still busy licking its wounds after the elections to the Lok Sabha, in legal defence of Varun Gandhi facing criminal charges. The law is taking its course against the son of Sanjay Gandhi (accused of cruel “excesses”, especially against a minority, during India’s infamous Emergency of the seventies) and Maneka Gandhi (a crusader against cruelty, specifically, to animals).

Varun had attracted provisions of the penal code by his hate speeches of particularly high venom content (even by the party’s strikingly permissive standards) and, consequently, his attempts to cause “enmity among different sections of people”, as the law coyly describes communal violence. Maneka considers the BJP’s callous indifference to the legal case comparable to cruelty, say, to wild beasts brought under the whip in big-top shows.

Many nameless party men, like big-name BJP supporter and former National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra, have voiced their view that political defence of Varun by top leaders was among the primary factors behind the Lok Sabha debacle. The party majority apparently expects a legal defence to lead to similar consequence in some upcoming State Assembly elections as well, and Mishra is likely to agree.

Maneka still has an influential minority in the leadership with her. Like Sushma Swaraj, for example. The “firebrand” leader, who once threatened to cut off her tresses and adopt a traditional widow’s life if “foreigner” Sonia Gandhi was sworn in as prime minister, has publicly taken the side of Varun’s mother on his security. She has not resorted to any dire vow this time but, unlike her party peers, has come out in support of Maneka’s demand for security of a Z or Z-plus or the highest category for Varun, faced, as one might guess, with terrorist threats after all his “Hindutva” fulminations.

Talking of the multiple interpretations of the statement, what exactly was our anonymous leader’s intended message? If the same statement had been made by a votary of Varun, it might have meant: why can’t we be telling the truth on his behalf? This is the question that many in the Parivar, the Far Right “family”, have indeed been asking ever since they saw and heard him spewing anti-minority venom on the most widely watched of all election videos. They have argued that, by hailing Varun’s hysterical histrionics, the party would have reaped a rich harvest of votes. The poll results might seem to have proved them wrong, but they have not revised their stand.

But, since the statement came from no Varun sympathiser, it might have meant: why should the party lie for him, can’t he do his own dirty work? Good question, considering the skill he displayed in those speeches in making monsters of a minority.

Or, the statement might have been another way of asking: should not the party be lying instead for more deserving candidates? Has not the party left poor Narendra Modi to fend for himself? Is it for dynastic reasons, or because Varun is a Gandhi, that the Gujarat chief minister, the champion of glorious “Hindutva”, has been discriminated against?

If the statement provokes laughter despite all its serious implications, it is because some mischievous people are determined to misread it. To them, the unidentified leader only seems to be asking: should not the party be lying for itself alone, as has been the practice? He must surely be joking, if he is trying to suggest that lying has just never been part of the party’s and the Parivar’s political life?

The Big Lie has provided the basis for all Far Right forces and parties everywhere. And, the BJP and the Parivar are no exceptions at all. The petty lie has no less important a place in their politics. We may soon be watching a procession of named and unnamed leaders resorting to a string of petty lies about the parts they played in the demolition of Babri Msjid on December 6, 1992.

After 17 years punctuated with 48 extensions, a commission of inquiry into the outrage by Justice (retired) MS Liberhan has submitted its report. Even before its presentation in Parliament and release to the public, the country is being treated to cowardly denial of the roles played by leaders ranging from Lal Krishna Advani of the Ayodhya “rath yatra” (chariot ride) to then Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Kalyan Singh who watched it happen without official intervention. The only exception is Uma Bharti, another “firebrand” of the Far Right, who owns up her own role, but she left the BJP long years ago.

The leader of a withheld name is not without a larger point. Varun need not make the BJP virtuous, but the party has enough lying to do without getting involved in his legal defence.