Con­di­tioned only to read what is pub­lished, and not trained at all in read­ing what is not pub­lished, most of us are ill-equipped to read the head­lines that do not ap­pear in news­pa­pers or in our tele­vi­sion de­bates or make it to our so­cial me­dia han­dles. Un­for­tu­nately, real pol­i­tics is of­ten played out, sides are de­cided and bat­tles are won or lost in this neb­u­lous zone of con­spir­a­to­r­ial si­lence. Se­nior Jour­nal­ist and an­chor SP Singh makes sense of the said and the un­said.

THE DEATH OF JE­SUIT PRIEST FA­THER STAN SWAMY AND its af­ter­math has once again un­der­lined this cru­cial in­abil­ity of our hordes to read be­tween the un­pub­lished lines, even as vast chunks of Pun­jab’s pop­u­lace is cur­rently in­volved in a ro­bust ag­i­ta­tion against the Cen­tre on an is­sue that may de­cide the fu­ture of this part of the world.

How many Pun­jabis have no­ticed that of the en­tire bunch of chief min­is­te­r­ial hope­fuls and claimants, in­clud­ing the in­cum­bent Cap­tain Amarinder Singh, Akali supremo Sukhbir Singh Badal, AAP dic­ta­tor Arvind Ke­jri­wal or his hand-picked clones/​clowns in Pun­jab, or even loud­mouths like Navjot Singh Sidhu or sober states­men like Sunil Ku­mar Jakhar, not one has said a sin­gle word about the death of Fa­ther Stan Swamy? And how many have taken note of this preg­nant si­lence?

Once again, do you think politi­cos like Amarinder Singh or Sukhbir Singh Badal or Ke­jri­wal for­got to con­demn the mus­cu­lar ap­proach of the Cen­tre or the ap­a­thy of the top ju­di­ciary be­cause there is al­ways so much hap­pen­ing on the po­lit­i­cal front, or such si­lence must be the re­sult of a very well thought out cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis in a state like Pun­jab that is to go to the polls within a few months?

 

The real trib­ute to Fa­ther Stan Swamy is to ask the most sedi­tious ques­tion of our pol­i­tics: how dis­hon­est can dis­hon­esty be? 

Un­der­stand­ing this si­lence is an ex­er­cise in peel­ing the lay­ers and un­pack­ing the nu­ances of Pun­jab pol­i­tics. At one level, it also ex­poses a cer­tain unity of ap­proach to­wards some of the core is­sues that de­fine what kind of a peo­ple we are, and how our pol­i­tics wants to mould us.

Con­gress pres­i­dent, in­terim or mummy of the next one, So­nia Gandhi, wrote a let­ter to the Pres­i­dent of In­dia, co-signed by three of her par­ty’s chief min­is­ters, be­sides a bunch of other op­po­si­tion politi­cians, de­mand­ing ac­count­abil­ity for those who di­rectly or in­di­rectly con­tributed to the death of the tribal rights ac­tivist in ju­di­cial cus­tody. 

It was not very long ago that promi­nent sec­tions of Pun­jab’s ag­i­tat­ing farmer unions were car­ry­ing out a protest march to de­mand the re­lease of sev­eral civil lib­er­ties and hu­man rights ac­tivists, in­clud­ing Fa­ther Stan Swamy. In fact, In­di­a’s heav­ily pro-es­tab­lish­ment me­dia had at­tacked the farmer unions for such sup­port to what it called sym­pa­this­ers of “Maoists” and “sep­a­ratist el­e­ments”.

While the op­po­si­tion Con­gress party did make an oc­ca­sional noise to de­mand the re­lease of ac­tivists like Swamy, Sudha Bharad­waj, Ver­non Gon­salves, Arun Fer­reira and Anand Tel­tumbde, the fact re­mains that many of them lan­guished in jail for weeks, months and years be­cause of cer­tain dra­con­ian pro­vi­sions in the Un­law­ful Ac­tiv­i­ties (Pre­ven­tion) Act (UAPA), in­tro­duced by the UPA gov­ern­ment, when the Union Home Min­istry was un­der the tute­lage of P Chi­dambaram.

The UAPA was brought in to crush what clearly was a move­ment born out of poverty, skewed de­vel­op­ment, mis­placed pri­or­i­ties and mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion of the poor­est. As the Nax­al­bari in­sur­gency reared its head, the In­dian state armed it­self with UAPA to term any­one and any ac­tiv­ity as “un­law­ful” and weaponised terms like “sov­er­eignty” and “ter­ri­to­r­ial in­tegrity.”

In the same vein, laws like TADA and POTA were brought in as weapons to first crush the Sikh as­pi­ra­tional move­ment and later any­one fight­ing back against state re­pres­sion. When POTA had to be re­pealed af­ter wide­spread mis­use, the Cen­tre ex­panded the scope of the UAPA and the worst of POTA was in­jected into this in­fa­mous law.

Even two days be­fore his death, Stan Swamy had moved the Bom­bay High Court, chal­leng­ing Sec­tion 43D(5) of UAPA, which ba­si­cally re­stricts the courts from grant­ing bail, re­quires that the judge must only be sat­is­fied that a “prima fa­cie” case ex­ists against the ac­cused as per the pros­e­cu­tion di­ary. This pro­vi­sion was in­jected into the UAPA by P Chi­dambaram in De­cem­ber 2008, a shackle on the ju­di­ciary that was fur­ther tight­ened in 2019 by the apex court that fur­ther de­fined “prima fa­cie” even more nar­rowly, say­ing the courts must not analyse ev­i­dence or cir­cum­stances and must only look at the “to­tal­ity of the case” pre­sented by the state.

The pro­viso puts the onus on the ac­cused to prove his in­no­cence but bars the court from eval­u­at­ing avail­able ev­i­dence.

Also, in 2019, the Modi gov­ern­ment amended the UAPA to arm it­self with pow­ers to des­ig­nate in­di­vid­u­als as ter­ror­ists.

All through the de­bate on the Modi gov­ern­ment go­ing af­ter civil lib­er­ties ac­tivists, and the tragic death of Stan Swamy, as well as the rather meek protes­ta­tions by the Con­gress in the af­ter­math of such a death, the de­bate in Pun­jab has failed to en­gage the po­lit­i­cal par­ties.

Sur­pris­ingly, all the three main con­tenders for power, the Badals’ Akali Dal, Amarinder Singh’s Con­gress and Ke­jri­wal’s AAP, could af­ford to re­main mum on Swamy’s death only be­cause the sole vis­i­ble and au­di­ble op­po­si­tion in the re­gion — the farmer or­gan­i­sa­tions and civil so­ci­ety ac­tivists — seem to have de­cided not to ques­tion these par­ties.

In fact, and shock­ingly, no one seems to have re­mem­bered that the Con­gress party had ac­tu­ally taken the bull by the horns and had specif­i­cally promised to ap­ply cor­rec­tives to laws like the UAPA in its 2019 Man­i­festo.

So rev­o­lu­tion­ary was the Con­gress’ Man­i­festo in this re­spect that parts of it could have been drafted by peo­ple like Fa­ther Stan Swamy.

While So­nia Gandhi chose not to make any ref­er­ence to her own party man­i­festo, Rahul Gandhi, too, re­mained mum on the is­sue and Amarinder Singh was never ex­pected to raise it, the promises made by the party in writ­ing ring loud and clear.

Re­leased in the pres­ence of So­nia Gandhi and Man­mo­han Singh, and drafted pri­mar­ily by Chi­dambaram who had ear­lier in­jected steroids into the UAPA, the Man­i­festo de­clared the par­ty’s ap­proach in no un­cer­tain terms.

“Specif­i­cally, Con­gress promises to:

“De­crim­i­nalise laws that are es­sen­tially laws di­rected against civil vi­o­la­tions and can be sub­jected to civil penal­ties;

“Omit Sec­tion 499 of the In­dian Pe­nal Code and make ‘defama­tion’ a civil of­fence;

“Omit Sec­tion 124A of the In­dian Pe­nal Code (that de­fines the of­fence of ‘sedi­tion’) that has been mis­used and, in any event, has be­come re­dun­dant be­cause of sub­se­quent laws;

“Amend the laws that al­low for de­ten­tion with­out trial in or­der to bring them in ac­cord with the spirit, and not just the let­ter, of the Con­sti­tu­tion as well as In­ter­na­tional Hu­man Rights Con­ven­tions;

“Pass a law ti­tled the Pre­ven­tion of Tor­ture Act to pro­hibit the use of third-de­gree meth­ods dur­ing cus­tody or in­ter­ro­ga­tion and pun­ish cases of tor­ture, bru­tal­ity or other po­lice ex­cesses;

“Amend the Armed Forces (Spe­cial Pow­ers) Act, 1958 in or­der to strike a bal­ance be­tween the pow­ers of se­cu­rity forces and the hu­man rights of cit­i­zens and to re­move im­mu­nity for en­forced dis­ap­pear­ance, sex­ual vi­o­lence and tor­ture.

“Amend the laws to de­clare that every in­ves­ti­ga­tion agency that has the power to search, seize, at­tach, sum­mon, in­ter­ro­gate and ar­rest will be sub­ject to the re­stric­tions im­posed on the po­lice by the Con­sti­tu­tion, the Code of Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dure and the In­dian Ev­i­dence Act; and

“Amend the Code of Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dure and re­lated laws to af­firm the prin­ci­ple that ‘Bail is the rule and jail is the ex­cep­tion:’

IF THIS IN­DEED was what the Con­gress party promised in its Man­i­festo, why is the party to­day shy of even mak­ing a ref­er­ence to it as it con­demns the mis­use of UAPA and other laws and in­ves­ti­gat­ing agen­cies? Why is Amarinder Singh com­pletely silent? Why is Akali Dal not bash­ing the Con­gress over its si­lence? Why is the AAP and Ke­jri­wal not bash­ing both with this han­dle?

While farmer or­gan­i­sa­tions like BKU (Ugra­han) raised their voice to de­mand the re­lease of some left­ist aca­d­e­mics and ac­tivists in Bhima Ko­re­gaon/​El­gar Parishad cases, how many Pun­jab politi­cians have made it an is­sue that UAPA ar­rests were ris­ing in Pun­jab?

Jas­pal Singh Man­jh­pur, who has con­sis­tently pur­sued such cases for years now, has claimed that at least 94 cases have been reg­is­tered un­der the UAPA in Pun­jab since 2009, and 370 peo­ple were ar­rested in these.

In fact, the Con­gress gov­ern­ment of Amarinder Singh has been proac­tive in slap­ping UAPA. While just four UAPA cases were reg­is­tered and 7 peo­ple were ar­rested in 2015 and 2016, 101 peo­ple were ar­rested in be­tween 2017 and 2019 in 18 such cases.

So­nia Gandhi may write let­ters to Pres­i­dent af­ter Stan Swamy’s death but is her chief min­is­ter in Pun­jab or her newly anointed party pres­i­dent Navjot Singh Sidhu even both­ered about such an is­sue?

The fact re­mains that all three par­ties have divvied up their pol­i­tics and do not want to be seen as prin­ci­pal or prin­ci­pled op­po­nents to the Naren­dra Modi-Amit Shah line of pol­i­tics. Con­gress in Pun­jab does not want to ques­tion the Hin­dutva pol­i­tics of the BJP while the Akali Dal is more in­ter­ested in re­turn­ing to its iden­tity pol­i­tics turf, shar­ing the right of the cen­tre space with the BJP. The AAP has al­ready proven in Delhi that it could play the Hin­dutva and Na­tion­al­ist cards prag­mat­i­cally. Ke­jri­wal’s tem­ple run be­fore the elec­tion in Delhi and his proxy slam­ming of the Sha­heen Bagh protests planted him firmly on the Hin­dutva band­wagon.

That is why even when the Supreme Court, on July 14, ques­tioned the need for the ‘colo­nial’ law of Sedi­tion af­ter 75 years of In­de­pen­dence and stated that it would ex­am­ine its va­lid­ity, Con­gress did not pre­sent it as its vic­tory. The party chose not to re­mind any­one that it had al­ready promised in its 2019 Man­i­festo a re­peal of the Sedi­tion law.

Did you see any Con­gress­man, from Amarinder Singh right down to the mo­halla com­mit­tee pres­i­dent of the party, re­mind­ing any­one about the par­ty’s stance on Sedi­tion law? Even the me­dia corps in Pun­jab for­gets to seek Amarinder Singh’s re­ac­tion on the is­sue.

The fact is that Amarinder Singh has been run­ning a gov­ern­ment more in tune with the hard­core ul­tra-na­tion­al­ist BJP than with a more lib­eral Rahul Gandhi line of think­ing as re­flected by the young scion’s Twit­ter han­dle.

You will never hear Amarinder Singh slam­ming the BJP gov­ern­ment over the Rafael deal, even though Rahul Gandhi has been go­ing af­ter Modi ham­mer and tongs on this score. He has not is­sued a sin­gle state­ment on how the con­tro­versy over the Rafael deal and the talk of bribery can af­fect the morale of the armed forces.

He never ut­tered a word about Cen­tre’s use of the CBI, never con­demned Is­lam­o­pho­bia, did not say a word about ri­ots in Muz­za­far­na­gar, never slammed mob lynch­ings, never made an is­sue out of ar­rests and de­ten­tion of civil so­ci­ety ac­tivists, and hardly ever even tried to de­fend So­nia Gandhi/​Rahul Gandhi in the Na­tional Her­ald case in which both are on bail. His pol­i­tics is well aligned with the BJP’s. It never in­cluded mak­ing re­peated ref­er­ences to the loot of the coun­try by the likes of Vi­jay Mallya, Ni­rav Modi, Mehul Choksi etc. He does not re­fer to these is­sues even though the farm­ers on the Singhu Tikri bor­der talk about the sub­ject every sin­gle day.

It takes a lot of ef­fort to cu­rate such a si­lence. Amarinder Singh started early and has prac­tised a lot. He re­mained silent on beef ban, love ji­had, ghar wapsi, Ishrat Ja­han en­counter, the as­sault on JNU stu­dent lead­ers, the sui­cide of Ro­hit Vem­ula. He has been prac­tis­ing si­lence for a long, long time. The man has se­ri­ous ED cases go­ing on against him.

Who can for­get the fact that Amarinder Singh ac­tu­ally wrote an ar­ti­cle in the In­dian Ex­press, de­mand­ing a brav­ery medal for the In­dian Army Ma­jor who trussed up an in­no­cent Kash­miri man on a jeep and used him as a hu­man shield against stone pel­ters? 

Who can for­get the fact that Amarinder Singh ac­tu­ally wrote an ar­ti­cle in the In­dian Ex­press, de­mand­ing a brav­ery medal for the In­dian Army Ma­jor who trussed up an in­no­cent Kash­miri man on a jeep and used him as a hu­man shield against stone pel­ters? He wrote an ar­ti­cle in The Tri­bune, ad­vo­cat­ing a free hand for the Army in Kash­mir and termed any re­sul­tant corpses as col­lat­eral dam­age.

Which part of this is aligned with Rahul Gand­hi’s stated line of think­ing?

Then why are his po­lit­i­cal ri­vals not ques­tion­ing Amarinder Singh on his pol­i­tics?

Why is Navjot Singh Sidhu not tak­ing upon Amarinder Singh head-on on these core is­sues?

Why is Akali Dal not call­ing Amarinder Singh bluff?

Why is the AAP not call­ing the Con­gress’ and the Akali Dal’s bluff?

And the most im­por­tant ques­tion: why is a ro­bust move­ment be­ing seen as a re­nais­sance in Pun­jab’s pol­i­tics not pos­ing these se­ri­ous ques­tions to the en­tire po­lit­i­cal class?

It will mat­ter lit­tle as to which face AAP chooses as its CM can­di­date, or if Navjot Sidhu be­comes the party chief in Pun­jab to­day or a CM to­mor­row, or if Sukhbir Singh Badal fi­nally re­turns to power, as long as our pol­i­tics re­mains hostage to ide­o­log­i­cal con­fu­sions, prag­matic si­lences, pro­grammed com­mu­nal re­sponses, de­vi­ous and in­ces­tu­ous sub­ter­ranean un­der­stand­ings and a gen­eral moral bank­ruptcy.

The move­ment about the three farm bills could be a trig­ger for a bold re­turn to the core is­sue of in­tel­lec­tual bank­ruptcy, or it could be a shroud you can use to cover up a mur­der of a re­nais­sance.

The real trib­ute to Fa­ther Stan Swamy is to ask the most sedi­tious ques­tion of our pol­i­tics: how dis­hon­est can dis­hon­esty be? Read the head­lines that are not be­ing pub­lished. Take charge of the de­bates that are not hap­pen­ing on your tele­vi­sion sets. All rev­o­lu­tions start from deep within.