Congress' Midsummer Folly

Swami Ramdev asked me on June 4 whether police would try to arrest him. He said that he had definite information. My reply then was: “No government would dare to make such a mistake. You are staging a peaceful fast in the presence of thousands of your supporters. There are at least 40 OB Vans of TV channels monitoring everything”. I also told him: “Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh will never allow this to happen”.

I was under the impression that the Congress had learnt its lesson from the Emergency days. During the last seven years of UPA rule, neither Sonia Gandhi nor Manmohan Singh had nothing to suggest that they would ever  try to exert muscle power.

But I was proved wrong within a few hours.  At the dead of night I got a call from India TV newsroom: “Sir, police have swooped on Ramlila Maidan”.

The visuals of police on the rampage that I saw on  television that night were really disturbing. How can any one do such a thing? In the glare of TV cameras police swung their lathis, fired teargas shells, beat up old men and children and tore the clothes of women.

I heard Swami Ramdev sitting on the shoulder of one of his supporters telling the police: “Do not beat the people here, I am ready to court arrest”. But when a government sends a 5,000-strong police force to disrupt a gathering,  the policemen are clearly unwilling to listen to the voice of reason. Policemen are trained to wield sticks, to fire teargas shells and bullets. For the policemen, it matters the least that these were starving  people sleeping after a daylong fast. Had the crowd been violent, the police could well have resorted to firing. I can only thank God that  most of Swami Ramdev’s followers were either old, women and children or were his selected ‘sadhaks’(trainers) who have been trained never to be violent.

Earlier, when Swami Ramdev rang me up during the daytime, he had told me that somebody has given him a credible information that thousands of policemen would try to clear out the tents at midnight. The informer had also told him that the police could also kill him in a fake encounter or set the tent on fire.

 

I had then told Swami Ramdev, “such things can’t happen. It is impossible that thousands of policemen will try to enter the tents, and nobody can ever imagine of killing you in his wildest of dreams”.

After seeing the police on rampage from 1 am till 5 am on television, I wondered how Ramdev proved me wrong. I later realized why Swami Ramdev wore a women’s attire to sneak out of the camp. He might have thought, when his  information about police entry was correct,  about police wielding lathis was correct, then surely the secret info about  a possible encounter would also be correct.

Congress, to me, is a party having leaders experienced in the art of governance. I had always believed that the Congress leaders know how to govern, but the June 4-5 midnight crackdown has shocked me. I fail to understand even now why the government did such a thing at all. And the most important  question: What did the Congress or the government gain out of  it?

Supreme Court sent a notice asking the government to explain the brutal police action in the dead of night. Will the government tell the apex court that it did this in order to assert its might, that it can gag anybody’s voice. Kapil Sibal had told the media that evening “if we know how to accommodate, we also know how to rein in”.

 

I wonder what did the Congress get out of all this? The yoga guru who had been extending his hand towards Congress is now its sworn enemy. The same Swami Ramdev, who was maintaining a distance from RSS and shaking hands with Muslim leaders in order to project an image acceptable to all, has been shoved by the Congress into the RSS camp. The Congress, by brutally beating up Swami Ramdev’s supporters with the help of police, has brought both Mayawati and Mulayam Singh on the same plane. A leader like Brinda Karat who used to criticize Swami Ramdev in public, appeared on television to condemn the brutal police action.

Both the Congress and the government were already in a fix over Anna Hazare and were eyeing Swami Ramdev as an antidote to Hazare, but the midnight crackdown has reversed this.



Both Anna and Ramdev who were at unease with each other are now together. Anna Hazare is sitting  on fast to protest over police brutality on Ramdev supporters. Now the government will have to deal with both.

While the Congress went on back foot, rival BJP got rejuvenated. BJP which was trying to revive its fortunes but was bereft of any big issue against the government. The very same party is now out in full force, thanks to the gift of a livewire issue from Congress.

The Congress has unwittingly given the BJP not only an issue, but also a leader like Ramdev with a mass base of crores of people. Now the Congress will have to face  not only the BJP, but also Ramdev, Anna Hazare’s civil society, Mayawati and Mulayam Singh.

The timing of the bloody, brutal police action was also significant. The previous evening, Kapil Sibal had created confusion by showing a letter about  a deal with Ramdev. Swami Ramdev was on the defensive and he was busy clarifying that the letter merely states that all  his demands will be met and the fast will be over in two days. But by sending a 5,000-strong police force in the dead of night, the government has now put Ramdev on the offensive. It is now Ramdev who is attacking Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh by name. Ramdev had been scrupulously avoiding criticism of these two leaders for the last five years.

On the other hand, Digvijay Singh described Ramdev as a ‘thug’, his associate Acharya Balkrishna a thief, and had demanded that the government must probe Ramdev’s assets. A prominent newspaper published a news item  that the CBI and ED will probe the assets of  the trusts and companies associated with Ramdev. Had Swami Ramdev been a thug, then how is it that the Prime Minister of India Dr Manmohan Singh sent him a letter appealing him not to sit on fast?

Why did the Prime Minister write a letter to a ‘thug’ to say that his movement against corruption was valid?

If the assets of Ramdev’s trusts and companies are to be probed, then why did the Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and three other senior ministers went to the airport to meet Ramdev?

In any democracy, the people’s faith acts as oxygen for  the political parties, but sheer arrogance of power can work as a corroding acid for any party.

History is witness to the fact that a democracy cannot be run on the strength of sheer brute force. Only those governments last, which listen to the voice of the opposition and of those who criticize peacefully. It is now up to the Congress to choose between oxygen and an acid.