When The 'Voice Of A Nation' Was Sold For A Bottle Of Whiskey
Last
week I attended a book launch for a friend in Delhi. One of the speakers, a
journalist of national stature who was also the compere, during his speech began
to compare the working style of the two prime ministers under whom he worked,
one Manmohan Singh and the other Narendra Modi during travel.
He
began by saying how the journalists and the media personnel accompanied the two
prime ministers during their trips abroad. For the former he described how
anyone and everyone would be included depending upon his or her closeness to
the inner circle. He described the choicest food and the most expensive alcoholic
drinks that flowed like water during the time the former prime minister
travelled. He described how when a journalist would enter his room after checking
in, an expensive bottle of black label would be waiting for him alongside with
a note ‘with best compliments’ from the external ministry.
The
two prime ministers have vastly different working styles, he shared. Manmohan Singh
would work at the most half a day and for the rest half they would leave for
sight seeing and even visiting nightclubs and tourist spots, all expenses paid
for by the ministry, the matter being kept discreet.
A
press room would be set up with the most exotic foods from around the world
being made available and again expensive alcoholic drinks would be available for
the asking. He said many of the journalists would pick up bottles and carry
them to their room to be given as gifts later.
When
the journey would end, they would be given a bottle of black label scotch as a parting
gift along with many other freebies. The ostentation and gluttony reached its
peak during the second term of Manmohan Singh, he added saying most of them vied
to be as close to the lutyens media as they could so that they could be included
in each trip.
While
describing the working style of Narendra Modi during foreign trips, his tone
changed. “With him we had to work long hours with few gaps in between. There were
no pleasure trips but two programs scheduled daily and the schedules were so
tightly packed, people had to hurry to not miss their meals. And the alcoholic
drinks were replaced with tea, coffee and some biscuits.”
“And
what did the journalists write during Manmohan Singh’s time?” Someone next to
me in the audience asked.
“They
had to protect Manmohan Singh and project him as a good and honest man. And,
well, they had a second agenda too, that was discreet.” A woman who identified
herself as a journalist in the audience said they all would go on such trips
too for another reason. “We had to sing paeans and praises for the queen.” The
audience laughed out loud.
The
audience heard him spellbound and laughed at his jokes, by now too common.
Though what he said was common knowledge, it still was a revelation the way he
described it in minute detail with all the ‘mirch masala’. The audience laughed
at the comparison each time he made of the two styles of the prime ministers. After
the debauchery of the time period spent with Manmohan Singh, it was very
difficult for the journalists to adapt to the stoic discipline of Narendra Modi
he added. “Everyone resented it and cursed the change.”
As
the lecture ended and we were coming out a young woman from the audience asked
the journalist, “Tell me something. Where was your conscience all this while?”
He
was surprised at the question and looked straight at her, “Why only ask me?” he
said, his eyebrows raised. “Where was the conscience of everyone? Where was the
conscience of the nation?” saying this he walked away.
Two
different leaders. Two different time periods. Two men with the responsibility
of leading a nation. Yet the two periods are marked by sharp differences, sound
unreal and Kafkaesque as different as night and day, one that we have survived.
While the former bought off the voice of the fourth pillar by silencing them with
greed, the other has distanced itself from it and is hated.
What
the journalist said was that when the very conscience of our nation slept, why only
a single individual should be asked to bear the responsibility for the
collective failure of our conscience to speak up? But is that a valid line of argument?
Why
did our conscience disappear for ten years? Did we kill it like Abhimanyu of Mahabharata
encircling and forgetting what makes us human is our inner voice? Why did we as
a nation, didn’t raise our voice against injustice after injustice, wrongs that
we saw committed in front of our eyes? Why is so our collective voice weak and doesn’t
make itself heard like a rule of law society should?
Sometime
ago I was watching a film, the trial of a mass murderer for crimes against
humanity. To every question asked by the judge of the international court, he
had only one answer. “I was only following my orders. I had no choice to do
otherwise.” After listening to him patiently, the judge pronounced him guilty and
stated, “Each one of us is an agent of his or her own free will and has the choice
to say ‘no’ when we face evil. If you didn’t, that was your choice and still was
an act of free will.”
The
choice to not support, to say ‘no’ to a wrong, to any evil is the last of the
freedom as described by Victor Frankel in his book ‘Man’s search for meaning’.
We can exercise it even when we may have reached the point where death is certain
and life has stopped to offer any meaning. This freedom belongs to us as an individual,
not to the collective and we must guard it. That is where we as people have to
take it away from those who stole it from us.
When
we lost our land, our religion, our culture to invaders, we also lost this last
of the freedom to express. We also lost the awareness that we are its only keepers.
We have come close to losing it again when we give power to those who think everything
about Indians is up for sale including its conscience. Isn’t it time we
retrieve it? Will the future generations then ask us why did we sell our nation
for something as cheap as a bottle of whiskey?
Rajat
Mitra
Psychologist
and Author of ‘The Infidel Next Door’
