The Art of Mudslinging
Sanjaya Baru, the ex media advisor to Dr ManMohan Singh in his first term as Prime Minister(2004-08)
has brought out two books claiming knowledge of an insider. The two books are
about two former Prime Ministers –both not from the Nehru- Gandhi dynasty. The
second and the latest is a welcome panegyric, though belated and much delayed on
P.V. Narasimha Rao, the Prime Minister to succeed Rajiv Gandhi from the
Congress party and the other a critical assessment of Dr.Man Mohan Singh to
show him as a ‘great’man with his hands tied to the saree of Soniaji. These
books will top the Best Sellers list for the next couple of weeks till another
book hits the shelf that is more damaging to the Congress party which is now almost in comatose. It is human nature to
revile a dead horse but in modern times even the living horse in its dying
moments is punched and ridiculed. Baru’s new book reinstating the once harshly
and vilely reviled PV for what he did and what he did not, as the 1991 Man of the Year is not a new
revelation. It is exciting not because the present day reader has a historical
perspective to see PV in a true light, but because his elevation comes
alongside the defanging of the dynasty. Similarly
Man Mohan Singh, the good and honest man, the Economic Reforms man, the unassuming
intellectual, the courteous gentleman who would not hurt a fly is presented as
a spineless man who had willingly obliged to be pushed into the PM’s chair and keep
it warm till the young scion of the Nehru dynasty gained political maturity.
But since the waiting for the Prince to become politically suave and wise had
to be stretched indefinitely and it resembled almost Godot-like waiting, the
light weight ManMohanji found himself edged out by Modi,a a 56”chested muscular strongman. The Media, the book
reviewers and the Lutyens zone intellectuals have gone gung ho about Baru’s book as it shows the mother-son duo of the
erstwhile first family as selfish, scheming, and sly and the Congressmen and
women –in particular ManMohan Singh= as servile and spineless before the
supercilious and disdainful dynasty.
I hold no brief for the Congress of today. It is bereft of the Nehruviani
left-centric ideology that had given India a strong, stable democracy with a
utopian vision to bring an egalitarian society by adopting democratic
socialism. The present Congress has no
policy today except rightly or wrongly to cavil at everything the ruling party
does. There is no slogan like’ corruption hatao’ as corruption scams were the
prime cause of downfall of the UPA
government despite the impeccable credentials of a honest , PM ManMohan Singh. But I feel uneasy at the number
of ‘personal’ books by authors who have held high positions in government and
by virtue of that, claim to be privy to the unseemly talks and misdeeds among
their political masters. These are the
new “elites” who can do no wrong when they document their personal views and
claim that these views are ‘objective’ and not ‘subjective’. The gullible
reader recognizing the erstwhile proximity of the author to leaders at that
point of time laps up the contents with a “I had sniffed it alright then,
though I did not speak out” look and nods in agreement as though the oracle had
spoken. I am scared at the rise of a scandal mongering society, encouraged by
the media that spends all its time sniffing to discover in which hell hole has
every Congressman buried his past. They
are looking for skeletons in the cupboard and no leader of the opposition is
left out of investigative hounding.
As for the authors who have been insiders as they claim and therefore
write truth and nothing but the truth, it begs the question as to how much they
actually knew about their masters. To use a venerable adjective ‘the
Accidental’ is a clever art of denying the man any claim to merit or worth and
exposing him as a sycophant willing to
humble himself with no self -respect.
Today mudslinging is an intellectual pastime; gossiping about people in high
places is a sign of one’s elitism; to criticize the former masters (who had
treated them as their confidantes) is to display extraordinary guts to speak harsh
truths; to document such views is the democratic prerogative and duty of the highbrows of the society.
I do not claim to judge the veracity of such books that keep popping up
in bookstores. Like the proverbial Pontius Pilate, we have to ask the question:
What is truth? Today such a question
generates answers based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific
expertise. All books are written with a wisdom of hindsight, but that wisdom is
artfully managed by one’s personal opinions. Baru is full of praise for PV who
was the architect of Economic liberalization along with Dr.ManmohanSingh. To
praise is to voice approbation. But no praise is praise if it is at the expense
of another. Baru’s praise of PV should have been wholesome and not adulterated
by pejorative references to Rajiv Gandhi whose death engineered the elevation
of PV. PV’s wisdom, maturity, silent leadership without any bluster,
scholarship and diplomacy are more than adequate to earn him the highest esteem
of the entire nation, but to show Rajiv’s inadequacies as a foil to PV’s
greatness may sound sweet to those who are averse to the Nehru dynasty, but it
fails in situating PV as an extraordinary PM in his own right.
This is the new age of writing autobiographies, memoirs, insiders’
narratives in the name of Creative Truth. The writers have made a fine art of
mudslinging as they are no longer restricted by ethics of time bar whereby all
references to living people should wait for a lapse of time before they are
made public. When the views expressed
are caustic and full of character assailment, there has to be some degree of
self restraint and self regulation. These books do not belong to the genre of
history as history is “ the study of the human past as it is described in the
written documents left by human beings” . These books are not literary classics
that define the essence of humanizing culture. They are just period pieces for
the moment. Good going for the authors like the collection in movie halls on
the first day release of a film. Beyond that, do they have any permanent value
except for gossip at the tea table? I may sound a classical puritan to expect
books to elevate our minds and give us a direction to shape our existence into
something beautiful, meaningful and noble. Maybe I am not in sync with the
times when even the US presidential debate veers round Bill Clinton’s sexual
past. These are times when discussions, debates, arguments and dialogues have
descended to a low level only towards destroying someone’s reputation- that
someone need not be even one’s acquaintance, friend or foe. Sai Baba once said
the one who slanders others removes the dirt of others by his tongue.
I confess that I have not done a deep study of Sanjaya Baru’s books, but
what I heard from his own exegesis on TV
channels made me sad that a good intellect aided by vast experience and felicity of expression has gone waste by
writings that suffer from penury of exalted thoughts and ideas.
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