The Art of Mudslinging

                                                                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.