Just In Jest
Devils’ Advocate

Somnath Chatterjee, veteran parliamentarian, dyed-in-red communist and unflinching social crusader is an angry man today. Since communism is said to have been born out of anger against all social evils, his anger, one would presume, must fit in with his role.

But not this time however. The lawyer parliamentarian is now holding a brief for the devil. He is angry that the Government, the political system and, through them, the people of this country should put a nice guy like Laloo Prasad Yadav on trial in the name of fodder seam.

His ire is particularly directed against CBI Chief Joginder Singh and the Bharatiya Janata Party leader, Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Chatterjee is fuming because the CBI Chief has nailed the Bihar Chief Minister and ‘Messiah of the Poor’ in the fodder seam and Vajpayee, instead of standing by the ‘innocent’ Laloo Prasad, has chosen to live up to the upper caste bias of his party.

Vajpayee did the unpardonable thing when he asked Prime Minister IK Gujral to ensure that the guilty in the Rs 950 crore scam are not let off. The BJP leader, according to the communist veteran, seems obsessed with bourgeois values like probity in public life, instead of standing by the downtrodden sections of the society. Comrade Somnath Chatterjee’s outburst is understandable.

His anguish on behalf of the Bihar Chief Minister is very much in tune with the time-tested praxis of the communist movement in this country.

When Red China invaded India way back in 1962, the communists did not find fault with Mao’s regime. The resolution, they passed, had no words against the aggressor. Instead, they came down heavily on the domestic bourgeois parties such as Jan Sangh which, the communists felt, were using the occasion to raise jingoistic sentiments against the working classes of China. You cannot let down socialism for few thousand kilometer of land and the lives of those who die while defending it.

In the seventies when Emergency was promulgated in the country followed by draconian measures such as press censorship and arrests under MISA, the communists, especially the Communist Party of India (CPI), loyally stood by Indira Gandhi. On the other hand, they held the victims (the opposition parties and the people at large) responsible for bringing upon themselves the Emergency-related excesses by their ‘irresponsible’ behavior.

It’s a different matter that when late Sanjay Gandhi started hounding them out of positions of privilege, the comrades saw in him a danger to civil society and democracy. By the time elections came, the anti-Emergency wave was sweeping the country. The communists were pragmatic enough to change sides immediately.

It is, therefore, not surprising that the fodder scam does not seem to be worrying comrade Chatterjee. His prime concern is how Vajpayee managed to get the fodder for the missive to the Prime Minister on CBI’s findings about the shady deal. Who gave him the details? Why? When?

But then Vajpayee was once a journalist. So he will not reveal the source. Somnathji, on the other hand, is more of a lawyer than a revolutionary. A lawyer who had had no time to read the Lok Sabha proceedings of the 50s. If he had, he would have learnt that when HV Kamath and Feroz Gandhi had tabled some uncomfortable reports in Parliament, no one, not even the communists--had asked them the source. But, for Somnath Chatterjee, facts do not matter: who leaks them is the most important thing.

Somnath Chatterjee is also appalled that CBI Chief shares his findings with the media. What a lack of understanding on the comrade’s part that he should think transparency in the functioning of the Government, promised by Prime Minister Gujral, should not be used in exposing chinks in the armor of secular battalions and their chief as the comrade looks at it, it’s really distressing that the country’s top sleuth does not know how to keep his secrets and bury them deep, if need be. In his reckoning, CBI Chief deserves to be tried under the ‘Official Secrets Act.’ Of course, in comrade Chatterjee’s utopian socialist state, all time-wasting legal niceties that characterize a democracy could have been dispensed with. The erring official should have been summarily tried and sent to the deserts of Rajasthan for ‘education,’ a la the Gulags of Siberia.

In the larger interests of ‘higher values,’ one can surely overlook mundane matters which involve both men and cattle. And, in any case, why should he worry about the four-legged species, when human beings are in no better condition in Bihar? What if little Robin Hoods loot trains passing through the State or the entire treasury is emptied by those who preside over the Government? All these should be swept under the carpet in order to save the ‘forces of secularism and social justice,’ read ‘Congress, JD and communists.’

[From The Observer]

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