Nucleur force – Tharoor & controversies

Nuclear force – Tharoor & controversies
Why do you suppose Shashi Tharoor flies from controversy to controversy? Some of it, I am prepared to concede, has to do with his unfamiliarity with the Indian political idiom. And some of it has to do with the distinction between public statements and private conversations – a distinction that has been increasingly eroded in the era of social media.
From Tharoor’s perspective, when he told a friend on Twitter that he was now travelling cattle class, he was merely using the same idiom he would use in face to face or telephonic conversations with that friend. But once you’re on Twitter, there is no such thing as a private conversation. And if you are a politician, then the laws of Indian politics demand that you restrict yourself to the political idiom. Whatever he does is a part of his public life.
It would be tempting to say that veteran Indian politicians understand the distinction and Tharoor does not. But the truth is that the emergence of social networks and the like is such a new phenomenon that nobody knows how politicians are supposed to behave on social media. For instance, I’m forever being told how irresponsible Omar Abdullah is in his postings on Facebook. Omar is hardly a novice so I don’t think it has that much to do with experience.
Perhaps. But these distinctions are still evolving. Nobody is quite sure what kind of comment is appropriate on which kind of web-based social medium. We’re all groping. And we’re making up the rules as we go along.
But even if you take the line that the Tharoor controversies have been about social media and the political idiom, this explanation falls flat in the case of the latest controversy: Tharoor’s alleged criticism of Pandit Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi.
I saw the offending clip on television and as far as I could see, all that happened was that while summarizing Bhiku Parekh’s arguments, Shashi listed various contributions made to Indian foreign policy by Nehru and Gandhi and referred to the fact that many people (outside of India) believed that they were offering moral commentaries on the state of the world.
There was nothing at all offensive about anything he said. And in any case, as Aravind Adiga points out in Tuesday’s HT, Shashi is a great Nehru fan who has sung his praises for years now.
But, assume, for the purposes of argument, that Tharoor had been critical of Nehru or Gandhi. Would this have been such a terrible thing?
Suppose he had said that Nehru made a mistake by referring the Kashmir issue to the United Nations. Or that Mahatma Gandhi’s emphasis on the village needlessly romanticised an institution that was often based on injustice.
I would have agreed with both those points. So, I suspect, would many Indians. But we would not have treated such remarks as attacks on Nehru or Gandhi. We would have regarded them as reasonable comments on policies judged with the benefit of hindsight.
The worrying thing about the way in which the press has jumped on Shashi is that journos seem to believe that politicians should never ever say anything remotely critical of policies followed by the great Indian leaders of the 20th century.
In Stalinist Russia or Mao Tse Tung’s China or Hitler’s Germany, I could understand this emphasis on regarding great leaders as beyond all criticism. But surely, India is a liberal democracy? We pride ourselves on being a society based on ideas and reason. Why should we expect our politicians to refuse to confront the mistakes of our past?
Consider the experience of Western democracies. It is well known that Winston Churchill is widely regarded as the greatest Conservative Prime Minister of the last 100 years. But no modern-day Conservative leader would have any difficulty in conceding that Churchill was wrong when he said that the British Empire should go on forever and that Indians were not capable of governing themselves.
Or take an American parallel. Ronald Reagan was one of the most venerated (by his own party at least) Republican Presidents of the 20th century. But no Republican leader would get into trouble for suggesting that the financial deregulation Reagan ushered in contributed to the enrichment of Wall Street at the expense of ordinary Americans.
Nobody in the British or American media would be at all surprised if Churchill or Reagan were criticized by members of their party. So why do we in the Indian media expect that all Congress politicians must never ever disagree with the policies of previous Congress politicians? As far as I can tell, the Congress seems less worried by Tharoor’s remarks than the TV channels and newspapers are.
All of this leads me to the inescapable conclusion that the media are now out to ‘get’ Tharoor. By that I don’t mean that there is a sinister campaign to dislodge him from his position or that vested interests have conspired against him.
The way the media work is this: they settle on somebody who seems to be a loose cannon and who appears – at least in the eyes of journos – to be too smug and self-satisfied. Then, they follow such a person night and day, looking for the slightest mistake, blowing every remark out of proportion and willfully distorting innocent comments.
Tharoor is not the first person to meet this fate. Over 20 years ago, exactly the same thing was done to Mani Shankar Aiyar when he was part of Rajiv Gandhi’s PMO. Journos regarded Mani as arrogant and superior. It did not help, of course, that Mani said things like “Journalists are basically people who knew they couldn’t pass the Civil Services exam” or “The English media have no impact; the only reason I bother with them is because journalists come from the same social background.”
Once the media became determined to ‘get’ Mani, it was almost as though he was incapable of doing anything right. Every single thing he said was either blown up or distorted. When Rajiv Gandhi visited the US and journos fought for invitations to the White House banquet, an exasperated Mani finally said to one of them: “Why do you want to go? Do you want to dance with Nancy Reagan?”
This made the headlines. Except in this version of the story, Mani was portrayed as this pimp-like figure, offering journalists the chance to dance with Nancy Reagan.
Mani stood his ground. And eventually the media moved on. I hope Shashi will do the same.