Prime Minister Narendra’s Modi’s fourth Independence Day address from the ramparts of Delhi’s Red Fort had all the usual ingredients of intonations and invocations that captivated the nation’s attention. It is also customary for chief ministers of various states to address their respective constituencies/people in their capitals after the prime minister had concluded his flag-hoisting ceremony. If the prime minister’s is a ‘state of the nation’ address, the chief ministers’ can be described as ‘state of the state’ speech.
Thus it was that Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath Yogi dwelt at length on the unfortunate death of 70 children due to Japanese encephalitis in the space of two days in his home district of Gorakhpur, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh announced his government’s decision to provide 50,000 jobs to the state’s youth and his Karnataka counterpart Siddharamaiah spoke of his state’s objection to the imposition of Hindi. Siddharamaiah also emphasised the plurality of Indian society and the concept of co-operative federalism.
In brief, the chief ministers’ speeches were a mixture of hope and despair depending on your political lineage. All these speeches, except one, were telecast and broadcast live by the Doordarshan and All India Radio, which is controlled by Prasar Bharati, the supposedly-independent, statutory authority. As per Section 12 (2) (b) of the Constitution, it is the duty of Prasar Bharati to safeguard “the citizen’s right to be informed freely, truthfully and objectively on all matters of public interest, national or international, and presenting a fair and balanced flow of information including contrasting vies without advocating any opinion or ideology of its own.”
The lone speech that got the thumps down from Prasar Bharati was that of Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar. His address to the people of the north-eastern state was blacked out by the official media, the ostensible reason being it contained references to secularism being “under attack” and “conspiracies and attempts” to create “divisions in society” that are “contrary to the goals, dreams and ideals of our freedom struggle.”
The obvious allusion was to charges against the Modi regime that has often been seen as following the agenda set by the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Tripura is ruled by the Communist Party Marxist (CPM) and Sarkar has been the chief minister of the state for the past 21 years.
Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been furiously at work in the state to unseat Sarkar in next year’s assembly elections and its chances got a major boost when all five Trinamool Congress legislators along with some 400 local leaders and workers crossed over to the party earlier this month. The formation of the North-East Democratic Alliance last year, with the BJP heading an 11-party coalition, was aimed at capturing power in Assam and Manipur, which it has already achieved, as well in Tripura, the last bastion of non-BJP forces in those parts of the country.
To have the chief minister of the state speak such “unspeakable” things on the august occasion of the Independence Day would have created confusion in the minds of the people of the state with regard to the BJP’s game-plan. So, the local head of Prasar Bharati flagged the speech for his bosses in Delhi to take the final call and it was promptly decided that the official media would not air it.
It is curious that while Sarkar got the chop, his party colleague and Kerala counterpart Pinarayi Vijayan did not face any such issues. In his speech Vijayan, too, had highlighted the importance of defeating “attempts to water down the concept of nationalism” and had called for “nationalism based on democracy and secularism”. “If nationalism is constructed on narrow-minded sentiments, a great threat is waiting to emerge,” Vijayan told the people of Kerala.
Why Sarkar’s speech was axed while Vijayan’s was aired remains a mystery. Perhaps the powers that be in Prasar Bharati and their bosses in the government must have thought that tiny, far-flung Tripura would not be in the national radar unlike a frontline state like Kerala. Next year’s election and the BJP’s realistic chances to win power in the north-eastern state could be other reason, whereas elections in Kerala are not due for nearly four years and there is little hope for the BJP to make any significant mark in the southern state anyway.
Whatever the reason, the Modi government has not covered itself in glory with its high-handed censoring of the speech of a duly elected and respected chief minister. Perhaps the only fig leaf the government can hide behind is that Prasar Bharati had done it before too and with a different chief minister who, incidentally, is now the prime minister.
In 2014, as campaigning for the Lok Sabha elections was heading to a crescendo, Doordarshan interviewed Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi who had been chosen the BJP’s, and by extension the National Democratic Alliance’s, prime ministerial candidate. When the full version of the interview reached the telecasting agency’s headquarters in New Delhi, the mandarins there found that Modi had a lot to say about Sonia Gandhi’s family and your guess is as good as mine as to what he would have said. The interview was duly shelved. That effort however backfired when the BJP went to town with the news. Eventually Doordarshan telecast a heavily censored interview.
Modi and the BJP should know from their own experience that censoring/blacking out opposition views would eventually come home to roost. But then again, politicians are slow learners, especially when they are in power.
BJP could be the real winner in TN
So finally, hopefully, we have a semblance of governance returning to Tamil Nadu. Ever since All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) supremo Jayalalithaa Jayaraman died after a prolonged illness in December of last year, one of India’s richest and most industrialised states had been plunged into political chaos that seemed to get deeper by the day.
The dramatic imprisonment of V K Sasikala, who succeeded Jayalalithaa as party chief, on corruption charges and her desperate attempts to cling to power through proxy by appointing her nephew as a sort of caretaker for the party only added to the crassness and vulgarity of family politics that is in vogue across several states in the country.
Now that former chief minister Ottakara Pannerselvam, OPS to almost everyone, and incumbent Chief Minister Edappadi Palaniswami, EPS to those close to him, have signed a truce and decided to “get on with it”, the state can heave a sigh of relief. For nearly nine months the state administration has been in limbo. It can now take the baby steps, as it were, as this is a coalition of old friends who had gone astray and come together again.
But they will have to keep looking over their shoulders because Sasikala is a very resourceful person, not just in terms of the wealth she has amassed but in the way she is able to use it to her advantage. The Hindu newspaper reported this week that she had managed to walk out of her prison in Bengaluru at will and do her thing thanks to her money power. She and her family are not going to make things easy for the OPS-EPS duo.
In fact, legislators backing Sasikla’s nephew T T V Dhinakaran met the Tamil Nadu governor yesterday and submitted letters withdrawing their support to Palaniswami.
The only consolation the ruling elite has is that it has the support of New Delhi. In fact, the BJP has nudged, pushed and shoved the two factions of the AIADMK into shaking hands. Naturally this will reflect in the way things pan out in the next Lok Sabha elections, due in less than two years, and also the state assembly polls about four years from now. As BJP chief Amit Shah has been quoted as saying: “We are not looking at ruling for five or ten years. We are here for the next fifty years.” Getting a foothold in Tamil Nadu is of prime importance in achieving that goal.
Dehli
