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Correspondent

23 August 2024 at 4:29:04 pm

Manufactured Martyrs

The attempt by the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) to turn activist Sonam Wangchuk into the next Anna Hazare has exposed how manufactured symbolism cannot compensate for the absence of genuine public outrage. What began as a grievance over the NEET paper leak, one of India’s gravest examination scandals in recent times, has drifted into an exercise in political pageantry, where the cause has been eclipsed by its chosen mascots. Wangchuk’s indefinite hunger strike was plainly meant to recreate a...

Manufactured Martyrs

The attempt by the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) to turn activist Sonam Wangchuk into the next Anna Hazare has exposed how manufactured symbolism cannot compensate for the absence of genuine public outrage. What began as a grievance over the NEET paper leak, one of India’s gravest examination scandals in recent times, has drifted into an exercise in political pageantry, where the cause has been eclipsed by its chosen mascots. Wangchuk’s indefinite hunger strike was plainly meant to recreate a familiar script where an allegedly unassuming public figure embraces personal sacrifice and a reluctant government buckles under mounting moral pressure. But history does not repeat itself on command. Anna Hazare’s fast in 2011 succeeded not because fasting possesses mystical political powers, but because it rode a tidal wave of public anger against corruption. Millions identified with the cause. That equation is conspicuously absent today. The platform that ought to have belonged to students who suffered from the NEET paper leak, or to parents whose children bore its consequences, instead became crowded with the usual constellation of professional activists, ideological campaigners and political fellow travellers. The faces dominating the stage were not those most directly affected by the scandal. A movement demanding educational accountability gradually came to look like another gathering of Delhi’s permanently aggrieved activist class. Even Wangchuk appeared to sense the contradiction. During the protest he reportedly lamented that while he was observing an indefinite fast, many around him were happily eating meals, urging at least a token one-day fast in solidarity. Successful protest movements depend upon authenticity. Once the public begins suspecting that an individual is being deployed less as a leader than as a moral accessory for someone else’s ideological project, sympathy quickly evaporates. Nor does Wangchuk arrive without controversy. Questions have been raised over the cancellation of the FCRA licence of SECMOL, the educational organisation associated with him, and over allegations regarding subsequent foreign funding arrangements. Critics have also challenged aspects of the carefully cultivated public mythology surrounding his achievements, from the origins of the ice-stupa concept to the popular belief that he inspired the protagonist of 3 Idiots. These matters deserve scrutiny on their own merits rather than hagiography or character assassination. The greater failure here surely belongs to the protest’s organisers. The CJP has mistaken optics for momentum and symbolism for public sentiment. Instead of allowing the victims of the NEET scandal to speak for themselves, they attempted to manufacture another national conscience by placing a familiar face at the centre of the stage. Political legitimacy cannot be outsourced to celebrity. Nor can mass movements be assembled from social-media influencers and habitual protesters. Anna Hazare became powerful because the public chose him. Attempts to manufacture his successor merely underline how rare such moments really are.

Procedural Farce

The latest gambit by the Congress-led Opposition, threatening to move a resolution to remove Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, has little to do with safeguarding parliamentary propriety and much to do with disguising disorder as principle.


The trigger was unremarkable by recent standards. Amid sloganeering and protests, the Lok Sabha was adjourned minutes before Prime Minister Narendra Modi was to deliver his reply to the Motion of Thanks on the President’s address. Birla later said he had advised the PM to stay away, citing “concrete information” that opposition MPs might do something “unexpected” near the latter’s seat. The Opposition led by the Congress chose to escalate the matter by deploying the heaviest artillery in the parliamentary handbook, which is Article 94(c) seeking the Speaker’s removal.


They have accused the Speaker of defaming Opposition MPs, denying Congress leader Rahul Gandhi his right to speak, allegedly shielding a BJP member from censure, suspending eight opposition MPs, and maligning Congress women members.


This is only the fourth time such a resolution has been attempted against a sitting Speaker and none has succeeded thus far. Previous efforts failed not because Speakers were saints, but because Parliament recognised a distinction between institutional disagreement and institutional sabotage. That distinction now seems lost.


The Congress’s most emotive plank is gendered indignation. Its women MPs, including Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, have accused the Speaker of making baseless allegations under pressure from the ruling BJP to justify the PM’s absence. Meanwhile, eyewitness accounts submitted by BJP women MPs allege that opposition members stormed the well of the House, climbed onto the Speaker’s table, tore papers hurled them at the Chair and surrounded the PM’s seat.


Whatever the truth, the fact that is beyond dispute is that scenes of MPs clambering onto furniture and brandishing placards are not compatible with the lofty constitutionalism the Congress claims to embody.


Nor is the selective outrage convincing. The same Opposition that decries the denial of speaking time has perfected the art of ensuring that no one else can speak either. Walkouts, din and forced adjournments have now almost become de rigueur strategy on the Opposition’s part rather than constructive debate. The Motion of Thanks, that was meant to scrutinise the government’s agenda, was reduced to theatre.


The attempt to unseat the Speaker looks less like a defence of parliamentary dignity than an effort to launder misconduct through procedure. It weaponizes constitutional mechanisms while hollowing out the constitutional spirit that gives them meaning.


India’s Parliament is already diminished by declining debate and rising decibel levels. The Congress, once proud of its institutional inheritance, now treats institutions as stage props in a permanent agitation. A party that cannot control its own members’ conduct has little standing to sermonise about decorum. By turning farce into grievance and its grievance into grandstanding, the Opposition is acting as if it no longer knows the difference between protest and vandalism. 


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