The government should do better than insult the intelligence of the nation by saying parliament attack convict’s hanging had nothing to do with politics. Capital punishment per se is political — it’s the state’s reply to address a sore thumb and talk to its people
Now that Afzal Guru has been hanged, buried, the pressconferences addressed, and clarifications made and sought — respectively by theUPA government and the BJP — it’s time to get back to the core question: whynow?
The contention that Guru’s hanging, to borrow that widelyused marketing-turned-media mantra, was an idea whose time might have come, andthat the UPA is in a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t quandary over suchissues, does not really cut much ice. As BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasadsaid, the supreme court had convicted parliament attack convict Afzal Guru backin August 2005, and a Delhi court had ordered him to be hanged about a yearlater. Why did it take over six years for the Manmohan Singh government to bitethe bullet?
The government’s stock response on these issues came frominformation and broadcasting minister Manish Tewari — the UPA government doesnot look at electoral considerations when it comes to national security andminister of state for home RPN Singh — “This is not a time for politics butcalm, restraint and sobriety," he wrote on Twitter.
The first could be termed balderdash and the second, well,balderdash, in the absence of a more profound word. It’s called an attempt totake the moral high ground when there’s physically little ground beneath thefeet.
Both statements force an agonising turn back to the last bitof the first sentence of this piece: why now?
The Manmohan Singh government had very bright reasons to doit earlier — first, it had Pratibha Patil as the country’s president for theperiod immediately after the conviction and hanging order, and Patil was asrubber-stamp a resident of Rashtrapati Bhavan as rubber stamp residents of thatestate go; second, it had the 2009 general elections; and third, it had halfthe world’s go-ahead in the aftermath of the US Navy Seals ‘encounter killing’of Osama bin laden. The government also had other reasons and opportunities inthese six years but the fact that it did not grab those means not thatManmohan-Sonia-Rahul and company were waiting for Christmas, or a divineclearance.
It merely meant indecisiveness.
And the fact that it has finally bit the bullet does notmean the government has suddenly become uber-decisive. It merely means thereare few other cards left to play, let alone aces.
One of the last aces the Congress played came in January,when it anointed Rahul Gandhi as the party’s number two, and the de facto primeministerial candidate for 2014. That the Gandhi scion did not raise a storm ina teacup even a fortnight after his anointment — he has said precious littlesince getting emotionally charged in Jaipur, and is still busy with hisfavourite pastime, organisation-strengthening exercises, the latest edition ofwhich comes on February 15 — and Narendra Modi’s surge and success in grabbingthe national psyche, along with the coming elections in Karnataka (most likelyon May 20 and 23) could have prompted the ruling party to play another card andhope for it to deliver.
Shantanu is a senior editor with Governance Now. Based inDelhi, he dreams of Goa whenever he is in office and not working, which is aneveryday affair
