While all political parties have now come around to espousing the need for building an inclusive social order, the statements and actions of their functionaries create a totally different scenario. When BJP’s Pilibhit Lok Sabha candidate Varun Gandhi talked of cutting off the limbs of those attacking Hindus, the party said that it did not subscribe to the remarks attributed to him. As Varun Gandhi himself said at the time that it was not his voice, the party gave him the benefit of the doubt, and a big one at that, and retained him as its candidate.
The BJP’s bad show in the Lok Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh, however, brought home to the party that it must refurbish its plank that Hindutva is equal to creation of an inclusive society.
The BJP is not alone in treading on sensitive toes. Rita Bahuguna Joshi, head of the Congress unit in Uttar Pradesh, stirred up a hornet’s nest when she made some very distasteful remarks about Bahujan Samaj Party chief and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati. In this case also, the concerned party, the Congress, dissociated itself from the remarks, but stopped short of taking any action against her. Just like the BJP, which had not thought it fit to deny Varun Gandhi the party ticket for his anti-minority remarks.
There are so many other manifestations of the ugly Indian phenomenon, which can be seen when one reads newspapers and views TV news channels. One of the most distasteful in recent days was of the CBI charge-sheet filed in a Kochi court in the Sister Abhya murder case. Senior CPI (M) leader Brinda Karat expressed outrage at the vulgar and objectionable language used by the CBI in the charge-sheet which has been described as crude and bizarre by a leading newspaper.
But in recent days, what takes the cake is the frisking of former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam by the security staff of an American airline at Delhi airport. Despite being well aware and despite being informed that former Presidents are exempt from security checks in India, the airline insisted on his going through the security check and even removing his shoes before he was allowed to board the aircraft.
What is shocking is the Civil Aviation and Home Ministry officials keeping mum over the episode for three months and taking action in the matter only when it came up in the press. And the action, when it came, has been halting and slip-shod.
So far as the US airline is concerned, and also the US Transportation Security Administration, they have reinforced the image of the Ugly American by asserting that there was nothing wrong with the treatment of former President Kalam. Their thinking appears to be in line with the perception or illusion that the American way is the best way to live, and whatever the United States does, is the way things should be done all over the globe.
The episode shows why Americans are not exactly very popular in many parts of the world despite the claim that the United States is now the sole super power on earth. There is no doubt that Americans mean good, but they appear to have a fatal flaw of not appreciating that other people may have a different way of life and different thinking. Even when they go to other countries, they want to follow their own rules and regulations. Just like the Continental Airlines, which sought to enforce American rules and regulations on Indian soil, forgetting that India has its own rules and regulations which have primacy when the airline is operating from the country.
The Americans have good intentions, but that can pave the way to hell, as the saying is. The most glaring example of that could be seen in Vietnam during the last century. While trying to enforce the Pax Americana in Vietnam, the US miscalculation led to the death of hundreds of thousands of people in Vietnam, before the returning body-bags made the country pull back its forces.
The Kalam frisking episode is not of that level. But nonetheless, it shows how you can make friends into enemies.
