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Wholly negative occurrences in recent weeks, including threats from the treasury benches to debar the leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha for life – lately topped by the arrest of ‘shirtless’ protesters against a government-sponsored international AI jamboree under non-bailable sections of the law – make a mockery of democracy as we have known it, and the way the term is generally understood. 

Even in a reduced democracy – where elections of a kind are conducted but that is where it stops – open threats cannot be made to evict the leader of the opposition from parliament through the use of brute majority, or by obtaining false confessions of wrongdoing from supporters through the use of coercive tactics. 

Rough methods such as these also raise questions: can there be a democracy without an opposition? Or, will only a loyal opposition be tolerated even as the system is called democratic? To these, add a third query: what kind of regime is it that demands only a quiescent opposition – one that will refuse to interrogate the government? Indeed, that roughly seems to be the kind of government we have landed.  

In a recent interview to ANI, Union parliamentary affairs minister Kiren Rijiju, no less, went to the extent of handing out open warnings. He identified Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to be “the most dangerous person for India’s security”. Why? Because the leader of the opposition meets “extremists” and “Naxalites”, and because he “associates with anti-India forces” and “with people like George Soros”.

Who or what exactly are these forces? That’s not stated. Are they Americans, Chinese, Russians, Arabs, Africans, or just plain Indians? How much power do they have even if they exist?  Or is this whole thing just a bogey built up by the regime in order to appear holier than thou “nationalists”, and on that basis spread pro-regime propaganda and play the victim when under opposition fire.

At any rate, who is this Soros, the regime’s bugbear frequently invoked by all and sundry in the ruling establishment in an illiterate effort to denigrate Rahul Gandhi? 

The plain facts are that 95-year-old Soros is one of America’s most famous investors who founded the Open Society Foundation after making great sums of money in the hedge fund business. He was a Nazi Holocaust survivor in his native, Hungary, and fled to England when the communists took over after the Second World War. He is clearly at odds with Nazism/fascism as well as communism. 

He worked as a railway porter and night club waiter to earn enough to study at the London School of Economics. Later, he emigrated to the United States, became a hedge fund tycoon and famously an adherent of the concept of “Open Society” propounded by the philosopher Karl Popper. Soros also supports the European Council on Foreign Relations and the International Crisis Group and holds honorary doctorates from Yale and Oxford. Where are the anti-India credentials here? Does Gandhi meet him? If so, what is objectionable about it?

Rijiju and others like him in the Modi orbit should dig more and let the country know why Soros is an undesirable character in their eyes. At any rate, they should explain why associating with this man in his nineties endangers India’s security. Is it because he speaks out against fascism and dictatorial regimes? 

What about the nonsensical chatter about Rahul Gandhi meeting Naxalites and extremists? Jayaprakash Narayan, whom the BJP once pretended to revere, also used to meet Naxalites and dacoits. That only added to the glow around him. If Mahatma Gandhi were........

© The Wire