The peculiar art of political denial

The doctor is in. Like the ghost in the machine, the doctor in the tape seems to be in permanent residence in every piece of recorded evidence that threatens to rip the mask off our politicians. Earlier, you could go rabblerousing with no fear of legal reprimand, you could say you were misquoted and get away with inciting murder.
Not anymore. Now you have enthusiasts with cameras running amok, sending off tapes to television channels, cramping your campaign style. So you say all evidence is doctored, and pretend that nobody knows you are lying. And once you deny it, civil society is expected to be civil and presume you are innocent till ‘proven’ guilty. Of course, given adequate muscle, no proof is enough to nab you.

Except human vanity. So when Sena Chief Bal Thackeray appreciates Varun Gandhi’s anti-Muslim diatribe, declaring that he should not apologise for speaking the truth, dear Varun perks up and thanks him. He is grateful and overwhelmed by Thackeray’s support, he says, quickly accepting congratulations for something he denies having done. Never mind. We have seen too many obvious truths denied, too many shameless lies established. We know the truth, and the lie, and do not disturb either.

It’s a bit of a game, this ‘I know that you know I’m lying but I still will’, a game of nerves to see who blinks first. And we, the people give up and return to our daily struggle for survival.

But we do have memories. So when we hear LK Advani, now standing for prime minister, say that he was opposed to the demolition of the Babri Masjid, that it was the saddest day of his life, some of us remember the excitement and joy on the faces of Advani, Uma Bharati, Murali Manohar Joshi and Ashok Singhal as the 400-year-old mosque was pulled down. We remember his nation-wide rath yatra provoking people to destroy the mosque and build a temple at this Ram Janmabhoomi.

We remember Advani presiding over the demolition, sharing a platform with Uma Bharati and others as they urged the kar sevaks: “Ek dhakka aur do, Babri Masjid tor do!” (Give one more push, pull down the Babri masjid!) And “Tel lagao Dabur ka, naam mitao Babur ka.” (Use Dabur’s oil, erase Babur’s name!) Till finally their joy burst forth with, “Ram naam satya hai, Babri Masjid dhvasth hai!” (Ram’s name lives, the Babri Masjid is gone!) Advani was there, on that platform, looking dignified amidst the hate speech of his colleagues.
And will remain there, in the memories of millions who witnessed the day’s events either directly or through the media. Even if he is airbrushed out of the evidence and even his own conscience.

There’s more where that memory came from. The hate speeches of Narendra Modi, including one where he said that the relief camps for Muslims (set up after the 2002 massacre) had become breeding factories and should be closed down. “Hum paanch, hamare pachees! (We are five, we have 25!)” he had sneered, calling upon the crowd to teach Muslims a lesson for increasing our population so alarmingly. Sure enough, he said the tapes aired on television were all doctored. And his justifying Sohrabuddin’s murder on the grounds that he was a terrorist (which was disproved) was also media manipulation. Shameless denial is now customary.

Denial itself is certainly not new. The massacre of Sikhs in 1984 elicited similar denials from the Congress, even though everyone knew that Congress leaders like HKL Bhagat, Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar had incited the killer mobs. But the BJP has made brazen denial an art form. Now it is more a norm than an aberration.

Who blinks first is fine as a game. But in a democracy you need more than raw nerve. You need informed dialogue on a common platform of truth, not flagrant doublespeak on the shifting sands of make-believe. For a stable democracy, we first need a stable reality.

The writer is is editor, The Little Magazine