The Hindu : Heroes and hooligans

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Aug 10, 2002

Opinion

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Heroes and hooligans

YOU PICK THE terrorist. On one side, we have Sandeep Pandey, a Magsaysay award winner, a former IIT Professor, a doctoral degree holder from a reputed U.S. university, who gave up a secure future to work for the betterment of the poor and underprivileged in Uttar Pradesh. On the other, we have Hari Dixit, a Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) functionary who has sought the court's intervention for having Mr. Pandey arrested under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) for allegedly expressing anti-national sentiments. The story of how Hindu fundamentalists became angered by the recipient of the 2002 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership — whose NGO called Asha supports education and livelihood projects for poor children (mainly Dalits) — is truly bizarre.

At the heart of the controversy are certain remarks Mr. Pandey made about the India-Pakistan issue. This included an observation that the activities of their respective intelligence agencies (RAW and ISI) merit equal condemnation and comments to the effect that, at the present juncture, the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee's attitude seems less positive than the Pakistan President, Pervez Musharraf's towards the objective of attaining peace between the two countries. One may or may not agree with Mr. Pandey on this matter, but this is hardly the relevant issue. The point is that in a functioning democracy, he is totally free to entertain such an opinion. Moreover, what he said was not anti-national by any stretch of the imagination. Are Mr. Dixit and his VHP fellow travellers trying to say that any criticism of the Prime Minister vis-a-vis the Pakistan issue is anti-national? As good Indians, must we always stand up and defend everything the Research and Analysis Wing is doing or attempting to do across our western borders?

The problem here is simple. On matters connected to Pakistan, the VHP and other sectarian outfits adopt a position of such belligerence that any view which falls short of a shrill jingoism is labelled subversive or lacking in national pride. There is also an element of publicity-seeking in the VHP's attitude. Mr. Pandey has been working on issues of communal peace and disarmament for many years now. As he himself has suggested, his views on matters such as the India-Pakistan question were hardly new and were well known to everyone acquainted with him. The fact that the VHP should make an issue of it just days after Mr. Pandey was dignified with the Magsaysay award — as a result of which he moved from relative obscurity to national fame — is instructive. In spreading their hate campaigns, organisations such as the VHP, the Shiv Sena and the Bajrang Dal invariably select those who are prominent as their targets. M. F. Husain, Dilip Kumar, Deepa Mehta... there is a definite pattern here.

Finally, what of the case itself? Mr. Dixit, secretary of the Kanpur unit of the VHP, has moved the court for arresting Mr. Pandey under POTA for his utterances; what he has filed is not a writ petition, merely a criminal complaint before a lower court. If Mr. Pandey's well-wishers are unperturbed by Mr. Dixit's move, it is because they are convinced that there is no legal basis for making such a complaint — no ground for someone to ask the state to apply POTA to a particular individual. Indeed, the legitimacy of Mr. Dixit's move is hardly the most worrying aspect of the controversy. In other words, the problem is not so much the legal force of the complaint but the totally unhealthy and dangerous mindset that went into its making. The official Magsaysay award citation refers to Mr. Pandey as a man who has "has chosen (Mahatma) Gandhi's path" and lauds his "commitment to the transformation of India's marginalised poor". The country needs such heroes. What it doesn't need are persons who attempt to disgrace and dishonour them.

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