kobad ghandy, naxal

You could call it timing. Just when Maharashtra is in the throes of the run-up to another frenzied assembly election comes the news of the arrest of Kobad Ghandy. Even for someone who has read some literature about the naxals, I must admit I had never heard of this man before. I have heard of the elusive Comrade Ganapathy- though I don’t know by what moniker he goes around now- and to a little extent about scholar historian –turned naxal commander Saket Rajan or Comrade Prem- though he got killed several years ago in a fire-fight with the Greyhounds of Andhra Pradesh.

Reading the lead story of the Times of India today- September 23- a stray thought about what is right, what is wrong and what is it that we call a country all came to me at the same time. Funnily enough every time you think deeply of the political system in this country, the only reaction you can elicit from yourself is a smirk, which itself tells the story of a dream we started when some good old men chased the Britons away.

Here we are reporting on a daily basis about parties ‘committed’ to the nation-state of India as we know it. Parties who once they attain power swear on the holy books that they would uphold the sovereignty, integrity blah blah blah of the nation. And then go into the teakwood paneled offices and start doing exactly the opposite.

In the run up to attaining that power- through a circus we call elections- these parties and their leaders ensure that every promise they have ever made to their party workers or the nation in general is stuffed up whichever part of the anatomy has place to take it in.

Leaders think nothing beyond promoting their kin even if they are jackasses of the first degree. So the dear leader’s daughter gets a ticket, the departed leader’s daughter gets a ticket, the son gets one, the so-called mass leaders get tickets from safe seats, the opportunist gets a ticket the moment he walks into a party even if it is the fiftieth party he has walked into in the past five years.

Those who lose out on tickets openly say that the party demands Rs 2 crores for a nomination. It is a barter of democracy pimped by parties, prostituted by leaders.

Amongst a barrage of such news- that makes Churchill’s prediction of Indians being too idiotic to govern themselves true- comes the news of Kobad Ghandy. The man studied in the best of schools- as a journalist I know how editors swoon over pea-brained journalists whose only claim to fame is schooling in Doon and college at St Stephens- and in the best of colleges- HE’S FROM XAVIERS!!!- but somehow schooling could not dumb him I think.

The man then went on to be managing director of a company, lived amidst riches, married rich and still managed to think of some who are so not part of the system we call India that they don’t get counted even if they die.

And then he leaves all of that to go out and claim for the poor what the poor are too poor too claim for themselves.

I know in the days to come the establishment will make Kobad Ghandy look like that bastard Qasab. I know we will get to hear stories of Naxal leaders living in posh surroundings while the cadre fight it out in god-forsaken jungles. Cadre who then fall to malaria, bullets or snakebites whichever wins the race to fell a red rascal. By the way Kobad Ghandy’s wife died of malaria the cops inform.

I hold no brief for the naxals, because any movement that holds the gun as its bible generally leaves a caravan of carcasses and stench, not revolution and utopia. This would be no different.

But if the leaders of parties like the BJP, Shiv Sena , the Congress and the NCP are reading about Kobad Ghandy amidst haggling for tickets for their sons, daughters, dogs and dhobi, let them reflect for a moment.

Ghandy might be served the justice he deserves by the law that governs India, but in the court of law of the elements- where barter of good and equality is the cornerstone- Kobad Ghandy might just be handed a ‘not guilty at all’ sentence.

Let us fight the naxals not with the gun, but by bringing the equality they talk about. We have a bigger system, we have better guns, it is now time to show we have better hearts as well.