Glossing Over Rajiv’s Role

Leaders of the Congress are scurrying for cover as the television and print media have begun bombarding the nation with hitherto unknown facts about the horrific environmental disaster that struck Bhopal in 1984. While a host of Congress leaders, including senior Ministers in the Manmohan Singh Government, and party functionaries have come in the media’s line of fire, the real big story is the possible involvement of Rajiv Gandhi in the release of Union Carbide Corporation’s then chairman Warren Anderson.

Sensing that the needle of suspicion could eventually point at Rajiv Ganhi, the Congress is desperately looking for scapegoats, reminding us all of the party’s discomfort with the truth, especially when it pertains to members of the Nehru-Gandhi family. However, this time round there are not enough foot soldiers to defend the honour of ‘The Family’ because most of them are pre-occupied with saving their own reputation or whatever is left of it.

Tragically, for the country’s oldest party and for India, what is emerging from the information blitzkrieg is that more than a dozen key functionaries and Ministers of the Congress have been batting not for the 15,000 who died and thousands of people who suffered serious disabilities consequent to the gas leak, but for Union Carbide and its successor company. Even more disturbing is the fact that in all probability then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi led the pack of pro-Union Carbide party men. So much for the party’s concern for the aam admi!

Several bureaucrats and police officers have rendered signal service to the country by raising the issue of Warren Andersen’s release on bail and subsequent escape from India.

The first among them was Mr BR Lall, a former Joint Director of the Central Bureau of Investigation. According to him, the Ministry of External Affairs did not want the CBI to press for Anderson’s extradition. Mr PC Alexander, the Principal Secretary to Rajiv Gandhi when he became Prime Minister, has tried to put things in perspective but made no special effort to exonerate his former boss.

The then District Collector of Bhopal has recounted how Anderson was arrested and soon thereafter ‘granted bail’ and flown to Delhi. Meanwhile, a former bureaucrat of Madhya Pradesh has said that Chief Minister Arjun Singh told officials he was under pressure from Rajiv Gandhi to release Anderson. Lending credence to the theory that the then Prime Minister had a hand in his escape is the declassified document of America’s Central Intelligence Agency which speaks of the Union Government’s “quick release” of Anderson after his arrest by “eager” State officials.

From all these accounts, it is very clear that the Government treated Anderson not as a person accused of culpable homicide but as a ‘VIP’. The authorities went through the farce of an ‘arrest’, quickly granted him ‘bail’ after he executed a worthless bond, and packed him off to Delhi on a special aircraft.

The Congress is keen to deflect the debate away from Rajiv Gandhi and to quickly pin the blame on some one else for Anderson’s release. In this particular case, Mr Arjun Singh is the potential fall guy and that is why party spokespersons are fretting and fuming over his silence. In other words, they want him to not only speak up but also own responsibility for letting off Anderson.

However, even if Mr Singh obliges the Nehru-Gandhi family, it is simply not possible to believe that he acted on his own. Those who have watched the Congress and the Nehru-Gandhis while in power will consider such a confession, if it ever comes, as absolute hogwash. When the Nehru-Gandhis are at the helm, we have all seen how Congress Chief Ministers bow and scrape before them and only act on their explicit orders.

But all this effort to keep Rajiv Gandhi’s name out of the controversy need not surprise us because, however daunting the task, it is the duty of loyal Congress leaders to protect the image of the Nehru-Gandhi family.

In order to do so, every effort must be made by them to blame others for all things that go wrong.

Thus, the whole truth about Ayodhya must never be told. It is enough to say that PV Narasimha Rao was the villain. Similarly, the whole truth about the Iraq oil-for-food scam need not be told. The Volcker Committee’s conclusion that the Congress and Mr Natwar Singh were beneficiaries of Saddam Hussein’s largesse must be kept away. It is enough to say that Mr Natwar Singh was the villain.

As regards Ayodhya, the narration must be limited to the events of December 6, 1992 when the Babri structure was pulled down by Hindu zealots when PV Narasimha Rao was Prime Minister. Some critical chapters of the story prior to this fateful event must be erased from memory. For example, it should never be known that the doors of the Sri Ram Temple at Ayodhya were unlocked when Rajiv Gandhi was Prime Minister. Further, his disservice to the country’s secular order and core constitutional values in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's judgement in the Shah Bano case must never be told.

Nor should it be known that Rajiv Gandhi searched for desperate measures to win back the support of the Hindu majority prior to the Lok Sabha election in 1989 and, therefore, despatched his Home Minister, Mr Buta Singh, to attend the shilanyas for the construction of the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya. In other words, the Rajiv Gandhi Government gave its tacit approval for the construction of the Ram Mandir and even participated in what was essentially a foundation-laying ceremony.

Yet, the Congress would like the country to believe that Narasimha Rao, who was Prime Minister in 1992, was solely responsible for the build-up of the Hindu movement and the fanatical enthusiasm of Kar Sevaks to demolish the structure that was standing in the way of the proposed temple. Historians and intellectuals who have received the patronage of this family have been working overtime to hide these facts about Rajiv Gandhi’s involvement both in regard to unlocking the temple and the shilanyas ceremony.

The same network of committed intellectuals has once again been deployed by the Congress and the family which has proprietorial rights over it, to do a cover-up of the Bhopal scandal. Citizens beware!

Published in The Pioneer on 15th June, 2010.