Bandit Territory, America?

Moscow, October 1993: In those chaotic days after the end of the Soviet Union, the President and the parliament were at loggerheads. President Yeltsin was angling to dissolve the then Congress of People’s Deputies and Parliament, the Supreme Soviet, in a manner not authorized by the constitution. On 3rd October, demonstrators, beseeched by their leaders, removed the police cordons around the Russian White House, the then seat of the parliament, took over the Mayor's office and stormed the main television centre. Subsequently, the army, which was hitherto neutral, heeded to Yeltsin’s demand and stepped in force in early morning hours of 4th October. Army tanks began to shell the building and soon, the leaders of the resistance were arrested. The world watched in horror and speculated if Russia was on the brink. Well, it did not baulk and pulled back but the ten-day conflict became the deadliest single event of people fighting the army since the days of the Revolution in Russia.

Washington, 6^th December 2020: You know what happened. President Donald Trump is trying to stick to his chair by hook or by crook in the face of a clear defeat in the Presidential election. Americans, smug as they are, remain busy lampooning his extraordinary caballing even as Trump tries to manipulate the outcome of the election in the manner of a demagogue, obscuring or distorting facts with emotionalism, prejudice, and worse, flagrant lies. But he has the support of a very sizeable number of white Americans. His supporters storm the US Capitol building in Washington DC on January 6, disrupting lawmakers' session which is on to certify the Presidential election result. The world sees, live, a spectacle straight out of a grotesque futuristic movie, a drama totally inconceivable up till this point in time, with the surreal becoming palpably real. The mob clashes with the police and mooches around brusquely, shouting and waving Trump and American flags, defiling the American temple of democracy, a democracy claimed to be the oldest in the world. Lawmakers cower under desks and rush to don gas masks while the police stand at entrances, pistols drawn. Five people lose their lives. There is clear recorded evidence that Trump, like a classic rabble-rouser, incited and provoked his supporters to do what they did. There are clear images of the most powerful (which ought to make him the most answerable but sadly it doesn’t) person in the US, and indeed, as yet, in the world, instigating a mob to take law in their hands. And even worse, there is no remorse as Trump speaks of merely a sham withdrawal and that too, when the fear of summary dismissal became real.  

2006: The US has been openly critical of Vladimir Putin's iron grip on Russia's media and politics even as the former was parenting Iraq in introduction of democracy. In a joint appearance of George Bush and Putin, the latter delivered a stinging quip in response to Bush's muted criticism of Russia's democratic record, saying that he did not want to head a democracy like Iraq's. The remark raised a loud laugh from the assembled reporters but the irony was not funny.

 

2013: There was this much-talked about article by Putin in NYT, amidst the brewing crisis in Syria, which was seen by many as a brassy whack to subvert the elected officials of US and address the American people directly. This blatant experiment did put the then President, Obama, on the defensive, fearing impairment of the already weakening domestic support for American military designs in Syria.

 

Vladimir Putin could hardly be  the right person to harangue America on democracy but today, a “democratically-elected” Putin can, can he not?

 

2015: Days after India hosted him with characteristic, though arguably misplaced and exaggerated, rapture, US President Barack Obama dealt an embarrassing jolt, saying that Gandhi would have been shocked at the acts of intolerance in the country which prided itself on its diversity. His words, “Michelle and I returned from India, an incredible, beautiful country full of magnificent diversity, but a place where, in past years religious faiths of all types have, on occasion, been targeted by other peoples of faith simply due to their heritage and their beliefs. Acts of intolerance that would have shocked Gandhiji, the person who helped to liberate that nation”.

After all, unity in diversity, howsoever putative it may be, has always been India’s USP. And if our rallying cry was turning into a mere shibboleth, it was natural that Obama used it to berate us.

 

Abki bar Trump Sarkar? Trump kept his trap shut when he was in India in February last year, perhaps for some selfish reasons, certainly not because of any empathy with our predicament on Kashmir. And even under Trump, the US government hasn’t exactly been silent on the perception  of growing deficit of democracy in India. Alice Wells of the US State Department issued some statements disapproving of India on the CAA, detained Kashmiri politicians and internet restrictions in Kashmir. If that’s what the Trump administration did, it is easy to guess that the Biden administration will likely be louder. 

What goes around comes around, Uncle Sam! The number of popularly-elected governments around the world toppled with your aiding and abetting is legion. Your cup of sins is full, sir, and now, you are on the brink. I am sure you will recover and introspect but the world should be free of your homilies for some time.

 

But that should be that and no more. Instead, smarting under the barrages of edifications from the US, and others like the UK, some worthies lost no time in trying to exhort Modi ji, on the TV, to give it back to the US. Tell the arrogant hypocrites that in India, people protest but never march on the parliament; the only time our parliament came under siege was by some terrorists recruited by the failed state of Pakistan, a hopeless country you always treat with kid gloves. Modi ji said he was distressed to see news of rioting and violence in Washington. “Orderly and peaceful transfer of power must continue. The democratic process cannot be allowed to be subverted through unlawful protests”, he tweeted.   To many of these smarting worthies, this was too mild. To others, who find everything about Modi ji objectionable, it was out of place, coming from someone who was supervising the retreat of democracy in India.

 

Pointless Schadenfreude. All this gloating at America’s discomfiture is meaningless. By and large, since we in India have been conditioned to look to the US as a beacon to be followed, the happenings in Washington evoked shock and disbelief, and rightly so. It is time to look for lessons and lessons there are many. The US, and indeed the world, has suffered a President who is in the mould of an agent provocateur. Remember him inflaming passions during the BLM unrest, calling protestors ‘thugs’, threatening to deploy military and that infamous tweet, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”. Or the disgraceful phrase “blame on both sides” at the time of violence between white supremacists & counter-protesting immigrants in Charlottesville. Knowing Trump, what he said was not news.

 

The news was that Trump had to frequently walk back his outrageous remarks in social media under direct action from the service-providers. This time the chastisement was more severe with Twitter and Facebook, both epitomes of American dominance in everyday technology, suspending his account. It is time to remember the Houston police chief during the BLM protests, criticizing Trump candidly, admonishing him with, “If the US President has nothing constructive to say, he should keep his mouth shut”. It is time to recapture the powerful imagery of many white people standing with black folks in solidarity. We have to but remember and wonder why all the Trump’s shenanigans could not influence his own deputy into overturning the election that fateful day. We must wonder at the tenacity of the system which saw the American lawmakers completing the process of Biden’s confirmation even as the mayhem at the Capitol Hill had hardly subsided. We have to grasp that spirit of American democracy which has strong Republican governors and election officials refusing to collude with him in stalling the counting of votes or countermanding the election in any way in their states and even supreme court judges appointed by him dismissing his preposterous claims. That is the America we should look at.

 

Polarization along religious lines has widened in recent years in India. I am not going to step into the quagmire of blamestorming here as some blame rests on all sides. We hope our society matures into a more tolerant one in spite of artifices and skullduggery by all the political parties. But learn we must from this American ethos as to how strong institutions can protect a country from the severest of internal disagreements and disunity.

 

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