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Consensus and sobriety

Children, the saying suggests, should be seen and not heard. Going by the verbal pyrotechnics let loose at the two press conferences addressed by the gentleman whose election as the nation's next President appears almost inevitable, every future head of state of the Republic of India should perhaps be neither seen nor heard.

The dignitary has to be literate though, for he will have to sign ordinances at great frequency. Come to think of it, it should be enough if the eminence has the reputation of being literate without actually being so. The attorney general could be persuaded to give a ruling that the President is entitled to delegate the necessary power of attorney to, for example, the prime minister, who will then do all the signing on behalf of the head of state. This will also be in consonance with the revised Article 74 of the Constitution, according to which the president has to do everything according to the wishes of the Council of Ministers in the Union government.

The above paragraph will conceivably draw the ire of purists belonging to the conventional school. The person almost sure to be elected President in a fortnight's time has been selected, we will be told, by national consensus. It is important for the sake of the nation's dignity that an individual chosen through such national consensus is spared irreverence of any genre; those who indulge in pastimes of this kind ought deserve a proper dressing-down.

What, however, is a consensus, of which the nation supposedly should be proud? According to the dictionary, consensus represents "a general agreement", or "the opinion of most of the people in a group". It is not that someone picked through a so-called national consensus is a unanimous choice. He or she is the choice of the majority. The very basis of a practising democracy is combat between, and conflict of, views entertained by different members of society. Precisely this attribute distinguishes a democracy from other systems.

A democratic framework is sustained by the conflation of different ideas, opinions, and courses of action. The democratic process lays down the modality through which the contending proposals and points of view have to pass before a final decision, embedded in law, is reached. Considered from this angle, a national consensus represents no articulation of democracy, but its negation.

It is, it follows, no scandal, if what is proclaimed as national consensus is not agreed to by some constituents of society and they prefer to wait for a democratic verdict by the electorate. It is not only no scandal, but no treason either. We have decided to jump in the lake, therefore you too must jump in the lake, we are making fools of ourselves, you too therefore must make a fool of yourself: these are instances of specious and dangerous logic which paves the way to authoritarianism.

Give the consensus-mongers an inch and they will claim a mile. The Ram fetishists in the Vishwa Hindu Parishad have now revealed the Kashmir plan dear to their heart. Jammu & Kashmir is proposed to be cut up in four slices. The region to the northeast of the Jhelum river is to be reserved for Kashmiri Pandits; the exclusively Hindu enclave in Jammu should be given the status of a Union territory; the same dispensation is intended for Leh and Ladakh. The residual parts of the existing state are to be left for the abominable Muslims; in any case -- the implication is obvious -- this wretched area should be permanently under the occupation of the brave and patriotic Indian Army.

Precedents are not for flouting. What the VHP thinks in the morning, the Bharatiya Janata Party endorses wholesale in the afternoon. What the BJP approves in the afternoon, the National Democratic Alliance dittoes in a late-evening session held at the prime minister's residence. Following a few hectic days of confabulation, entities such as the Telugu Desam Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party, the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagham and others tend to fall in line with the NDA prescription. Once the eventful week ends, a national consensus is announced to have emerged. It is then time for thanksgiving and celebration.

Assuming identical pressure tactics are applied in the case of the proposed Manuvadi vivisection of Kashmir, those making up the rest of the nation are expected to go along with the proposal. Should they refuse to go along, they are to be dubbed anti-national. The next stage is obviously their disfranchisement. Wouldn't that be loverly?

Decide in haste and repent at leisure. Even the overarching ambition of the Hindu fanatics should have a pause. Mistakes committed over a matter, which to all intents and purposes is now an international issue, are not easily reversible. What happens to Kashmir and along the India-Pakistan border no longer belongs to the sphere of decision-making on the part of Indians and Pakistanis alone. The Americans have taken over. They are selling "sensors" to India and installing their troops, who know how to operate the sensors, on this side of the border.

American army personnel are already in Pakistan to hunt down the abominable Al Qaeda. Here too, precedents should matter. American army units have been in permanent residence in Korea ever since 1950. They will, rest assured, take up the status of "ordinarily resident" in both India and Pakistan as well along the celebrated Line of Control. That is the only way, they will explain, peace and harmony can be maintained between the two adversary nations.

The latest Hindu thought on Kashmir will come as heavenly gift to the Samaritans from god's own country. Now that BJP zealots have mooted the idea of a four-way cutting up of the disputed state, the next deputy assistant secretary of state from Washington, DC, visiting the subcontinent may well suggest a two-way partition of the disputed territory, which he will describe as a reasonable compromise. He will offer a minor segment to India: the bulk of the land will be offered on a platter to General Pervez Musharraf.

New Delhi will of course protest, but a subaltern regime has its limitations, it will have to accept sooner or later, with ill grace or otherwise, what the Americans are prepared to offer. Meanwhile, while the Hurriyat Conference is comprehensively alienated, the National Conference has also been pushed to an impossible corner, of course with some help from the Abdullahs themselves. In due course, the Government of India will be bereft of any sensible policy alternative apropos of Kashmir. With the establishment of the fact that those who are not with New Delhi are solidly lined up against it, Kashmir will be the easiest of pickings for the Americans.

To flaunt the datum of a national consensus, stressing the need to preserve the valley's link with the Union of India in the face of such a chain of prospective developments will be as much a tragedy as a comedy. Indian folklore is full of stories of buffoons and impostors catapulting to positions of power and using that power to ensure successive calamities and disasters. Folklore is, however, usually not taken seriously, and the message it tries to transmit is often absentmindedly brushed aside.

Let there be no mincing of words here. If this nation is to survive, it would do well to brush aside national consensuses. Which is to say, it should return to democratic sobriety.

Ashok Mitra