Politics over ex-serviceman Grewal's suicide: 8 questions to ask

Every author who has written on the subject of suicide agrees on one thing: suicide is the most unambiguous statement a human being can make. You may dispute the meaning or finality of anything a person does; other than suicide.

Now think of Ram Kishan Grewal's suicide. The most confusing thing we have come across for a very long time.

It is not that the nature of suicide has changed. It is that the nature of our public life has changed. And this problem is worse than the suicide of an individual; or of a thousand individuals.

Throughout yesterday, a gigantic national kitchen of confusion was working overtime. We have been served a Himalayan banquet of bewilderment and mystification. So, a drop of clarity will not be out of place.

To be clear, we have to be non-partisan. This means being free to see both sides of an issue and to hold them in balance. That becomes possible only when we subscribe to some basic norms and principles.

When all shared values and norms are rejected - which happens when vested interests reign supreme - public discourse resembles, in the words of the English poet Matthew Arnold, the clash of ignorant armies by night.

Let us ask:

1. Is it an immoral or unlawful thing for the members of a bereaved family to be visited by anyone? Surely not. Visiting is a gesture of solidarity. It is human and humane to be in solidarity with those who grieve. It is bottomline compassion. A family in trauma is helped through such solidarity, if it is solidarity that is envisaged.

2. Is it right for politicians to visit a bereaved family? Of course yes, if politicians are human beings.

3. Does such visiting amount to politicisation? That depends on the intent or purpose. There is a problem here. The riskiest and trickiest thing to do is to judge any public action in terms of suspected purpose. It takes time for purposes to come to light. The best thing to do is to let time expose the true intent of a particular person or neta. But to do that, we must have faith in the intelligence of the common man. If the government of the day thinks that citizens are stupid, it will be tempted to resort to preemptive strikes!

4. Let us assume that some political leaders' visit to the members of the bereaved family was political in intent. Does it amount to a crime? It is a moral offence; certainly not a crime. The police are dangerously irrelevant to the moral aspect of any issue. The moment we allow policemen to maintain or defend public morality, we create a police raj.

5. Let us consider the police version of the rationale behind their action; namely, they had to ensure the smooth functioning of RML Hospital. The key question here is - which none asked yesterday - did anyone complain that the visit of X, Y or Z was disrupting the work of the hospital? Who complained? How could anyone have made such a complaint when the visitors were detained at the gate itself?

How do policemen know that the visit of a particular leader or ten leaders affected the work of the hospital adversely when none was allowed to enter the hospital?

So, the best the police can say for themselves is that they "thought" work would be affected. Justifying presumptive police action is a dangerous thing.

If presumption is a valid reason for police action, anything can be justified; including all atrocities. All of human rights can be abolished de facto on the basis of subjective and presumptive police apprehensions.

6. Did the family members have to be kept in detention throughout the day? The purpose, we are told, was to protect them from the politicians who wanted to descend, like vultures, on them.

If that was the case, two small questions arise (i) couldn't this have been achieved in any other way? (ii) Why was it necessary to roughen them up, as they complain they were? Would we apply the same logic to our VVIPs and say they should be detained and confined to their houses to ensure their safety?

7. Did the government panic, which also was reported, that politicians meeting with the family members of the deceased would result in adverse publicity? If it did, again two small questions (i) was this not because of the monopoly and proprietorship the Narendra Modi government wants to exercise in respect of the Army? And is this not related to the forthcoming UP elections? If it is, does it not amount to politicisation?

(ii) Does not preventing the family members from meeting various political parties amount to politicisation of the suicide? Given the fact that the anxiety of the government is purely political? In that case, did the government not politicise the event first and all other attempts to politicise it come in its wake and as a consequence?

8. One valid question that came up repeatedly yesterday was this: Where were these politicians when the veterans were fighting for justice? What was the Congress doing for four decades? How come Congress leaders discover all of a sudden that injustice has been done to them?

This is an important question, primarily because it exposes the shortsightedness that bedevils politics at the present time. This shortsightedness is obvious in two broad areas (i) as soon as a party comes to power, it forgets its pre-poll promises as though promises are molasses in which to catch flies called voters. In this Modi, let us be truthful, is as culpable as everyone else (ii) governments become blind to frontiers of justice while in office.

The cheapness attributed to Rahul Gandhi's attempt to showcase solidarity with the bereaved family stems from the blindness of his party while in government.

What is wrong is not that a politician visits a bereaved family but that such visits are vitiated by their dearth of credibility in respect of the issue involved.

Let us now look away from Ram Kishan Grewal and his hapless family. This event is not only what has happened to one family. It has happened to all of us. It is a pointer to where we have reached and where, further, we are headed.

As dispassionate, non-partisan, citizens we have reasons to worry:

(a) The invasion of a citizen's private life by State power. There is no parallel to what was done to Ram Kishan's bereaved family in our history. Bereavement is a private and personal matter. The State has absolutely nothing to do with who the bereaved family members meet or how they seek to redress their grievances. The fact that the State did not think twice about unleashing its power into this private sphere of human life - and, worse, it is being justified most callously - is a cause of extreme worry.

(b) It is difficult to not be amused by the indignation expressed by various channels at the attempts by politicians to "politicise" the issue of a person's suicide. (What do we expect politicians to do, to sanctify, mythologise or philosophise issues?)

But the electronic media was complicit in this! I wish the channels had not given this disturbing event the sort of sickeningly overabundant coverage they did. If politicians are guilty of politicisation, are not the channels guilty of commercialising a tragedy?

(c) In the unending monsoon of media coverage throughout yesterday, no attempt was made to fix some bottomline principles, some essential parameters, for discussing an event as tragic as this. How can we have a discussion without a modicum of common principles? For all the sound and fury generated, we are left more confused and bewildered.

Political parties may gain from confusion and lowering of norms of common morality. But it is surely not in our interest as citizens to play on and be led by our noses.

If today politicians are cynical about politics, we are to blame. We allow them to harbour the idea that we are partial and stupid, easily swayed by propaganda and gimmicks. It is not for nothing that the wise used to say: "A people get the government they deserve."

Also read - Like Rohith Vemula, ex-serviceman Ram Kishan Grewal chose suicide as a form of protest