People's Democracy

 WEST BENGAL

 Joshi Flayed For His Uncalled For Remarks

 B Prasant

HOW desperate can the leader of a political outfit become when it comes to electioneering? Can he stoop low enough to touch the rock bottom of civility?  Can he indulge in lies? Can he threaten his political opponents with dire consequences? Can he call the masses as stupid for having supported a government of the Left for more than a quarter of a century?

These are questions that beg answers. Questions that were raised when the human resources development minister Murli Manohar Joshi chose to share the platform with the state Trinamul Congress leadership at Asansol and when he spoke to the media later at Howrah.

Joshi waxed eloquent. He reminded the people of West Bengal that the BJP-led NDA “now possesses a majority in the Rajya Sabha.” This was none too vague a threat about imposing article 365 in the state. Then he went on to note that the state “has gone backward in the realm of education” with “all-India service IAS and IPS officers constantly kicking out elected functionaries (?)”. Joshi also declared with a smug smile that the Left Front government “has no interest in advancing primary education and technical education.”

Finally, and much to the astonishment of both the Trinamul Congress chiefs and representatives of the corporate media, Joshi thundered that the people of Bengal were “illiterate and stupid enough” to vote the communists to office, year in and year out.

On his remarks about the intelligence of the people of Bengal or the lack thereof, a whole host of men of letters in the state have come out angrily, with strong statements challenging Joshi’s own intellectual equipment. Filmmaker Mrinal Sen said that the desperate nature of Joshi’s irrelevant comments were borne out of political frustration about the BJP’s complete lack of electoral prospects in Bengal.

Economist Amiya Kumar Bagchi said that while Joshi’s utterances bordered on sheer foolishness, his comments on the people of Bengal proved that he did not possess even a modicum of respect for the people of this state, and in this, he was following in the footsteps of his prime minister and party leader.

Novelist and poet Sunil Gangopadhyaya said Joshi would end up by proving that, in a minority of cases, education would not cure the innate foolishness of behaviour of some persons. “We are not prepared to listen to cant from a man who keeps trying to pass off astrology as a science,” said the writer.

Novelist and essayist Syed Mustafa Siraj said that it needs intellect to judge whether the people of the state of Bengal possess intelligence. “The Left Front government,” said Siraj “would continue in office because it has the support of the people, for the interest of whom the government has dedicated itself.”

Elsewhere, senior CPI(M) leader Jyoti Basu was characteristically laconic in his criticism of Joshi’s utterances that he dubbed as insulting to the people of the state. Basu said that Joshi’s rage was understandable as the Left Front could win its way to office six times in a row even as the BJP’s prospects kept on dwindling here. He recalled that it was Joshi who was trying to foist on the nation a distorted history of India’s past and present. “What more does one expect of a person of his métier?” was Basu’s question to the media.

Earlier, school education minister Kanti Biswas refuted Joshi’s charges about primary education. Commenting that Joshi’s desperate utterances showed how frustrated and angry he was on seeing the resonant popular base of the Left front government in Bengal, Biswas nailed the HRD minister’s lies and untruths.

Biswas quoted figures to prove that the Left Front government of Bengal spends more on primary education than any other state in the country. The state government bears the responsibility of the salary and other emoluments of the teachers, which was also quite unique nationwide. Technical education has made good progress in Bengal and the literacy rate in the state, at 70 per cent, is better than the national average of 65 per cent. The rate of success of the students of Bengal in the National Eligibility Test was also the highest in the country, added Biswas. 

Will Murli Manohar Joshi have the courage to face up to the truth? Doubts persist, given the opportunistic nature of the political outlook of the party he represents.

The doubts were brought sharply into focus when Joshi, who was in the metropolis of Kolkata to inaugurate the National Book Fair organised by the National Book Trust, gave the green signal to the organisers to organise a Saraswati vandana as part of the inaugural ceremony. The secular nature of the Indian constitution precludes the use of religious symbols and ceremonies in a programme organised under the aegis of the government --- union or state. 

But Joshi would not care, deeply dedicated as he was to try and play the communal card in Bengal as the Lok Sabha elections approach and the prospects of the BJP would not improve. More so because Uttar Pradesh has been the latest ego-deflating experience for Vajpayee and his men and women.

Thus, Joshi saw red when the guest in chief for the occasion, Professor Satyasadhan Chakravarty, minister for higher education in the Left Front government, chose to walk out of the function, and without much public fuss.  He fulminated against Chakravarty questioning whether the latter had “any love for books,” and then proceeded to complicate matters for himself by referring school education minister Kanti Biswas’s rejoinder to his earlier peroration about the ‘stupidity’ of the people of Bengal, saying that Biswas was an “ignorant fellow.”

Chakravarty later told People’s Democracy/INN that while “we are never against the Saraswati puja per se, we do believe that no religious function should be associated with any programme being organised under the aegis of the government since that would go against the grain of the Indian constitution.” (INN)