The questioning of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal by the Central Bureau of Investigation in the alleged liquor scam case and the consequent arrests of thousands of Aam Aadmi party workers who were protesting in support of the Delhi Chief Minister reeks of pure petty political vindictiveness and throws up serious questions about India’s continuance as a democracy that guarantees civil freedoms to all especially those of opposition parties.
On Sunday Kejriwal spent nine hours allegedly being grilled by the Central Bureau of Investigation -- the investigation coming at a time when the Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia is in jail in the same case and immediately after Kejriwal and the Aam Aadmi Party raised questions of the genuineness of the educational qualifications of the Prime Minister.
While the use of agencies to target opposition leaders is a tried and tested trick -- indeed there is no opposition party in the country today whose leaders are not being hounded by central agencies -- while quite conspicuously the same agencies seem completely blind to allegations of corruption against members of the ruling party -- how the reign has expanded to even include cracking down on legitimate protests -- a singularly defining feature of a country that calls itself a democracy.
Even a country like Russia and China that themselves hardly qualify as democracies have witnessed protests -- in Russia there were massive anti-war protests and in China there were massive protests against the restrictive Covid quarantine and lockdown measures.
In India too protests have been held, but as the 2024 election nears, it is increasingly clear that India’s democracy is being attacked by those who are currently in power and the current safeguards and checks and balances are falling way short of their primary duty of being able to keep a check on those in power.
Today we have reached a stage where it is quite conceivable that before the 2024 assembly elections every opposition political leader is in jail under one ruse or the other. The most vocal critics of the government are either already in jail or are facing cases where they could shortly find themselves there.
We have seen petty vindictiveness not just against politicians but also against media organisations like the BBC who were subjected to raids by the Income Tax Department in the wake of the party organisation publishing documentaries of the role of the Prime Minister in the Gujarat riots.
It is clear that those at the very top wish to indicate that they will brook no criticism and consider themselves and their aura of invincibility to be the one thing they will protect at all costs perhaps out of the fear that a single chink in their armour will prompt the entire edifice to collapse.
It is important that we as a nation do not look at these as isolated incidents and be caught in discussing the technicalities of these individual acts of vindictiveness and instead look at the larger picture -- a picture that from every angle indicates that today every citizen is really only free at the mercy of those in power. The moment those in power decide otherwise they can be taken away, and no independent agency will be willing to come to your aid.
