Summer’s a cruel season. That’s when the shadows of broad daylight become ghosts by night. You never know what lies at the far end of the tunnel. You never know what comes around the bend of darkness in the moments before dawn. History records momentous civilisational changes during those uncertain summer nights. A knife unsheathed. And the sudden death of innocence. Let me tell you of the Night of the Long Knives.
Let’s get started back in time, 72 summers ago. Germany was still a democracy, held fair elections and nobody could abuse the citizens’ right to vote. Germans could vote for any of the numerous political parties. To pass a law, the Reichstag (Parliament) had to agree to a bill after it went through routine discussion and arguments. On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed the chancellor of Germany at the head of a coalition government. Yet, within the Reichstag, over half the legislators were opposed to his Nazi Party. Hitler could not have got what he wanted passed into law. Many saw Hitler as a fall guy to be blamed if things went wrong. Yet, just one summer later, in August 1934, Hitler emerged the Fuehrer. And with it, Germans witnessed the death of democracy. Why did this happen?
Historians believe that by the summer of 1932, Hitler was convinced that support for the Nazis had peaked in Germany. Anything other than a huge endorsement of Hitler and the Nazis would have been disastrous. And Hitler could not afford to take that gamble. One week before elections were due in March 1933, the Reichstag building was gutted in a mystery fire. Hitler, playing on President Hindenburg’s fear, immediately declared that it was the signal for a communist takeover of the nation. And the rest, as they say, is history. I don’t know if you’ve got what I am driving home, by now. Suffice to say, we live in dangerous times. And summer’s a cruel season. It’s been a Night of the Long Knives once more. Democracy woke up this Monday morning with a knife stab in the back. The dark night before, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh advised the President to dissolve the Bihar legislative assembly. Because, let’s get this right, it was no longer possible for the Congress and its tainted partner, RJD, to form a government in Bihar. The numbers would no longer add up. And Bihar faced the threat of a saffron takeover. Just look at the similarities between then and now. The UPA coalition in Bihar just didn’t have the numbers. Because the voters of Bihar didn’t want it that way when the state went to polls earlier this year. Congress knew its popularity had peaked in the general elections last summer. And the RJD was no longer worth the ballot paper. Three months of hedging the options and yet, the NDA, seemed certain to stake a claim to power. Alas, Dr Singh’s coalition couldn’t afford that gamble. The only way out had to be a subversion of the democratic mandate of a people. “You’re stretching your imagination too far,” TK, who edits this page, seems to suggest, though I assume he agrees to the subversion plot. And others may well argue that neither Bihar is a Germany in the making, nor does Manmohan Singh have the makings of a Fuehrer. I never told TK that history repeats itself as a carbon copy of the original action plan. You look at history’s markers. And arrive at a judgement. And Dr Singh has picked up enough of those markers to leave a trail of suspicion behind. So, where does the trail possibly lead us to, if we were catch up from where Dr Singh left us this Sunday night?
Don’t go by the promises of democracy to keep the NDA out. Don’t go by the certainties of a future election. What happens if last February’s mandate is repeated in Bihar this fall? This summer is only the beginning to a long, uncertain future. The pointers to that are in the signed editorial that the UPA’s finance minister P Chidambaram wrote on this page on Tuesday. Running his course on the weight of legal erudition, Mr Chidambaram ended with the only thing that’s certain: “Whether it (the Congress-led government) will pay a political price for the same is something which cannot be answered now.” For now, the only thing that mattered was to keep the NDA out. At any cost whatsoever.
For most of this month, we in the media have evaluated one-year of Manmohan Singh’s government on the strength of his economic track record. One year into office, Manmohan Singh has come of age as a politician. It’s the mark of a person who has lost his virginity. Why should we expect Dr Singh to hold on to his innocence?
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