• Valson Thampu

P V Anwar is a quintessential politician. Even so, he does not always bother to mind keraleeyatha, the cultural flavour of being Keralite, in the practise of his politics. He has his opportunistic finger on the pulse of Keralites. I wish he’d also care to put his ear to their hearts.

Anwar is incensed at Adv. Jayshankar. He feels fouled by the encyclopedic advocate’s promiscuous alacrity to damn him with labels. Jayshankar, on his part, feels enfolded in his self-righteousness by TV channels featuring him in prime-time discussions as though he is the digital Oracle of Kerala. Clearly, he has no use for the Ciceronian dictum that a public speaker should spend 75% of his time and effort to understand his adversary aright, and only the remainder to shape the arguments in his favour. The all-knowing vakeel believes that whatever he happens to say is necessarily true, if only for the reason that he believes what he says.

Unfortunately, Anwar doesn’t think so. He believes that the vakeel’s arms should stop where his nose begins. By not doing so, Jayashankar gives him a bloody nose. Anwar, as even the vakeel will grant, has a right to protect his nose. The vakeel may, however, maintain that Anwar’s way of defending his nose should not involve bloodying his adversary’s nose in return. Humankind has, after all, outgrown the nose-for-a-nose sort of idea of justice.

I have little to say to the vakeel. But to the incensed and intemperate Anwar I have the following to say. Sir, you are a public figure. You represent the Keralites of a constituency. To do so is also to represent, albeit by extension, the people of the state as a whole; for you are a member of the Kerala legislative assembly. Representing a people involves not merely attending assembly sessions, or helping the people in your constituency when they are in distress, mostly because the systems in place rarely work routinely as they should. So, citizens are reduced to begging for patronage. But that is not my main concern here. My concern is that representing a people involves also caring for their culture and character. A people’s representative has the duty to avoid misrepresenting the people he represents. Put positively, he must show forth the best about them. I can only urge you to regard if, in the present instance, those who voted for you would endorse you as representing their sense and sensibility.

Secondly, Anwar ji, language is a social asset. The obvious implication in anything being ‘social’ is that others, beside the person who uses whatever is social, are affected by the manner of his using it. That is why social etiquettes or maryadas are prescribed, and adhered to, in how language is used, or statements aired, in the public domain in civilized societies.

Also, Anwar ji, by airing your vendetta, and the proposed mode of executing it, you are involving the members of the public in your personal quarrel as well as your style of going about it. The stand-off is strictly between you and the omniscient vakeel. It doesn’t concern the rest of us. By going public with it, especially in the manner you have, you are trying to suck us into the vortex of this unedifying skirmish. It is particularly unacceptable because of the linguistic vulgarity you inject into the effervescence of this conflict. This not how the rest of us couch our sentiments, even when we are incensed to the extent of insanity!

Your words, Anwar ji, bristle with violence. We have enough of violence in our politics already! You propose to pay back the advocate for his verbal violence with physical violence. Thus, you take the skirmish to the next level. Use of, or the threat to use, violence denotes a failure of our social imagination and democratic culture. It denotes a complete loss of faith in rule of law and justice delivery system. Arguably, the existing scheme of things leaves much to be desired; but you, as a legislator, cannot flaunt your cynicism vis-a-vis the rule of law in the manner, and to the extent, you have. How can you respond to the vakeel in this manner and, also, accuse the ADGP and other police officers of crime and malfeasance? Either you believe in the rule or law; or you don’t. Your commitment to, and faith in, the rule of law is proved best by how you seek to redress your grievances. Or, is it your argument that others have to be law-abiding citizens; but you, for being a people’s representative, are above that inconvenience?

You boast of your proven Congress pedigree. But what’s the use, Anwar ji, in invoking the past, when the present is a mockery of it? If even unwittingly you imply that your distinguished father would have approved your conduct in this instance, you insult his cherished memory. It should have been avoided. At any rate, past glory cannot camouflage present poverty. Traditions and memories are valuable only to the extent they are validated by living them in the present. A generation continues to be honoured thanks to the next.

Above all, Anwar ji, in the manner of your punishing the supposed offender, I reiterate, you are punishing the rest of us, Keralites. You may be justified in shaming the person who has shamed you.  But, you have no right to embarrass the rest of us in the process; for that is in effect what you have done through the sentiments and choice expressions you have deployed against, as you’d say, the delinquent vakeel, who could even now be laughing all the way to the next TV studio to fill the media niche he has carved out for himself.