WHEN SILENCE IS GOLDEN FOR CERTAIN PEOPLE
Tuesday, 10 December 2013 | A Surya Prakash | in Edit
Congress leaders were disgusted and horrified by the Gujarat Government’s alleged snooping on a woman. But they dismissed the rape charges against the Tehelka chief as an intra-office affair
The deafening silence of the Congress on the Tarun Tejpal rape case is telling us a lot more about this party than all the sound bites of its spokespersons on various issues over the last fortnight. The party appears to be in a state of shock because the man who was the party’s chief sting operator stands accused of one of the most heinous crimes a man can commit — sexual assault on a girl who looked up to him as a father.
Thus, while Mr Tejpal is crying hoarse that the conduct of Goa Police smacks of politics, the truth is that there is politics, not in the actions of Goa police but, in the inaction of the Congress, for whom he has rendered exemplary service over the years through entrapment of individuals via dubious sting operations. Just two facts which are now in the public domain tells us why Congress spokespersons have gone into a shell vis-à-vis the Tehelka rape case. The first of these is Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s intervention on Mr Tejpal’s behalf in 2004. Following the victory of the UPA in the Lok Sabha election that year, Ms Gandhi wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh about Mr Tejpal. BJP leader Subramanian Swamy has made public the Prime Minister’s prompt response, in which Mr Singh said he had received Ms Gandhi’s letter, enclosing the representation from Mr Tejpal regarding investigations pending against him. He said he was “asking the concerned ministries to examine the cases and review their status and proposed course of action”. Soon after the UPA Government was appointed in May 2004, Mr Tejpal made a representation to Ms Gandhi. She immediately wrote to the Prime Minister on June 18 and Mr Singh responded within a week on June 25. Such promptness by the Congress president and the Prime Minister tells us a lot about how valued Mr Tejpal was to them.
Mr Tejpal reciprocated in good measure with many stings against the Sangh Parivar. He was also virtually groveling at the feet of Ms Gandhi after the return of the UPA in 2009. Soon after that Lok Sabha election, he wrote an open letter to her and said things which even diehard sycophants of the Nehru-Gandhi family in the Congress would not say. In that shameful exhibition of servility, he said “...you have done a fine job of bringing up your son. He has humility, decorum, diligence, and he takes the long and inclusive view”. Further, he said Mr Rahul Gandhi was in touch with the soul of India unlike some others (read the Sangh Parivar) who try to barter deities for votes. The sycophancy did not end here. He told Ms Gandhi, “You have given us of yourself, and of your son. Now will you kindly also give unto us your luminous daughter”. This should surely go down as the most obsequious prose ever written by an editor to any politician anywhere in the democratic world.
The accusation of rape made by Mr Tejpal’s colleague in the first half of November, has resulted in the media turning its spotlight on the company that publishes Telelka and on Mr Tejpal, the businessman. And what has emerged has come as a shocker for all those who were taken in by the self-righteous posturing by Tehelka, Mr Tejpal and many others associated with it. We now know that this great crusader against corruption did not have any compunctions about the manner in which he went about his business or about the kind of partners he chose for his business.
Colleagues in the media have dug up a wealth of information on Mr Tejpal’s business practices and this includes the scuttling of the publication of a damning investigative report about the mining scandal in Goa. Thereafter, individuals and companies associated with mining in the State were roped in as promoters for the Think Fest. Also, there is evidence of Mr Tejpal tying up with liquor baron Ponty Chaddha for a hospitality business in New Delhi.
Yet, despite all this evidence, the big guns of the Congress have been silent. Four prominent women leaders of the party —Ms Jayanthi Natarajan, Ms Girija Vyas, Ms Rita Bahuguna Joshi and Ms Shobha Oza — addressed a joint Press conference on November 17 and blasted the Gujarat Government for the alleged surveillance on a woman architect in Ahmedabad. Ms Natarajan, as always, was the most vocal. She said this raised the vital issue of safety of women in the country and wondered whether women could walk around safely in the country in such circumstances. Referring to the accusation that the Gujarat Government had kept tabs on the movement of a woman, she said, “We feel a deep sense of horror, disgust and shame”. She claimed that “the honour and dignity of every woman in the country is at stake”. Ms Vyas was equally indignant. She said the Gujarat incident did not mean that just one woman’s privacy was violated. It amounted to the violation of privacy of many citizens including women. Ms Natarajan and others also demanded that the Gujarat incident must be enquired into by a retired Supreme Court judge. However, all this anger dissipated when the news broke that Mr Tejpal, who had exposed many scams relating to the Bharatiya Janata Party, was accused of rape.
Interestingly, when the Tehelka rape story hit the headlines on November 20, every sensitive Indian felt “a deep sense of horror, disgust and shame”. But, Ms Natarajan was not one of them. Another such leader who was untroubled by this case was Mr Digvijaya Singh, who said that “Tejpalji” was fighting against communal forces and as far as the rape charge was concerned, it was “a matter between a young journalist, an employee of Tehelka and its editor”. So, it was just another intra-office issue, hardly a crime that should warrant disgust!
Several of Mr Tejpal’s apologists have been desperately trying to spread canards against the young journalist, who was his victim, by claiming that whatever happened in the Goa hotel lift was consensual. They also claim ad nauseam that the “good work” of Tehelka should not be forgotten. Truly, after you hear that Tehelka killed investigative stories against the mining mafia and later accepted sponsorships from dubious quarters, would you yearn for the survival of Tehelka, a brand which has now become the very anti-thesis of what it claimed to be?
Finally, given the Congress’s conduct and its lack of moral fibre to speak up for a rape victim, one wonders whether this is really the party which was at the vanguard of our country’s freedom movement. Wah Congress!
http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/edit/when-silence-is-golden-for-certain-people.html