Over the past few days, a well-known and fairly accomplished Senior IPS Officer, who is currently the Home Secretary to the State Government of Karnataka, has been in the news for her public spat on Twitter with a widely followed and encyclopaedic anonymous commentator on history who prefers to go by the Twitter pseudonym, “True Indology” which is perhaps a nom de guerre. The spat was triggered by the IPS Officer’s tweet in support of the ban on the use of firecrackers on the occasion of Diwali. More than her support for the ban, a position she is perfectly entitled to take, what started the debate was her comment that bursting of firecrackers was not “essential” to the celebration of Diwali and that “non-essential religious practices” were mere dispensable “social practices”. This invited a response from other “tweetizens” including True Indology who dismantled her position brick by brick with reference after reference which clearly demonstrated that bursting of firecrackers had a specific religious significance, and was not merely an act of festivity and celebration. As someone who has presented the scriptural and documented evidence on the subject before the Supreme Court in Arjun Gopal v. Union of India in 2017 and 2018 in the context of the firecracker ban, I am in some position to endorse the views of True Indology.
That said, I am not on the IPS Officer’s uninformed views; after all, the fundamental right to hold a thought and express it is equally available to all hues of views, informed, not-so-informed, somewhat informed and utterly uninformed. However, after having taken a public position from her official handle, instead of engaging on merits with True Indology’s authority-backed counters, let alone disproving him, it appears that the IPS Officer demanded True Indology to divulge his personal details (privacy and due process, what are they?) and when he refused to do so, she is reported to have quipped “Your time is up”.
Within a matter of minutes of that ominous ultimatum, True Indology’s twitter handle is reported to have been suspended, which he confirmed on his Instagram account. Whether this was a coincidence or was there a correlation or a direct causality, I am not in a position to comment on with conviction. I wonder though, what would have happened if the user had not been anonymous and his details were publicly available? Another brave public arrest of a common citizen? Anyways, subsequently, the IPS Officer claimed that she was merely “disseminating” information about an order of the Government, “a decision taken at the highest level”, which was not her “personal opinion”. The irony was that she followed this up with a tweet about how she had a “real job” with “real responsibilities” i.e. after engaging in a public debate for at least two days from her official handle, thereby blurring the lines between dissemination of information and airing of opinions. So much for a real job with real responsibilities. The icing on the cake was the following tweet:
“And as a Govt official, I will first say follow Laws, Rules made by elected legislature, enforced by executive. U r free to question them in judiciary. Not twitter. Have respect for 3 pillars of State as envisaged by Constitution of this democratic country.”
The entire exchange and the above tweet in particular, in my opinion, is reflective of the feudal nature of Indian democracy and the top-down approach to rule of law, constitutional values and constitutional morality. Constitutional morality, as I have written elaborately on before quoting Dr. Ambedkar who in turn quoted Grote, is effectively a commitment to constitutional values, first, by the those in power and those who wield the law. In other words, constitutional morality is a check on untrammelled, unbridled, unrestrained and arrogant use of power by the State, especially its Police powers. Constitutional morality was not meant to be a stick to beat the public with or to indulge in a condescending “civilizing” mission which reeks and smacks of evangelical fervour. This applies to elected representatives and all the more to public servants who are appointees and do not have the direct endorsement of the electorate.
Public servants and elected representatives must remember that a dialogue in public is usually a dialogue with the public. And a dialogue, as embarrassingly obvious as it may be, is not a monologue. In a democracy, it is all the more a two-way street and if public officials wish to grandly hold forth on matters of civilization and religion from their official handles, they must have the maturity and the decency to accept civil reactions and responses from the public to their views. To weaponize their positions and to issue veiled threats merely because their ill-informed and unsolicited opinions have been called out in public is a textbook case of abuse of power. The power vested in them by or under the Constitution is to protect the law and the weak, not their fragile, bloated and weak egos.
Let me go a step further and explain my use of the word “feudal” in the context of our rich and vibrant democracy, encomiums we so love giving ourselves. I don’t believe that any form of political organization is permanent, and this equally applies to democracy. From a civilizational perspective or from the perspective of the vast canvas of human history, 500 years is nothing, I repeat nothing, let alone 70 years. Therefore, I don’t and won’t sit in judgement on any form of political organization which was in vogue before democracy became the mainstream. This is to say that I do not use “feudal” with contempt or disapproval. I am merely using it to highlight the convenient straddling of feudalism and democracy by those who wield power. My clear position is that if you wish to play by the rules of feudalism, the public too must be allowed to, and if you wish to play by the rules of democracy, they equally apply to you. You can’t hold forth on democracy and constitutional values when you pontificate to the public, and embarrassingly betray your feudal mindset when the public exercises its constitutionally guaranteed right of free speech to call out your colonial sanctimony and lack of depth. You can’t have it both ways, after all. You just can’t have the cake and eat it too.
Also, I use the word “colonial” with responsibility and with a sense of history because in most postcolonial societies, especially Bharat, it is an established and demonstrated fact that those who wield power have typically stepped into the shoes of the erstwhile colonizer, which explains their penchant for “civilizing” the native and talking down to her or him. Let me clarify that I don’t wish to paint everyone with the same brush, but I am certainly highlighting a systemic fault which is all-pervasive. We may have embraced the skeletal structure of democracy, but we are still uncomfortable with the republican spirit that comes with it. To a layperson, the attitude of the colonialised native wielder of power isn’t that different from the attitude of the erstwhile colonizer; in fact, it is even worse because the native wielder of power channels his own self-loathing tendencies and projects it on to the “plebs”, “the cattle class” or whatever other pejorative they may think of for the wretched commoner. What irks the public official even more is the empowerment of the common voice by the internet and social media, which has democratized gateways and channels of public communication which were hitherto the exclusive preserve of the select and Chosen few (the Gymkhana variety). And so, the old ways are back (remember Section 66A?). The age-old threats and gags are back and our time’s up. Long Live the Republic! And Long Live Constitutional Morality!
J. Sai Deepak is an Advocate practising as an arguing counsel before the Supreme Court of India and the High Court of Delhi.