Commentary/Ashok Mitra

An ambience of hypocrisy tinged with cowardice

Unbounded hypocrisy. Or, hypocrisy mixed with a liberal dose of cowardice. The facts have been generally known since the middle months of 1993. By then, the judicial process in Switzerland had almost been exhausted, and papers which would reveal the identity of the parties in whose numbered bank accounts the Swedish arms manufacturing firm had transferred funds over a certain period in the 1980s were ready for transfer to New Delhi.

True, even at the stage, there was scope for a further appeal, with the highest Swiss court. But this appeal could only be posted by parties directly affected by the judgment of the lower courts. The verdict that payments were received through numbered accounts could not any longer be challenged. But the parties were still entitled by Swiss law to put in the plea that papers which reveal their identity be held back from release.

The appeal, in other words, was not against the verdict that they had received secret payments from Bofors; it only concentrated on the narrow point that the revelation of their identity to the world would cause them incalculable harm.

The persons who filed appeals along these lines happened to be, apart from the Hinduja brothers, the shady character known as Win Chadha and Ottavio Quattrocchi, who had for more than a decade represented the Italian firm, Snamprogetti, in New Delhi and was widely regarded as kith and kin of the occupants of 10 Janpath.

The moment these persons filed their appeal with the superior Swiss court, they tacitly admitted the fact of their being the recipients of the Bofors payments, call these commissions or kickbacks or bribes. The Hinduja brothers were beyond the reach of the Indian administration; Win Chadha managed to leave the country, conceivably through official connivance, even as the scandal came to light in 1987. But that other character, Quattrocchi, was still very much in New Delhi, throwing his weight about.

The Central Bureau of Investigation could have picked him up the moment he had filed his final appeal before the Swiss judiciary, and relentlessly questioned him to find out on whose behalf he had received the payments. The CBI did nothing. Quattrocchi hung around for a few days, and one fine morning slipped out -- or was allowed to slip out -- of the country a la Chadha.

Even a moron would have sat up at coming across the Quattrocchi name in connection with the Bofors scandal. Even he could have added two and two together and come to a definite conclusion on the direction indicated by the needle of suspicion. But Quattrocchi departed, and there was not a squeak.

No politician of any hue spoke up condemning the failure to apprehend and interrogate the Italian citizen. No newspapers, otherwise so vociferous in defence of the nation's supposed interests and the waywardness of the police, could bring themselves to thunder at the official inability to gather in Quattrocchi. It would have been sacrilege to harass Quattrocchi, known as kith and kin of 10 Janpath. He disappeared from the country; not a dog barked.

Nothing has happened in the course of the past two and a half years to reverse any of the Bofors facts. During this period, Chadha, already a fugitive from Indian law, was allowed to enjoy his expatriate existence in the Gulf countries; there is no evidence that the help of Interpol was ever seriously sought to being him back. The Hinduja brothers have continued to behave as if they are the only entities to cultivate the chummiest of relations with the Indian high commission in London and with Indian politicians of all hues.

Some months ago, the media had carried an effusive report on a boat party on the Thames organised by the brothers which was joined by visiting Indian parliamentarians cutting across party lines. And Quattrocchi's name quietly dropped out of New Delhi's social register -- and the police register as well.

Given this background of events, what is currently going on in New Delhi's is sickening beyond description.

Is not the bravado of a statement that all the Bofors secrets will be laid bare by April 30 next a bundle of unalloyed nonsense? From all appearances, it will continue to be a game of ring-a-ring-a-roses. The CBI will go through the motion of a fresh round of interrogations of assorted retired generals and civil servants and former ministers. No enquiry will however be launched to identify and chargesheet the guilty parties who let Ottavio Quattrocchi out of the country in 1993. And none will dare to call in for interrogation the venerable lady residing at 10 Janpath.

There is a code of honour among thieves. The media and the politicians will be very, very careful; they will not shed their collective cowardice even for an absentminded moment and suggest that the possibility of a nexus between the kickbacks to Quattrocchi and the state of being of the occupants of 10 Janpath deserves to be explored. Instead, the lady residing at that address will continue to be treated as dowager queen; she will majestically perambulate from one iftar party to the next and keep granting audiences to awestruck politicians.

By whose leave nobody knows, on the occasion of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Constitution, when the still surviving members of the Constituent Assembly were presented with rolls of honour, the lady was seen to adorn with imperial hauteur, the foremost seat in the Central Hall of Parliament. A few minor politicians protested, but to most newspapers this was a non-event.

Now that the daughter of the household is entering into wedlock, another address is being readied, with all the trappings of royal regalia, as residence for her and her husband. Indian jurisprudence, one though, decrees that a daughter ceases to belong to the parental household from the moment she gets married. This law obviously does not apply in the case of the royal squatters at 10 Janpath.

Is it not time for a number of blunt questions? Because a former prime minister was brutally assassinated, should he and his family remain for eternity beyond the reach of criminal and civil jurisprudence? Because he was killed in the dastardly manner he was, has the nation permanently forfeited the right to prove whether he himself, his family and their friends were involved in any improprieties which grievously hurt the public cause? Under what law of which country must his 1987 denial of involvement in the Bofors bribery be assumed to be the last word in the matter?

Is it also not time to raise a further issue? Their presumed role in organising the former Indian prime minister's killing notwithstanding, why should there be reticence in admitting that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam had a legitimate roster of grievance against the assassinated former Indian prime minister? Any citizen of either this country or Sri Lanka has the right to evaluate critically the morality of the Indo-Sri Lanka treaty signed a decade ago, in the wake of which Indian troops undertook, for months on end, the grisly responsibility of ferreting out from the jungles and marshes Tamil insurgents fighting for their death-defying cause.

Even if the consideration that, in terms of lineage, the Sri Lanka Tamils, desperately struggling to attain their goal of self-determination, are flesh of our flesh is shoved aside, the other ethical issue still remains. The US administration claims for itself the divine right to proceed to any corner of the globe and interfere in the affairs of the holy mission of containing international terrorism. Was the role of the Indian expeditionary force sent out to Sri Lanka any different?

The pervading hypocrisy will prevent these and similar questions from being raised. Nor will any query be permitted on another strange spectacle currently being witnessed. The Congress party was in charge of the country's administration during the five-year spell 1991-96. Apart from the economic follies it had then perpetrated, roughly a quarter of its ministers have now been proceeded against on various criminal counts.

The misdoings of this party have had a great deal to do with the Bharatiya Janata Party's staggering success in last year's elections. As the results of the spate of elections and by-elections held in recent weeks suggest, the people have had enough of the Congress party. And yet, read the newspapers every day, the first page of every paper is monopolised by goings-on in this gone-to-the-seeds party.

Is that not simply a reflection of the nation's going to seed?

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