Under the Mind’s Microscope

Shourie,the economist,educationist and environmentalist,is subtle and convincing. Shourie the security analyst is less persuasive. He argues that the balance of security and liberty has decisively turned in favour of liberty in a way that is hampering the fight against terrorism. The Constitution is not a fundamentalist human rights document that the courts have made it out to be. His reading of the D.K Basu case is unnuanced. The context of the case was the Indian state’s horrendous record in custodial torture and violence,and the guidelines are sensible. Except the “identification” requirement,all of them have to do with post-arrest documentation. In any case,the courts have left the door open for the government to come up with alternatives that would address the problem of custodial torture and violence,rather than simply wish it away. Shourie underestimates the fear generated by draconian security laws. Perhaps if Delhi was under the sway of more than half a million troops and the Armed Forces Special Powers act was in operation,we might understand why people fear the state. The rhetorical use of victims’ rights cannot obviate the fact that a state is a state only if it has a moral identity. The so-called “weak laws” have become a self-serving alibi for larger institutional failures of the state. There is also considerable comparative evidence of how draconian security laws add little to law-enforcement capability.

There is also Shourie’s oft-repeated position that we should take a tough stand on China and use the Tibet card. Even if you were to accept Shourie’s argument,there is no analysis of what instruments we have to take action against the Chinese. Indeed,the paradox of his position is that having shown how incapable the state is,his policy prescriptions depend on assuming a power the Indian state cannot have. As the American example has shown,the so-called realism of the tough-minded security state is hoist on its own petard because it often overestimates the power of power. Yes,India needs to make sure it has adequate defences against a growing Chinese power. But the machismo and shrillness of our discourse on China is more a case of us trying to pick a fight for the sake of it,rather than a case of wise strategy. It is in danger of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The sarcasm in Shourie’s analysis of the BJP is biting. But one would have hoped for a more historically nuanced,psychologically subtle illumination of how the party he has so assiduously legitimised came to this pass. His engagement with his party’s history would be more interesting if he were not so busy trying to distance himself from it. The problem with an unalloyed sense of virtue,that Shourie deservedly has,is that it is better at expressing anger at vice than in clarifying how we all are implicated in it.