Torment of silver nights, a pain with no cure,
Heartache unanswered, the body's long cry of despair –
Only a few days, dear one, a few days more.
– Faiz Ahmed Faiz in A Few Days More, translated by Victor Kiernan
It has been two years since paediatrician and human-rights activist Binayak Sen was picked up in Chhattisgarh on charges of being a courier for the Naxalites. He has been held without trial ever since. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has given a reprieve to the hate-mongering Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Varun Gandhi, directing the Mayawati-led Uttar Pradesh government to drop the charges filed against him under the National Security Act for spewing venom against Muslims. The Gandhi youth has managed to become a parliamentarian, and the courts know where to draw the line when it comes to cases related to rightist militants.
A comparison between Sen and Gandhi would be deeply insulting to the former, a Jonathan Mann Award-winning doctor who had devoted his life to improving the health and human-rights access of Adivasis in Chhattisgarh. Gandhi, on the other hand, is known for being a Nehru-Gandhi scion who embraced opportunistic politics to remain in the limelight. The saffronite politico seems to have inherited the anti-Muslim traits of his late father, Sanjay Gandhi. In stark contrast, Sen is the general-secretary of the People's Union for Civil Liberties, an organisation that has consistently opposed Bajrang Dal militancy and the excesses of the Salwa Judum militias.
Much as there is to welcome in the results of India's 15th Lok Sabha elections, a few important questions remain unanswered. Will the triumph of the Indian National Congress herald the return of the tolerant and democratic polity of the 1960s and 1970s? Or will the 'old-new' establishment of Sonia Gandhi and her nominee, Manmohan Singh, continue with their contradictory policies of economic liberalism and political conservatism? Will the poor showing of leftwing alliances be interpreted as a rightist victory, or as a directive from the electorate to the Congress to return to its left-of-centre roots? Most importantly, does the leadership of the only robust Third World democracy possess the courage of conviction to become the visionary helmsmen of a new world order? Or will it lower its aspirations and remain a regional henchman of the US in the region? These are vital questions, and the person to face them is Rahul Gandhi – rather than the incumbent and future prime minister, who did not even seek an independent electoral mandate. It says something about the hold of dynastic politics that the prime minister of the largest democracy in the world has never won a direct election in his life.