Five Hundred Metres from Parliament, and Several Miles from Evidence

Rahul Gandhi has discovered a wonderfully convenient rule of Indian politics: if something goes wrong anywhere under a Ministry, the Minister must be either guilty or incompetent.

It saves everyone the trouble of investigating.

Students protest. Police intervene. Something goes badly wrong. The students are angry, the police are accused of brutality, and Rahul Gandhi arrives at the only conclusion available to him: Amit Shah is either culpable or incompetent.

There is, apparently, no third possibility.

The students may have had perfectly legitimate grievances. Examination paper leaks are no laughing matter. For a young person who has spent years preparing for an examination, a leaked paper is not merely an administrative irregularity; it can mean the loss of a year, a career and sometimes hope itself.

If the police used excessive force against peaceful protesters, investigate it. If officers broke the law, punish them. If senior officers gave improper orders, name them. No democratic government should be afraid of such questions. But Rahul Gandhi's argument has an awkward little hole in it.

Where is the evidence that the Home Minister ordered the assault? The police report to the Home Ministry. That is true. But the policeman holding the lathi does not carry the Home Minister's hand at the end of it.

Administrative control is not the same thing as personal command. Political accountability is not automatically personal culpability. Somewhere between the minister's office and the constable on the street there are officers, commanders, instructions, decisions and circumstances. That inconvenient machinery is called government.

Rahul Gandhi dispenses with all of it.

The students were attacked, we are told, 500 metres from Parliament. This is meant to make the crime sound almost as if it happened in the Central Hall itself. But a police action 500 metres from Parliament does not prove that Parliament ordered it; nor does it prove that the government authorised it, still less that the Home Minister directed it. Delhi is full of policemen operating within a few hundred metres of politicians without receiving their instructions by osmosis.

The 500 metres is powerful symbolism. As evidence, it is rather short.

There is, however, an interesting footnote from the Supreme Court.

When a plea seeking urgent intervention over the alleged police crackdown was initially mentioned before Chief Justice Surya Kant on July 22, the CJI reportedly told the lawyer, "Don’t waste our time, and don’t waste your time," while declining the request for urgent listing and indicating that the matter should be pursued through the proper legal route.

That should not be converted into a judicial certificate saying that there was no police excess. The Court did not make such a finding.

Indeed, when the matter subsequently came before the Supreme Court, the tone was considerably more nuanced. CJI Surya Kant said that the constitutional right to peaceful and lawful protest is guaranteed and that mere agitation cannot justify police excesses. 

The Court also stressed that both protesters and police have responsibilities and indicated that an independent inquiry could be considered.

That is rather different from Rahul Gandhi's neat little equation. The Supreme Court did not say: police good, protesters bad. Nor did it say: Home Minister guilty. 

It said, in effect: look at the facts, protect the right to peaceful protest, and hold wrongdoing on either side accountable.

And that brings us back to the elementary question Rahul Gandhi's article prefers to avoid.

Who ordered what? Were the protesters peaceful? Were warnings issued? Was force necessary? Who ordered it? Who authorised it? Were officers acting within the law? Were injuries caused? Were complaints made? What did the senior police officers know? What did the government know? And what action followed?

Those are questions worthy of Parliament, journalism and a democracy.

"Culpable or incompetent" is worthy of a political rally.

There is another curious feature of Rahul Gandhi's argument. He describes the protesters as brave, wise, tender and earnest. It is a touching catalogue of virtues. One half expects the next sentence to announce that he has personally examined the police records.

But adjectives are not evidence.

A protester can be brave and still violate a restriction. A policeman can be responsible for enforcing the law and still use excessive force. Both propositions can be true at the same time.

That is why serious democracies investigate facts rather than distribute halos.

Rahul Gandhi is perfectly entitled to demand accountability from the Home Minister. Indeed, opposition parties should demand it.

But the burden of a serious accusation is equally serious. Show the order. Show the chain of command. Show the evidence of knowledge. Show the decision to permit it. If those things exist, Rahul Gandhi has a case. If they do not, then the argument remains what it appears to be: a political conclusion searching for evidence.

The students deserve justice. The police deserve due process. And the Home Minister deserves accountability where accountability is established.

But democracy cannot work on the principle that every government failure becomes a ministerial crime merely because the minister sits at the top of the organisational chart.

That is not accountability. That is arithmetic for the angry: one police baton plus one Home Minister equals one political headline. 

And politics, like arithmetic, becomes dangerous when the numbers are made up.