New Delhi:
In the wake of the controversy over the cartoon depicting BR Ambedkar and Jawaharlal Nehru in an NCERT textbook, Members of Parliament united on Monday to express their concern over cartoons in textbooks, asking them to be removed immediately. We speak to the lone voice of dissent - BJP leader Jaswant Singh - amongst this united front.
NDTV: You are one of the few who has stood up and asked what the fuss is all about. Do you understand what is going on?
Jaswant Singh: No, I am afraid I don't at all, because I can understand a bit about sentiments being hurt on account of a cartoon depicting late Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Mr Ambedkar and that is a different matter all together. But that itself is a cartoon on 1949. But today what happened in the House, who will say suddenly the House erupted. And you see what is distressing to me, and also entirely beyond comprehension, is that I don't know what; that there was no discussion preceded, that preceded this kind of an extreme sentiment being expressed in the House. And so I am perplexed and at a loss to try and understand. It is very unusual for a Parliament to take such steps without at least examining what has caused the furore, and what the consequences of the steps would be.
NDTV: The bizarre spectacle is that the HRD Minister apologised for textbooks that he wasn't in charge of printing. Politician after politician saying they will corrupt young minds, does this reflect a lack of understanding?
Jaswant Singh: I don't know. You see the essence; I am distressed. I have mentioned this to some of my colleagues this morning. The Parliament is a Legislative body, it is not an Inquisitorial body. Parliament of course must legislate after doing deliberation. It cannot undertake what I call inquisitorial judgments about issues, without having fully examined the antecedents, the consequences what is causing it. I did ask some friends what is it? What has happened? A sheet of papers all clipped together as a preparatory to it and I glanced through them. There were various cartoons of vintage, depicting cartoons of 1971, early elections, that kind of period. And somebody told me these spoil young children minds. I too have a young grandson who I think is in class 10. I am not very sure but if he is in class 10 I can tell you, and if that be the norm and I think it is the norm, class 10, 11, 12 children are much less interested in their textbooks and much more interested in television, internet, cellphones. And the information that is coming to young minds is not through textbooks alone. And if they witness scenes in the Parliament, it's a daily delivery almost, they don't have to have any depiction in their textbooks of what India's politics is all about. That is what is distressing to me and one more point...
NDTV: Is it a farce that Parliament discussing this rather than key issues in Parliament, like IIP, farmer suicides, rather than a cartoon first published 60 years ago?
Jaswant Singh: Of course it seems; it adds to that irony, the essence of irony that you reflect, on all of us, collectively expressed yesterday about the sanctity of Parliamentary time etc etc. But the sanctity of Parliamentary time is not sanctity only about giving voice to views that do not accept a contrary viewpoint. How can you have a Parliament in which you do not want to hear a contrary viewpoint? What are these cartoons after all? They are depicting, some of them are hilarious. I am sitting here, your cameraman is here. Where I sit and work, the walls are covered with cartoons from over a period of time, and I value them, because some of the cartoons I have, the authors of those cartoons have signed those cartoons for me. They are in original. It's a kind of a record of my failures in political life. Why should we fight shy of that?
NDTV: More remarkable in a sense that the BJP has said they want the HRD Minister to resign, Yashwant Sinha said in Parliament today you are going against the party line in a sense.
Jaswant Singh: No, I don't know whether there is a party line. Party hasn't discussed it as party. I had a short conversation this morning with my distinguished colleague, Yashwant Sinha. He expressed the same view that it sort of spoils children's minds, and there also I disagreed with him. I said I am sorry Yashwant, I am unable to go on with that viewpoint, all the time saying that this is not an item, this is not an aspect on which we should really explode the Parliament out of its normal functions and duties. Is this the most important issue? I don't know. I am unable to convince myself about it, honestly I am unable to convince myself.
NDTV: All textbooks now to be reviewed; has this become like a thought Gestapo?
Jaswant Singh: I don't know but I feel sorry that a situation has arisen in which the Hon'ble Minister of the HRD is persuaded enough to say what he has said. I am unable to convince myself that this is really the need of the times, or how is he guilty in this? I don't know when these books were published and they have been there for a certain number of years. Why suddenly all this furore? I am entirely at a loss for words and I am sorry...
NDTV: Do you feel that the HRD Minister should resign?
Jaswant Singh: This is really a judgment that he has to exercise. How am I to give him advice on this matter? But there are other issues which are much more serious than this and I find that his own party is perhaps not with him in this matter, and that distresses me.
NDTV: Because the BJP strand at the press conference has been that he should resign?
Jaswant Singh: No, I did not see that who took that press conference or who said it. As a party we have not sat together to determine a voice on this issue, we need to reflect on it. How on earth can you have; how will you justify that Tagore's wonderfully evocative line, just the other day we were celebrating his birthday, "where the mind is without fear and the head is held high,"? Is this a demonstration of the mind being without fear? Are we holding a head high? What is it after all? It is just a sketch, a cartoon. It is an expression of a viewpoint perhaps different to what you hold, perhaps not very agreeable to your sensibilities, but it is still a viewpoint. I think if we continue to persist with this, how will we hold our head high and how will India be a land without fear? It cannot. We are diminishing the land and we are reducing our thinking. I seriously urge my colleagues in the Parliament to reflect on this dispassionately, quietly and without emotion. That is the only answer. I don't know what else to say.