The enhancement of former cricketer and Congress leader Navjot Singh Sidhu’s punishment from a fine to a one-year prison term took me back to the first day of the 34-year-old history of a rage that took a life so suddenly and unreasonably, but responsibility for which is still disowned. I was producing a newspaper in Chandigarh on a cold December night in 1988. It
was not a very newsy day, which was unusual in those killing days of militancy and terrorism.
Suddenly, at about 10 in the night, the phone rang. The correspondent from Patiala, a town about two hours’ drive from the city, was on the line. There was an incident of road rage in Patiala. A rising cricketer from the town, Navjot Singh Sidhu, had parked his car on the road, blocking traffic. He hit an elderly person who asked him to move aside so his car could move. The old man was probably already dead, but the official confirmation of death was yet to come. The story would follow.
As unfortunately happens in the profession, that put some life into the cold newsroom. There was some problem with the teleprinter, so I told the correspondent to dictate the story on the phone when he had all the details.
A little later, one of the office security guards called. There were a couple of people at the gate who wanted to come into the newsroom. Those days, no-one was allowed into the office and newsroom without permission, especially at night. One person was allowed to come in, accompanied by a security guard. He came to the subject without an introduction. You may have got the news of the road rage incident. Can you please not run it? It was not intentional and just happened. Can you help?
I said, that’s not done. A crime, of whatever nature, has been committed. No way it can be blacked out. The man said the career of a rising star was on the line. He pleaded and pleaded and wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.
I asked: Why are you asking us to kill the story when the matter is already public? All papers are going to report it. He said: We are contacting other papers also with the request and hope they will oblige. I said: Even if the papers do not carry the report, there will be a police case. What will you do then? He said: No, the cops have told us that they may be able to help if newspapers do not carry the news. I said: The dead person’s family will complain, won’t they? He said: We will talk to them. I told him finally: I am sorry, we cannot help you.
The phone rang, the correspondent was on the line. The story was taken down, edited, composed and put on the page in quick time so it could catch the edition that went to Patiala. The desk settled down with “double-column smiles”. The sports desk was curious about the commotion because the cricketer’s name was being talked about. Your man of big hits has apparently hit someone out of life, the city news desk told them.
After half an hour, there was a call from another edition of the paper. The news editor there wanted to know whether a weapon was used in the attack. Could a single hit with the fist kill a person? It was not known whether it was a single blow or more than one. This had been discussed with the correspondent when the story was filed, but he had not been sure. There was talk about the use of a cricket bat or a hockey stick, but this could not be confirmed. For a long time, the bat or the stick was part of the oral history of the incident. Would it make a difference to the case? Some said it would, because the use of a weapon would raise the action above the level of an emotive response and put some deliberation into it, making the crime more serious. Thereby hung a question.
In the next few weeks, stories also said the then Union Home Minister Buta Singh and the then Punjab Governor Siddhartha Shankar Ray had been approached for help.
Why did the cricket star hit a person who had the same right on the road as he had? Did he see himself as the lord of the road, the road as his pitch? Did his status and reputation as a rising star go to his head? Did road rage bring out the worst in him? The law did not need answers to these questions to judge
his action; society did, but did not get the answers.
As important as the question why he did that is the question why the story was sought to be suppressed and blacked out. The question has two aspects. Its core is moral, but it is expressed, in a society where rule of law runs, in legal terms. When a person kills another, by accident or by design, one assumes there should be moral responsibility for the act. But this was denied, and Sidhu maintained till the end of the case that he was sorry that the death happened, but he was not responsible for it. Several means were tried to avoid the legal responsibility, but the rule of law finally prevailed.
Punjab was in a churn in the 1980s, and that decade can be taken as the time when a moral, political and social order -- well-known and widely followed in the country -- changed, along with the norms and certitudes associated with them. The decade may even be taken as one that divided post-Independence India into two linear parts in time. It was a period of transition from an old India to a new one. The licence raj had started crumbling and the telecom revolution had started under Rajiv Gandhi, televisions had started entering homes, the Bofors scandal rocked politics and challenged many assumptions, Babri Masjid was being talked about, and one-day cricket had become popular. The ambitious and aspirational individual was coming to the fore. Very soon, economic liberalisation and globalisation would change not just the economy, but politics and society, too.
Many of the elements of today’s politics and society — moral and ethical permissiveness, the disregard for laws and norms, and the rise of the amoral individual — can be traced to the 1980s. Did Sidhu prefigure that emerging Indian person — individualistic, aggressive, amoral, achievement-fixated, and often ideology-neutral? If he did, it was no surprise that he also evolved into the typical politician of the later decades.
(The writer is a former Associate Editor of Deccan Herald)