Author: Kanchan Gupta
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: December 1, 2013
URL: http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/coffee-break/law-but-thats-for-others-not-lutyenss-delhi.html

Shaming and shunning does not happen among Delhi’s elite. They never disown their own. It’s only a matter of time before Tarun Tejpal is back in business and to being a toast of the chattering classes

 Lawyers and students of law would know better, but I can’t recall any anticipatory bail petition in recent times generating so much popular interest as has Tehelka boss Tarun Tejpal’s plea that he should not be arrested by Goa Police which is investigating allegations of rape levelled against him by his junior colleague, who has since resigned from the magazine. Nor do I recall hearing on an anticipatory bail stretching over two days with the defence pulling out all stops to paint the victim in the most lurid of colours and even naming her in violation of the law which stipulates stiff penalty for disclosing the identity of the person alleging rape. It would seem as if the trial proceedings have begun.

 It could be argued that anybody accused of committing a criminal offence would go all out to defend himself — this would be all the more true when the alleged crime is rape and the punishment is up to 10 years or more in jail. It would be foolish to expect Tarun Tejpal to throw away 10 years of his life: Never mind journalism, that’s a lot of money to be thrown away. Yet, this was no normal anticipatory bail petition, it was extraordinary, to say the least, and could become the benchmark for future petitions of this nature.

 Those seeking anticipatory bail usually claim they are respectable citizens and promise to cooperate with the investigation, thus obviating the need for custodial interrogation. But in this case we have seen Tarun Tejpal’s lawyers going way beyond that. Not only have they sought to make the accused look like the victim of an elaborate political conspiracy hatched by the BJP, they have also brought into question the moral integrity of the journalist who says she was sexually assaulted by her editor.

 This may sound shocking, the sum and substance of Tarun Tejpal’s defence as it has unfolded in a Panjim court is: Good girls don’t attend parties, go to the beach or visit bars. If they are sexually assaulted, they don’t show their face in public but sit and sob in a dark corner. All this and more was said, if not in so many words, then in words that polite society would find abhorrent and repulsive. It is a shame to see Tarun Tejpal, whose Tehelka was hysterically strident in promoting women’s rights like only those given to adamantine feminist posturing alone can, should now be perfectly at ease with slandering a woman in the grossest manner possible to save himself from prosecution and punishment. Nothing remains of his dignity hereafter; even if he manages to beat the rap, he will be deserving of pitiless scorn.

 It’s another matter though that the scorn we pour on him will be of little or no consequence. In Lutyens’s Delhi, shame, scorn and shun are words that are not meant for the privileged classes but to berate those less privileged than them. They would never shame any of their own nor shun him or her, leave alone feel scornful towards those who have allowed themselves to be guided not by that which is ethical and right, but everything that is immoral and wrong.

 It’s only natural that those who comprise the elite of Lutyens’s Delhi, the Establishment, so to say, should have no moral compunctions or be devoid of rectitude. The laws that are framed, often at their insistence, are not meant for them but the unwashed masses, the underclasses across the tracks. Years ago when I had the temerity to point out to a senior Government official that the law is the same for everybody, he had benignly smiled at me and replied, “The law is no doubt the same for everybody, but privileges are not.” That’s an Orwellian take on India’s putrid reality: All men are equal, but some men are more equal than others.

 Nothing explains Tarun Tejpal’s cockiness in the face of adversity, his nonchalance as was on display at Delhi airport, his attitude reflects neither concern nor worry. And there’s a reason for that, no matter how misplaced. Our elite are supremely confident that nothing, absolutely nothing, can touch or scar them. They can do whatever they wish, they can violate any law that stands in their way, they can brush aside restraints that apply to the masses. For them all that is part of their privileged existence; if a cussed law enforcer tries to push the envelope (and his luck) he would be fixed and punished for daring to do so.

 It is this attitude that has been at play ever since l’affaire Tehelka became public knowledge. Tarun Tejpal has changed his position repeatedly, each time with as much ease as the previous occasion. From cringing apology to swaggering slander, he has traversed the distance between ‘sorry I did something wrong’ and ‘who the hell are you to tell me I did something wrong’. That he should have tried to divert attention from what he is accused of having done by painting himself as a ‘secular’ victim of a political conspiracy, and that such specious frivolity should have found reflection in court arguments, tells a story far more revealing than what has been revealed till now — of Tarun Tejpal, Shoma Chaudhury, the usual suspects, the chatterati, the causerati, the literati, the feminazis and assorted Left-liberals who shape public discourse in this benighted land of ours.

 Those who are hopeful of Tehelka now becoming a footnote of gutter Press history and Tarun Tejpal riding into the sunset with his acolyte Shoma Chaudhury will yet be proved wrong. We shall now hear cries of ‘Save Tehelka’ and the beautiful people will surge forward with open purses. We shall hear harsh denunciation of the BJP for Tarun Tejpal’s plight —as if the party is responsible for his keeping his zip open — and the attendant raucous clamour of ‘Save secularism’ and the beautiful people will rally forward, lit candles in their hands.

 It’s my guess that Tarun Tejpal and Shoma Chaudhury will soon be back in business. In Lutyens’s Delhi, where one half of the elite (metaphorically) sleeps with the other half, there are no full stops, only commas and semicolons. Nothing stops forever — as the Congress ad says, Nahi rukegi Dilli… you could add two more words to that slogan … Yeh shahar hai dalalon ki…