Have you no sense of decency, sir?

This anguished rebuke from Senator Joseph Nye Welch on June 9, 1954 during the Army-McCarthy Hearings in the Senate Sub-Committee on Investigations, watched by over 20 million Americans on live TV, put the lid on the career of that notorious witch-hunter of communists in America, Senator Joseph McCarthy. And with those words, the silent majority suddenly found a voice and an expression to put an end to that unedifying chapter in American history known as McCarthyism. Today, the term is used more broadly to denounce demagoguery, reckless and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character or patriotism of political opponents or of minority communities. His supporters, however, chanted that “McCarthyism is Americanism with its sleeves rolled”, similar to our own version of “Hindutva is nationalism with its sleeves rolled.”

McCarthy’s career evaporated as the print and TV media came down heavily on him and decided to put an end to the hate campaign unleashed by him. Senator Welch’s question became the rallying cry for a nation that had temporarily lost its moral fibre to stop the cruelties of petty hatemongers. It is necessary to recall that period and that remarkable exchange, because memory is often the strongest power against tyranny.

Fast-forward to May 2021 and Bengaluru. On May 4, one of the young and ambitious MPs of the BJP made a dramatic revelation that a bed-allotment scam had been unearthed in the BBMP control room amidst a raging pandemic in the state. His point was simple. The crisis in Bengaluru over non-availability of beds was an artificial racket created by a bunch of operators who were booking beds in the names of asymptomatic or mildly affected patients and then selling them to critically ill and desperate patients at an exorbitant price. So, there was no shortage of beds, but critically ill patients were not getting it. In one fell swoop, he had put a fumbling government above blame and found the “real Public Enemy Number 1.”

The very next day, the MP went to the BBMP office along with two BJP MLAs and read out the names of the supposed culprits. They were 17 out of 205 and, unsurprisingly in the current milieu, all of them were Muslims. The ever-obliging Bengaluru Police quickly detained those young men for two nights and interrogated them for hours on end. And then they were let off because there was not a shred of evidence against them in the alleged bed scam that the MP had so dramatically revealed. But the deed had been done. The MP had established his credentials at the highest levels in his party that he had what it takes to be a leader in that party. The hunting spirit.

Hunting down Muslims and depriving them of their lives or livelihoods has been a popular sport in the country since 2014. It started with the ‘Gau Rakshaks’ lynching several Muslims seen with a cow in UP, Bihar, Jharkhand, even Karnataka. This appeared so well-orchestrated that there was a pattern and regularity to it that seemed to be either sanctioned or overlooked by the authorities. For none of the lynchers were brought to book for their crimes. When one such gang of lynchers was released on bail, one of the then Union ministers, educated at Harvard, went to receive and garland them outside the court in his home constituency in Jharkhand.

Carrying on with this cruel sport amidst a devastating pandemic started in March 2020, when PM Modi first imposed the world’s harshest lockdown on a nation of 1.3 billion people with a four-hour notice. Some 1,000-odd Tablighi Jamaat were caught in this lightning strike of a national lockdown at Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah in Delhi who could neither go back home nor stay where they were. They became ‘Corona-bombs’ or ‘Corona-Jihadis’ for a partisan and supplicant media. Police ignored the fact that many of them were patients suffering from Covid-19 themselves and put them behind bars.

Now, recalling Joseph Welch’s famous words, “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness...” When McCarthy resumed his attack, Welch interrupted him: “Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, Sir, at long last? Have you no sense of decency left?”

“It is, I regret to say, equally true that this young man shall bear the scar for the rest of his life, needlessly inflicted by you”, said Welch about his young lawyer Fred Fisher, who was accused of being a communist sympathiser by McCarthy. Think of those 17 young men, all belonging to one community, who shall bear the scar for the rest of their lives, needlessly inflicted by a young MP. Incredibly, an MLA standing next to the MP even asked, “Were they recruited for a Madrassa?” The question reveals more about the mindset of our legislators than about those young men working at the BBMP’s Covid control room.

It is always easier for a handful of demagogues to create and take over a narrative than for the silent majority to assert its ethical worldview. And the ‘moralist’ demagogue seems to triumph over the ‘ethical’ citizen, even if it’s only in the short run or temporarily. By the time the ethical worldview prevails, i.e., by the time the moralist is told “enough of your shallow morals, let us get back to some basic decency in social life”, he would have damaged the social fabric. There comes a time in the life of every nation when the good men or the silent majority have to stand up and tell the rulers not to cross the line of decency. Let us get back to some simple virtues that have held us together for centuries.

(The writer is a former Cabinet Secretariat official)