The Sunanda Pushkar case: Why the conspiracy theories will never die

Something is rotten in the state of everything. That’s pretty much the standard Indian reaction to all controversy. All that is visible is viewed as the tip of a dark iceberg, hiding deeper, murkier secrets. The Sunanda Pushkar death should have been a straightforward cut-and-dried investigation. Politician’s wife found dead. An autopsy is done. The investigating authorities take over. Relevant people are questioned and that of course, includes the husband. Charges are pressed, if evidence of any wrongdoing is found. When US Congressman Gary Condit came under intense suspicion after the disappearance of a young Chandra Levy with whom he was having an affair, everyone, including Levy’s parents, suspected a cover-up. Condit lost his bid for re-election, but he was soon cleared of suspicion, everyone moved on, and the real culprit was eventually found. [caption id=“attachment_1601635” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] PTI[/caption] This is how it works when the law and order system does its job, and with at least some modicum of credibility. But neither is true in India, where every prominent investigation ends up tainted by political agendas. Now with Sudhir Gupta, the head of forensic medicine at AIIMS alleging pressure from above to doctor the autopsy report, the story of Pushkar’s demise has snowballed past tabloid fodder and into the territory of the Kennedy assassination. Powers-that-be at AIIMS have questioned Gupta’s professional motives. But then again it’s not clear if those powers-that-be are acting on their own or there are invisible puppet masters pulling their strings from offstage. Only one thing is clear. Everyone has an opinion on the case. Everyone apparently knows how it really went down and who is covering up what. A Subramanian Swamy is tweeting out his conspiracy theories about oil for food payments. A Madhu Kishwar tweets out her suspicions about Pushkar’s son not raising hell. Fishing in troubled waters is the great Indian pastime. And Twitter has given gossip on the Delhi power circuit a worldwide platform. At last count 578 people were RTing Swamy. Of course, conspiracy theories are not unique to India. Neil Armstrong did not land on the moon. 9/11 was an inside job. Lee Harvey Oswald was not the lone gunman in the Kennedy assassination. Those conspiracy theories are still very much alive and kicking but they largely belong to the fringe. In India, the conspiracy theory is the mainstream. Here, speculation is treated with the authority of fact, while the official report is relegated to the margins, invariably dismissed as a pathetic cover-up not worth the paper it is printed on. Gossip is our currency, and it is always in a state of runaway inflation. But that’s one kind of mehengayi we do not mind. The reason is partly that government has misused and abused its power so routinely – from top to bottom – that all institutions whether its AIIMS or the CBI or the local police thana have lost all credibility. Institutions have babus and babus sing to the tune of the powerful. Even a routine FIR will not be filed if it implicates a two-bit hoodlum with some political connections because police openly admit they are waiting for a green signal from the top. Government performance reports, CBI reports, IB intelligence reports, autopsy reports, expense reports – everything can be fudged beyond recognition. The Pushkar case just joins a long line of stories - Snoopgate, Ishrat Jahan, Aarushi Talwar - which will never really be laid definitively to rest no matter what courts and commissions of enquiry decide. The other reason is that we are a society that studiously maintains a vast distance between what is acknowledged and what is true – be it our black money or sexual behavior, In a culture obsessed with appearances, nothing is ever what it seems. So why should the public not believe a Madhu Kishwar when she claims law agencies and media will treat someone like Tharoor –a man with an “Oxonian accent” – with “kid gloves”? That might or might not be true but the point is in a country where nothing gets done without the right connections, where a Robert Vadra is real estate genius, it’s a claim that’s easily believed. As a public we are willing to swallow any conspiracy theory wholesale because we are used to living in a country where the official media and its official record was about propaganda and not fact. Even Rajiv Gandhi had to tune in to the BBC to confirm that his mother, the nation’s prime minister was actually dead. Liberalisation may have made for more news outlets but it has hardly improved their credibility, with each viewed as “sold” to one political party or the other. And they have done little to help their case. So it’s not surprising that gossip in India acquires the gravitas of truth. Every other person in Delhi will claim to know authoritatively the low down on Rahul Gandhi’s love life or the state of Priyanka Gandhi’s marriage. It’s never confirmed or denied by the principals so the gossip gains a life force of its own. And when gossip comes from someone with the imprimatur of a Swamy, it triples in street cred. It does not matter if it sounds outlandish. Swamy has confidently said based on his “worldwide sources” that MH-370 was “hijacked, went over India to some remote Al-Qaeda type area and then waiting for?” He’s also claimed that Sonia Gandhi and her family contracted LTTE killers to kill Rajiv Gandhi. But all a one-man multiple-missile army like Swamy needs is for one of his stories to stick – as in the Associated Journals case or that of 2G – and all the rest of his wild fulminations begin to acquire the ring of truth. It’s one thing when murky conspiracy theories roil around unexplained mysteries. Subhas Bose’s body was never found and that’s why his fate will never be explained to the satisfaction of all. There is literally no habeas corpus in that case. But the problem in India is every scandal, every controversy swiftly enters that same foggy realm of innuendo and half-truth. Even a case that goes to court, like the Aarushi Talwar case, finds no relief. It is judged in parallel on 24x7 media through shrieking headlines. Now social media has become yet another forum, even more unfettered and unedited (and yes unaccountable) than regular media, to fan an orgy of wild, often unsavoury speculation. Twitter gossip eventually finds its way back to regular media as “news fit to print” because it’s out on social media, thus completing the vicious circle. The Talwar case wound its way to a verdict but by then everyone had made up their minds because they all just knew what happened in the house that night and they knew about the private lives of all the principals and they even knew why certain journalists were championing the parents’ case. A little knowledge might be a dangerous thing but never more dangerous than in a culture of know-it-alls. In an atmosphere like this a politician like Tharoor is damned if he does and damned if he does not. If an investigation clears him, he will be accused of using his Oxonian accent to hush up a scandal. If he is found guilty of anything, his supporters will accuse the new Modi sarkar of trying to frame one of Congress’ few successful MPs in parliament. Either way the only winner will be the rumour mills which will churn out ever more “truths” for us to swear by.