Home minister P Chidambaram finally found his voice on Wednesday, four days after the police under his charge battered democratic rights of thousands of citizens gathered for a peaceful protest at New Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan. “Let him do that, the law will deal with that,” he declared in response to the news that yoga guru Baba Ramdev, who led the protest at Ramlila Maidan against black money and corruption, had announced that he would raise a force of 11,000 for self-defence to carry on his campaign.

So, which is more outrageous: the centre’s mauling of democracy or the Baba’s silly statement?
The sequence of events shows that while Baba Ramdev’s irresponsible reaction stems from genuine hurt at the unprovoked midnight crackdown, the centre’s unpardonable police action and complete lack of remorse thereafter smacks of far deeper and diabolical designs on the basic tenets of democracy.

The Manmohan Singh government has sought to justify its midnight madness by alleging that Baba Ramdev’s protest fast was politically motivated and was actually engineered by the RSS. Even if that is true, is this how the Congress party-led government is going to handle all peaceful political protests? And in the spirit of equality, is this how non-Congress governments should deal with peaceful political protests backed or engineered by the Congress party? The centre’s stand surely suggests that the Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati let off Rahul Gandhi rather lightly when he joined the farmers’ agitation at Greater Noida’s Bhatta-Parsaul villages.

Baba Ramdev does not appear mistaken in his belief that a trained force of supporters would provide him immunity of sorts from a repeat of last Saturday night’s police action. Kashmiri separatists and Maoists routinely hold meetings in the capital and openly preach secessionism. Such groups too enjoy the right to voice their concerns without ever inviting the sort of action that visited Ramlila Maidan that night. If Baba Ramdev has reacted in the manner he did, isn’t the centre to blame for sending out the message that it respects the fundamental rights of only those who are either backed by private militia or who belong to their vote banks?

It is nobody’s case that Baba Ramdev should carry out his fanciful threat, only that it has to be seen in its proper context of the centre’s assault on the satyagrahis at Ramlila Maidan. If Chidambaram is so keen to implement the law, the nation would love to see it in action more stringently against those who threaten our democracy and not abused against those who hold peaceful protests.